Telecom industry interesting news & developments

Sprint Nextel has launched its Sprint TV App in the iOS app store, enabling millions of iPhone owners to watch free TV on their phones. Powered by MobiTV , the Sprint TV App will be free with Sprint’s unlimited data plans. Free channels will include the three major broadcast networks as well as ESPN, Disney, and The Weather Channel. For $10 a month, customers can add FOX News, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and ABC Family. Free TV has been available for Android devices for some time, but so far no major carrier has offered an app that consolidates mainstream television offerings. Hulu Plus offers a wider variety of content for mobile devices, but charges $8.00 a month. Sprint is the only one of the top 3 US carriers still offering unlimited data, and the only one NOT offering the IPad. But that could change very soon. Apple’s iPad 3 is expected to launch next week and with a new product Apple has the chance to announce a partnership with a new carrier. Since TV shows...

Telenor Group and the Wikimedia Foundation Tuesday announced a new partnership to offer Wikipedia free of traffic charges on mobile devices to Telenor customers in Asia and Southeastern Europe. By making versions of Wikipedia available to 135 million mobile customers, Telenor Group and the Wikimedia Foundation demonstrate a shared commitment to increasing access to the free and open knowledge available on Wikipedia, the Norway-based telecom giant stated in a release. According to Wikimedia Foundation, the initiative is a part of its mobile strategy, which focuses on reaching the billions of people around the world whose primary opportunity to access the Internet is via a mobile device. “The Wikimedia Foundation is working to remove barriers to free knowledge, and for most people around the world right now, cost and accessibility are the two biggest hurdles,” says Barry Newstead, Wikimedia’s Chief Global Development Officer. “We applaud Telenor for joining us to ...

PolyCom’s RealPresence video conferencing solution will be available for select HTC smartphones later this year, the two companies announced at Mobile World Congress. HTC smartphone owners will be able to download RealPresence from the Android Market by the middle of this year, according to PolyCom. RealPresence has been available for tablets since last October and has primarily been marketed to enterprise IT departments. The move to smartphones has been expected, as PolyCom works to extend its reach beyond the enterprise. Although its video conferencing solution is now used primarily for work-related tasks, the possibilities could expand considerably if the software proliferates on smartphones. “Increasingly, our customers are seeing the consumerization of IT; employees are bringing their favorite devices to work, and they want them supported on the corporate network,” said Sue Hayden, executive vice president of strategic alliances with Polycom. “Our new relationsh...

Spain’s Telefónica announced LTE deployment at Mobile World Congress , saying it will use Alcatel Lucent’s LightRadio technology in the 2.6Ghz frequency band. Deployment is expected to begin in Chile and Brazil. According to the company, the service will provide download speeds of 100 Mbps, and between 40-60Mbps on upload. Telefónica explained that the difference in its deployment is that in the conventional deployment, radio base stations co-exist with 4G metro cells (small base stations incorporating antennas and radio) working on the same frequency and with no interference. During the announcement, Telefónica highlighted as the most significant feature the increased capacity to support 30 people browsing simultaneously with an average speed of 30Mbps. The telecom operator noted that the network supports speeds of up to 10 times those offered by the 3G network, with download speeds of 100Mbps, upload speeds of 40-60 Mbps and with latency times of around 20-25 mi...

Months after having its acquisition attempt by AT&T quashed by regulators , T-Mobile USA laid out its plans for remaining a strong No. 4 challenger in the market, including $4 billion in network investments leading to the launch of LTE services next year. The carrier, which announced a similar network reinvigoration plan last year just prior to AT&T’s acquisition bid, said it plans to install new equipment at 37,000 cell sites and re-farm spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band currently used for its GSM-based services to launch HSPA+ services, which would then allow for the re-farming of its 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum currently used for HSPA+ services to bolster the spectrum gleaned from the merger break up to launch LTE in the 1.7/2.1 GHz band. T-Mobile USA’s management noted that the spectrum received from AT&T, which still needs to move through regulatory approval, will leave the carrier with approximately 60 megahertz of spectrum across the top 100 markets, an increas...

T-Mobile USA ended 2011 on a sour note as the carrier posted a marked increase in customer losses as well as the collapse of its planned acquisition by AT&T , both of which were somewhat related. T-Mobile USA said it lost 526,000 customers during the fourth quarter of 2011, pushing its customer base down to 33.2 million total customers on its network. The customer defections were substantially greater than the 23,000 customers it lost during the fourth quarter of 2010 and reversed the positive gain of 126,000 subscribers during the third quarter of last year. The customer losses were driven by its contract customer base, which lost 802,000 connections during the quarter, including the loss of 95,000 “connected devices” during the quarter. Prepaid customer growth did manage to grow year-over-year from 229,000 net additions in 2010 to 312,000 net additions last year, with the carrier noting it was serving 3.6 million indirect prepaid customers on its network at the end ...

The iPad will remain on sale in Shanghai for now, after a local court denied efforts by China’s Proview to force retailers to remove the tablets from their stores. Proview, which makes computer monitors, is fighting Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ) in courts all over China for the rights to the iPad name. “I think all eyes should be on this Shenzhen appellate case later this month,” says Stan Abrams, a law professor in Beijing who has been following the cases. The Shenzhen court ruled in Proview’s favor earlier this month, and iPads were removed from store shelves. The appeal in that case is expected to be heard on Wednesday, February 29. With its $97 billion cash hoard, Apple could end the cases quickly by setting with Proview. Proview’s monitor business is in decline, and the company has more to gain from a cash settlement than from holding onto the iPad name. But Abrams says that Apple is not ready to give in. “I have a feeling that the two sides are pretty far apart on a numb...