May 06

Sprint Planning New Prepaid Brand

Posted in: Sprint, Today's Chili
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In addition to revamping Virgin Mobile’s plans, Sprint had something else up its sleeve today: a new prepaid service.
The carrier plans to announce a cheaper, prepaid cell phone brand in the coming weeks, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday. The new brand would be Sprint’s fourth, coming after Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless.
The unnamed fourth brand will offer plans starting at under $30 per month, and will be targeted at budget-conscious customers desiring no frills, pay-per-minute offerings.
Carriers in the U.S. have seen renewed, and even increased, interest in lower-cost, prepaid plans as the economy emerges from recession.
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May 06

Virgin Mobile Revamps Plans, Device Lineup

Posted in: BlackBerry, LG, Sprint, Today's Chili

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No matter how satisfied you are with your current cell phone plan, you should take a look at what Sprint has been up to this morning.
The nation’s third-largest wireless carrier has unveiled a comprehensive refresh of its Virgin Mobile prepaid cell phone products and services, in an effort to position itself for a surge in consumer interest in the prepaid wireless market.
The new Beyond Talk plans focus on unlimited messaging, email, data, and Web access in lieu of voice minutes. They start at just $25 per month, and include what the company claims is the lowest-priced BlackBerry service plan on the market. There are three Beyond Talk plans: $25 per month for 300 voice minutes, $40 per month for 1,200 voice minutes, and $60 for unlimited voice calls.
In addition, Virgin Mobile will now offer a series of new devices, including the BlackBerry Curve 8530 at $299,99, the LG Rumor Touch at $149.99 (without contract only), the LG Rumor 2 (pictured) for $89.99, and the Kyocera Loft for $69.99.
Sprint also boosted Boost Mobile’s $50 Monthly Unlimited plan by adding unlimited 411 calls, email, and instant messaging.
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May 06

Sprint and Virgin Mobile announces Beyond Talk $25 prepaid plan, new prepaid brand

Posted in: Sprint, Today's Chili, video
Sprint Nextel, through its Virgin Mobile brand, has announced a pretty big shift in its business model by offering new prepaid plans that begin at a mind-blowing $25 a month. Starting on May 12, three new Beyond Talk plans will include unlimited messaging, email, data, and web, as well as 300 minutes ($25), 1,200 minutes ($40), or unlimited minutes ($60) of talk time. And that ain’t all — BlackBerry data service can be added for an additional $10. Of course, you’ll be paying full price for your phone, but at least the selection is indeed better than the usual pre-paid fare, including the Blackberry Curve 8530 ($300) and LG Rumor Touch ($150). We don’t know how the other carriers are going to respond, but this does prompt the question: would you put up with Sprint’s handset selection for a plan this cheap? PR after the break.

Update: The Wall Street Journal has it that Sprint is also fixing to launch an entirely new prepaid brand, and while it declined to share a name for the new branch, it did confess that it “will let customers pay upfront for cell service by the minute rather than signing up for a month at a time.” As you may expect, it’ll be aimed at “middle-aged Americans who only use cellphones occasionally to make calls,” and it’ll join Boost Mobile, Assurance Wireless and Virgin Mobile in Sprint’s rapidly expanding stable of prepaid sub-brands. Is it difficult to tell these guys love the prepaid and can’t quite figure out how to make ends meet on the postpaid side? Nah…

Continue reading Sprint and Virgin Mobile announces Beyond Talk $25 prepaid plan, new prepaid brand

Sprint and Virgin Mobile announces Beyond Talk $25 prepaid plan, new prepaid brand originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 06

Clearwire WiMAX to cover 120 million prospective HTC EVO 4G owners by end of year

Posted in: 4G, HTC, Sprint, Today's Chili, WiMAX



With the HTC EVO dual-mode 3G/4G handset launching this summer (and nearly ready for pre-order) with built-in hotspot capability, we’ve got a pretty good idea what all you US Americans are wondering: is WiMAX available in my city? Well, buried inside the Clearwire financials is mention of the 19 additional cities scheduled for WiMAXing this summer, joining the 32 markets (pictured above) and 41 million people already served by its 4G network offering 3Mbps to 6Mbps average downloads with an occasional 10Mbps peak:

Clearwire also today announced plans to launch 4G mobile broadband service in 19 additional cities this summer, including previously announced markets Kansas City, KS; St. Louis, MO; Salt Lake City, UT, and the core area of Washington, D.C. and newly announced markets Nashville, TN; Daytona, Orlando and Tampa, FL; Rochester and Syracuse, NY; Merced, Modesto, Stockton, and Visalia, CA; Wilmington, DE; Grand Rapids, MI; Eugene, OR; and Yakima and Tri-Cities, WA.

Things will get really interesting later in 2010 when Clearwire and Sprint take their 4G mobile broadband network to New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay Area, Miami, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh for a 120 million person strong data footprint. LTE who?

Clearwire WiMAX to cover 120 million prospective HTC EVO 4G owners by end of year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 08:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 06

Sprint HTC EVO pre-orders start this month at The Shack

Posted in: HTC, leak, pre-order, PreOrder, rumor, Sprint, Today's Chili, WiMAX

HTC’s EVO 4G super-speced handset seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That situation looks set to change soon based on the pic above nabbed off The Shack’s internal website showing a big “coming soon” exclamation that translates to pre-orders starting “later this month.” Remember, in addition to Android 2.1, an 8 megapixel camera, and 4.3-inch 480 x 800 display backed by fierce Snapdragon silicon, the Evo also comes packing WiMAX with built-in hotspot capability. We’re still not sure if Sprint will charge for that or make it a freebie a la Verizon’s Palm Pre and Pixi offering, but we can hope.

[Thanks, Erin and David]

Sprint HTC EVO pre-orders start this month at The Shack originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 May 2010 01:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 04

Sprint’s HTC Hero update to Android 2.1 finally coming on May 7?

Posted in: Android, Google, hero, HTC, rumor, Sprint, Today's Chili, update, upgrade

This is turning into a serious boy-who-cried-wolf kind of situation, but evidence is growing today that HTC and Sprint are finally — yes, finally — ready to drop a hot batch of Sense-laden Android 2.1 on eager Hero owners. A screen shot of a Best Buy employee news page reads that the update was “delayed until this week” and will be “in all stores” by this Friday, May 7; what that means isn’t exactly clear, but it could suggest that all Heros being sold in Best Buy Mobile locations will have the update applied by then. As for current customers, Best Buy is sending out instructions on how staff can help owners upgrade if they happen to wander into the store, but otherwise, it should be available from HTC’s site (yeah, no over-the-air action here). Stay tuned, folks.

[Thanks, John]

Sprint’s HTC Hero update to Android 2.1 finally coming on May 7? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 May 2010 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 04

Celebrity Nerds: Oprah has an EVO 4G and you don’t

Posted in: HTC, Sprint, Today's Chili, video

Celebrity Nerds confirms what you always knew, deep in your heart of hearts: that stars are nerds like us. Send in your own confirmations of this fact right here.

We wish we could tell you that Oprah caused a small riot in Chicago by handing out HTC EVO 4Gs to everyone in her audience but, alas, she seems to have just kept this one for herself. More specifically, she used the “fancy new” phone to show “those of you who actually know how to text” how easy it is to sign her “No Phone Zone” pledge. No discounts, no Bono, just a fleeting glimpse of one of the most anticipated phones of the year. Head on past the break for the video evidence of this momentous event.

[Thanks, Luis]

Continue reading Celebrity Nerds: Oprah has an EVO 4G and you don’t

Celebrity Nerds: Oprah has an EVO 4G and you don’t originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 May 2010 15:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 01

HTC EVO 4G found loitering in Sprint store

Posted in: 4G, HTC, in the wild, InTheWild, Sprint, Today's Chili, WiMAX

It’s not the biggest of pictures — the PPCGeeks forum poster says he shot this with his Touch Pro 2 — but what we’re looking at is allegedly the HTC EVO 4G. Wish we could have a better look, but who knows, maybe some lucky contest winner in the next few weeks will have a decent DSLR handy.

[Thanks, Rigo]

HTC EVO 4G found loitering in Sprint store originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 May 2010 19:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 28

Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages

Posted in: earnings, financial, Sprint, Today's Chili

If you can find the silver linings, the news is finally getting a little better over at the number three largest carrier in the States after countless quarters of brutal numbers. Sprint still isn’t turning a profit or earning net customer adds, but it’s continuing to stem losses by posting its first sequential rise in revenue in almost three years, clocking just under $8.1 billion for the quarter; that’s still less than the revenue it posted a year ago, but hey, at least it’s an improvement over Q4 2009’s roughly $7.8 billion. All told, that works out to a net loss of $865 million, which is also better than Q4’s $980 million. Net wireless customers fell by 75,000 — considerably better than Q4’s 148,000 — but net postpaid customers fell by a much larger 578,000, suggesting that Boost Mobile’s aggressive marketing is probably working. That’s all well and good, but it also likely means that ARPU is on a downward trend; Sprint claims it was flat sequentially and down a dollar from $56 to $55 year-over-year. All told, it seems the company’s fortunes are improving by baby steps — but is it fast enough? And how much is the EVO 4G going to mix things up?

Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 27

IDC: LTE Equipment Market to Pass WiMAX by 2011

Posted in: lte, networking, Sprint, Today's Chili, Verizon Wireless, WiMAX, Wireless

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For next-generation 4G cellular networks, WiMAX may have a decent amount of current buzz, but it’s not likely to last. That’s the conclusion from research firm IDC, which is predicting that spending on LTE equipment will exceed that of WiMAX-related spending by the end of 2011.
Over 100 operators around the world currently support LTE, including nine of the top 10 largest carriers, and over a dozen networks are expected to go live this year alone, IDC said in a statement.
While some challenges remain, particularly with regard to a given carrier’s level of commitment to the platform as well as some spectrum-related issues, “LTE’s ability to reduce data delivery costs is fundamentally driving the technology forward,” as well as its ability to complement existing 3G networks in the interim, according to the report.
Verizon Wireless is expected to be first out of the gate with LTE in the U.S. later this year. Last month, Cisco announced it was pulling out of the WiMAX base station market, and now favors the LTE standard.
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