Hasta La Gadget!

Telecom carriers Sprint and Verizon have said they will ensure all key cellphones from the two companies in the future will have Wi-Fi capability, a feature that has been missing in many of its recent devices.

Sprint will “embrace” Wi-Fi in all its “major devices”, Jeff Clemow, director of business product marketing for Sprint told Fierce Wireless. The feature is a requirement for all of Sprint’s equipment suppliers now, says Clemow.

Verizon has also indicated that all devices the company releases, after the BlackBerry Tour next week, will include Wi-Fi.

Last year, Verizon baffled customers with its decision to offer the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm without Wi-Fi capability. The move became a sore point among reviewers who criticized it in reviews of the Storm.

Sprint has faced similar questions. The company’s BlackBerry Tour phone, when it launches Sunday, will not include Wi-Fi. Sprint has said it hopes to change that with an updated version of the device that will be available next year.

Cost has been cited as one of the reasons for the lack of Wi-Fi in CDMA handsets from Verizon and Sprint. CDMA handsets with Wi-Fi capability are reportedly more expensive for the service providers compared to their GSM peers.

With consumers increasingly turning away from phones that don’t have Wi-Fi, Verizon and Sprint may have had little choice but to do what it takes to offer this feature to users.  Another possibility could be that these telecom carriers were hoping that without Wi-Fi capability more buyers would sign up for expensive data plans from the companies.

Meanwhile, rival AT&T has been expanding it Wi-Fi network. In November the company bought Wi-Fi services provider Wayport for $275 million and added about 10,000 hotspots. AT&T now has more than 20,000 domestic hotspots that allows it to claim the title of having the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network.

Clearly now both Sprint and Verizon see the lack of Wi-Fi in cellphones as a bet that they can’t afford to make.

Photo: (qviri/Flickr)

By the time Sprint gets around to releasing the 9630 Tour with WiFi, due out sometime early next year, we think most everyone’ll have moved on to any one of the numerous BlackBerry devices likely to hit in the interim. What’s more important in this FierceWireless report is that Sprint’s requiring WiFi “in all its major devices going forward” — which should mean pretty much every smartphone that lands in its CDMA-loving mitts. Verizon Wireless, who along with Sprint is also launching the WLAN-less Tour this Sunday, said that the company’s working with RIM to get WiFi into future BlackBerry, but didn’t oblige us with any hopeful descriptors that’d help us understand just how strong of a push was being made. Frankly, smartphones without WiFi at this point is downright criminal, and with CDMA phones trailing behind their GSM counterparts in this category, kudos to Sprint for taking the initiative.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Filed under: Cellphones

Sprint mandating WiFi on future smartphones, WLAN-lovin’ BlackBerry Tour coming next year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This article was written on October 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in 2006 we wrote about a consumer who had subscribed to Verizon’s unlimited broadband EVDO service only to get his account canceled for high usage.  Unlimited usually means… well, never-ending, unrestricted, or infinite.  Verizon marketed this service as such, except that they applied restrictions to the ‘unlimited’ part of it.  The man received a letter saying his usage was so high that they were canceling the service.  Never in the fine print did they say that their unlimited plan had a limit.

Then in April of this year, we noticed that Verizon had changed their terms (in the fine print of course) which outlined that their unlimited plan could only be used up to 5GB a month, otherwise usage was considered unacceptable and service would be terminated.  Shortly after we published our discovery, other sites caught on and this news spread like wildfire.  At the time we had several lawyers contact us wanting the contact information for anyone we knew of who were users of the service so that a class-action lawsuit could be filed. We didn’t provide them with any information, but knew it was only going to be a matter of time before Verizon would be in legal trouble for false advertising.

That leads us to today. Just yesterday Verizon agreed to pay $1 million dollars for their “unlimited” but limited EVDO plans.  Over 13,000 customers in all were cut-off from the service, and those customers will now be reimbursed for the hardware that they bought to use the service which no longer serves a purpose.  To get to this settlement, it took nine months of investigation to look at Verizon’s services and how they market them. Obviously they had been falsely advertising for quite some time.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cumo announced the settlement and said that Verizon was producing “misleading materials and deceptive marketing” for claiming that the plans were unlimited when they really weren’t.  He also said they “indirectly contradicted the promise of unlimited service.” Of course Verizon is no longer advertising “Unlimited Broadband Access” (apparently they don’t want another legal battle), they’re just calling it “Broadband Access” which is what it should have been called from the start.

It’s nice to see that Verizon had to face the consequences for falsely marketing and selling an unlimited service. Clearly they learned that they can’t say unlimited unless they actually mean it, and they now know that false advertising, while it may give you an increase in customers, eventually just lands you in legal trouble.

Source: Ars

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• Will Verizon’s “Unlimited Text, Pix, and Flix” be Limited too?
• Verizon’s Unlimited EVDO Wireless Not So Unlimited
• Verizon’s Unlimited Calling Plans Fall Short
• Verizon Set to Purchase Alltel for $28.1 Billion
• Coming Soon: http://m.youtube.com (YouTube Mobile!)

Looks like Verizon’s got a winner here. That leaked promotional graphic was right on the money, as the carrier’s just replaced its BlackBerry Tour teaser with a pre-order page and, lo and behold, it’s indeed coming July 12th for a penny under $200. We’re still waiting to see if Sprint’s whispered July 20th date pans out, but regardless, if you want a Tour before anyone else, looks like VZW’s the way to go.

[Thanks, Jeff]

Update: She’s official. The press release says so.

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon’s BlackBerry Tour coming July 12th, pre-order page now live originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

You know what’d sell like a cold glass of water in hell? A $199.99 BlackBerry Tour on Verizon, that’s what — and it looks like that might be what the carrier’s planning to unleash. Boy Genius Report has what seems to be a promotional graphic advertising the release of the Tour on July 12 — just over two weeks from today — which has the potential to make it the first Tour release anywhere, beating Telus’ July 15 date and Sprint’s nebulous “later this summer” window. Who’s camping out in line with us?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

BlackBerry Tour hitting Verizon on July 12 for $199.99? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments