Telecom industry interesting news & developments

Verizon Wireless shed some light on recent issues impacting its LTE network in a move that looks to placate a growing online call that maybe the carrier is not quite the gold standard of network reliability it makes itself out to be. In a statement, Verizon Wireless acknowledged that its LTE service has had a few hiccups and that some of its efforts to restore data connectivity also affected the ability to access 3G services for some customers. “Problems customers experienced affected connectivity to the 4G LTE network and data service,” the carrier said. “Several times, we have proactively ‘moved’ 4G LTE customers onto our 3G network to ensure all would have a data connection. For brief periods, such as on Wednesday (12/28), 4G LTE customers could not connect to the 3G network as quickly as we would have liked.” In explaining the particulars of the outages, Verizon Wireless noted that each incident was “different from a technical standpoint,” and that each instanc...

Mozilla's Firefoxes are winning with the new Google deal Well,   Mozilla   certainly fooled us. Just when we were counting Firefox out as a major Web browser player   in the years ahead. Sure,   Mozilla signed a new deal with Google , but by itself though   many of us didn’t think the deal meant much . I assumed, along with many others, that Google could support Firefox with its pocket change while devoting all its real attention to its own Web browser:   Chrome . Boy, were we wrong! We now know that   Google will pay just under $300 million per year to be Firefox’s default search engine choice . That’s almost three-times as much as Mozilla made in its previous deal with Google. In 2010,   84% of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue came from its Google search deal . This is great for Mozilla. As Jay Lyman, senior open-source analyst for   451 Research , said this is “certainly good news for Mozilla and Firefox and it buys them more...

Following the discovery of a lump of coal in its stocking earlier this week, AT&T ( T ) managed to get at least one present it was hoping for: Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum. AT&T announced late last night that it had garnered regulatory approval to purchase 700 MHz licenses from Qualcomm ( QCOM ) that was originally announced one year ago . The approval follows the announcement earlier this week that AT&T was pulling out of its planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA due to regulatory objections. That deal’s demise will cost AT&T approximately $4 billion in assets . The Qualcomm deal calls for AT&T to pick up 6 megahertz of nationwide, 700 MHz unpaired spectrum (D-Block) and 6 megahertz of unpaired 700 MHz spectrum (E-Block) covering approximately 70 million potential customers for $1.925 billion. Qualcomm had originally spent $558 million for those licenses during the 700 MHz auction . It should be noted that the remainder of the E-Block licens...

The end of one-time mobile broadband provider Open Range Communications is at hand as the company’s assets are set to be auctioned off beginning Jan. 11. Colorado-based Open Range, which provided wireless Internet and phone services using WiMAX technology across portions of 17 states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Oct. 6. According to auction services firm Heritage Global Partners, the auction will feature “large quantities of state-of-the-art networking, test equipment, IT equipment and office furnishings as well as more than 350 cell towers located throughout the United States.” “This auction is an opportunity for local or regional wireless telecom providers to purchase technologies and equipment to expand their services and better serve their customers,” said David Weiss, vice president of Heritage Global Partners. In 2008, Open Range garnered approval for $267 million in loans from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Rural Development Utilities Program to deli...

everal major global telecom vendors — including Alcatel Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, Huawei Telecommunication and ZTE Telecom — are among the bidders for the mobile equipment tender of state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL). India’s junior minister for telecommunications, Milind Deora, told Parliament that the tender for procurement of 14.4 million Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication lines for expansion of 2G and 3G services has been floated by BSNL. “The equipment is required for all the telecom circles of BSNL except Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, which would get equipment under PSU quota reserved for ITI against the tender,” the minister said. The minister also gave information on the fresh tenders which are floated based on revised requirements. BSNL had previously scrapped a tender for 93 million GSM lines which it floated in 2008 for all the telecom circles. The company also scrapped another tender for 5.5 mill...

Consumerization, cloud computing, consumer and enterprise social networks, mobile application, the shifting of sources of supply from Asia to the Americas, big data and cybercrime are some of the trends among research and advisory firm Gartner’s top predictions for IT organizations and users for 2012 and beyond. Gartner (NYSE: IT) also cited trends such as chief information officers losing control of their IT expenditures, which will be managed outside the IT department’s budget. Trends include events that will change the nature of business today and in years to come. One big challenge is to deal and to understand the increase in the amount of information available to organizations. According to Gartner, given the shifts in control of systems that IT organizations are facing, the loss of ability to guarantee consistency and effectiveness of data will leave many struggling to prevent their organizations from missing key opportunities or from using questionable informati...

Leap Wireless ( LEAP ) threw its hat into the LTE ring, announcing the commercial launch of service in the Tucson, Ariz., market. The carrier said the initial service offering covers more than 90% of its current CDMA-based footprint in that market, with further expansion to Nogales planned for 2012. The LTE network in Tucson is using equipment from Alcatel-Lucent. Leap noted that initial testing has returned network speeds up to 10 times faster than its current 3G network, which itself returns network speeds of up to 1 megabit per second on the downlink, though rate plans indicate actual speeds will top out at 6 Mbps for the LTE service. Rate plans for the service begin at $50 per month for 5 gigabytes of data access at speeds up to 3 Mbps, with big spenders able to access the same 5 GB of data at speeds up to 6 Mbps for $60 per month. Leap’s current CDMA-based wireless modem plans allow for 2.5 GB of data transmission at speeds up to 1.4 Mbps for $45 per month; 5 GB...

One segment expected to benefit from AT&T’s ( T ) decision to drop its acquisition bid of T-Mobile USA is the tower market, which for the past several months has waited on news of how a combined AT&T Mobility/T-Mobile USA would impact their operations . Now, that the deal is off, most expect business to again hit a boom cycle for the tower industry. This boom is to be fueled by T-Mobile USA now needing to spend money on towers in support of its newly acquired spectrum and possible LTE strategy. “Some of our private contacts have already indicated that last week T-Mobile has begun re-engaging in a dialogue with wireless RF and tower operators to continue to focus on its HSPA+ rollout,” Wells Fargo Securities said in a research note. “It is our understanding that since the March 20, 2010 announcement of the merger, T-Mobile has been somewhat quiet on this front.” Also boding well for the tower market are the expected tower buildouts associated with Verizon Wirel...

With its planned acquisition of T-Mobile USA now dead , AT&T Mobility look set to end the year having to plan how to proceed. Details of the deal’s demise indicate that the companies have entered into a network-sharing arrangement, details of which are not yet known. What is known is that AT&T will be handing over $3 billion in cash; 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum licenses covering 128 markets, including 12 of the nation’s top 20 markets; and a nationwide UMTS roaming agreement that will allow T-Mobile USA to expand coverage from its current 230 million potential customers covered to 280 million pops covered. That bounty will at least give Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile USA a jump on their plans. Those plans could be a fallback to what Deutsche Telekom had announced just prior to AT&T’s acquisition attempt when the company held a news conference touting the ways in which it was going to re-energize its U.S. operations. Deutsche Telekom said at that time that it want...

After nearly nine months, AT&T has said it will drop its $39 billion acquisition attempt of T-Mobile USA. The carrier cited recent acts by the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission to block the deal in ending the acquisition attempt. In a statement, AT&T reiterated that it needed to acquire T-Mobile USA in order to gain access to spectrum resources to power wireless networks straining under increased consumer demand, and that without being able to gain access to those spectrum assets, “customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.” AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement that the carrier would continue to invest in its network, but that the government needed to allow the “free markets to work so that additional spectrum is available to meet the immediate needs of the U.S. wireless industry, including expeditiously approving our acquisition of unused Qualcomm spectrum currently pending before the FC...