11/04, 6:55pm
One Voice initiative aims for interoperability
A long list of cellular providers and manufacturers, including players such as AT&T, Verizon, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Samsung, have all agreed on standards for voice calls and SMS messages distributed across LTE networks. The companies have collaborated on a technical profile, the One Voice initiative, that aims to ensure widespread compatibility between different products.
more
10/22, 7:40pm
Companies claim up to 10X faster speed than 3G
Clearwire and Sprint have announced their latest 4G deployment plans that will bring the faster data service to cities in the continental US and the Hawaiian islands. Fulfilling earlier promises, locations scheduled for November launch include Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh, North Carolina; Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas. Honolulu and Maui residents will be able to utilize the upgraded network beginning in December.
more
09/17, 5:20pm
Technology approaching commercial deployment
Nokia Siemens on Thursday announced that it has made the first voice call on a 4G LTE network. Although the technology has been previously tested, the latest demonstration was performed on a commercial base station while using standards-compliant software. The call was placed at Nokia Siemens research and development facility in Ulm, Germany, using the company's Flexi Multiradio Base Station.
more
08/11, 9:15pm
Sprint expanding 4G range
Sprint on Tuesday announced plans to expand its 4G WiMAX service to 17 additional cities in Hawaii, Idaho, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The carrier claims mobile broadband speeds reaching 10 Mb/s while downloading or between 3-6 Mb/s for uploads. The 4G service is said to exceed 3G speeds by a factor of three to five.
more
08/03, 3:50pm
Clearwire 4G launch
Clearwire has announced that it is set to launch its 4G WiMAX service in ten new markets spread across Idaho, Washington and Texas beginning September 1st. The company's mobile Internet network is currently available in four locations including Atlanta; Baltimore, Las Vegas and Portland, Oregon.
more
04/01, 3:45pm
Verizon JILL platform
Verizon executives at CTIA provided additional details regarding the upcoming 4G LTE network, along with a cross-carrier platform known as JILL. Despite the company pushing to get the next-generation technology rolled out before competitors, Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg does not expect the transition to require a significantly higher amount of capital. He claimed the upgrades were "not that expensive," as the company plans to shift investments from the current EV-DO standard to cover a large portion of the 4G conversion.
more
01/15, 5:15pm
TeliaSonera first with 4G
TeliaSonera announced on Thursday it expects to become the first wireless provider in the world to offer the next-generation 4G mobile broadband network to its customers. The company is on course to launch the service in Stockholm and Oslo in 2010, partnering with hardware maker Ericsson for the initial 4G city network in Stockholm and Huawei in Oslo. Talks with suppliers for 4G-ready devices in other Nordic and Baltic countries are currently in progress, TeliaSonera's Senior Vice President and CTO, Lars Klasson, adds.
more
11/05, 9:15pm
TMobile goes direct to LTE
After remaining silent for quite some time, T-Mobile on Tuesday confirmed its plans for its 4G LTE network, as well as what it will do with its current 3G network. Unstrung reports that T-Mobile is excluding HSPA+ from its network expansion plans, instead opting to focus purely on LTE, mainly due to matters of efficiency. "If I need to invest into more hardware, I think it's better to start early [with LTE]," said Joachim Horn, Chief Technology Officer. "LTE is a more future-oriented technology."
more
09/18, 2:45pm
LTE in-car tests a success
Wireless network provider T-Mobile and Nortel Networks on Thursday announced the successful test of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) high-speed wireless data network in a moving car, according to a new update. Tested on a highway in Bonn, Germany in a vehicle moving at an average speed of 42mph, the upcoming LTE network achieved 170Mbps download speeds and 50Mbps upload speeds. Throughout the trip, the car was in range of three cell sites.
more
07/16, 4:25pm
Aircell Wi-Fi going LTE 4G
Aircell, which will offer Wi-Fi access on airplanes while in flight via its Gogo service, today announced it would base its second generation of the service on the 4G Long Term Evolution data network. When the service goes live later on this year, it will use CDMA EVDO Rev A for data transfer during flights, topping out at more than 12 Mbps. By the end of 2009, Aircell plans to up that number to 22.7 Mbps with advances in its current technology. When the company incorporates the 4G LTE network in 2011, throughput speeds will jump to 300 Mbps, Aircell promises.
more
07/09, 3:05pm
Korea Developing 5G
Although fourth-generation (4G) cellular wireless still has yet to hold its own, the South Korean government is already developing 5G access that may be ready soon after 4G services go live, the country's officials say (registration required). The country hopes to invest money equal to $58.4 million over the next three years into both advancing 4G access and to starting work on 5G at the same time. Doing so is said to hopefully make the Asian country the top-ranked cellphone producer in the world by setting a 4G standard and becoming the primary source of 4G on the planet.
more
06/19, 2:40pm
Xohm Second Wave Expansion
Sprint's next wave of cities to receive its Xohm WiMAX service after Baltimore will focus primarily on Texas and the northeast, the carrier is telling interested customers. In addition to extra launches planned for Chicago and Washington DC, the 4G service should be available in Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence in the New England area as well as its first southern effort in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
more
06/18, 4:10pm
Xohm Live in September
Sprint's long-delayed full rollout of its Xohm WiMAX Internet service should start in September, company chief technical officer Barry West said Wednesday at the WiMAX Forum's Global Congress event. The executive now claims that the 4G-class wireless network will start its normal, paid business in September with a first run in Baltimore; Chicago and Washington DC, which have also participated in early trials, will see their networks opened to the public sometime in the fall. Other cities should come soon after, West says.
more
06/12, 4:40pm
NXP intros 4G mobile modem
NXP Semiconductors today announced it's set to launch the world's first 4G mobile modem, called the Nexperia Cellular System Solution PNX6910. The modem uses soft architecture to achieve claimed download speeds of 150Mbps and 50Mbps upload speeds. When it launches, it will be capable of supporting the LTE, HSPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS and GSM networks in mobile data devices, says NXP.
more
06/10, 2:10pm
Verizon on iPhone 3G Plan
Apple's decision to allow subsidized prices for the iPhone 3G is an admission that it needs to follow the traditional cellphone provider model, Verizon's chief operating officer Denny Strigl claimed at the second day of the Deutsche Bank Conference. The executive downplays the impact of the new cellphone on his own company and contends that Apple and AT&T are simply learning to accept a conventional practice that discounts the phone's up-front price rather than insist on splitting monthly phone revenues.
more
06/05, 10:35am
Verizon Buys Alltel
Quickly following up on earlier confirmations by its partner Vodafone, Verizon on Thursday said it would buy out Alltel in a cash merger with a total value of about $28.1 billion. The deal is mutually agreed upon and should see the union take place by the end of the year following approvals from the US government; Alltel chief Scott Ford will continue to run Alltel until the deal is completed.
more
06/04, 4:30pm
Verizon May Buy Alltel
The American cellular industry may consolidate once again with a potential Verizon buyout of Alltel, CNBC claims. Referring to anonymous sources said to be aware of the deal, the TV news network asserts that Verizon would pay as much as eight times Alltel's pre-interest, pre-tax earnings, or $27 billion, for the acquisition. The deal would be a friendly takeover as Goldman Sachs and TPG, the financial institutions that took Alltel into private holding just last year, are eager to turn a premium no matter how small.
more
05/15, 2:05pm
Alltel to Use LTE for 4G
Alltel will use Long Term Evolution (LTE) for its next-generation phone network, according to statements made during a conference call discussing the provider's latest financial results. Company chief Scott Ford explained that the technology is Alltel's pick and that LTE will have a "significant" installed base for the company's cellular network within the next three to five years. Ford doesn't say when Alltel will start its rollout, but notes that there is no short-term budget and that nothing will be underway until at least 2009.
more
05/14, 8:45am
ATT 20Mbps 3G in 2009
AT&T's cellular Internet access will be more than five times faster in 2009 than it is this year, the company's mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said today at Morgan Stanley's annual Communications Conference. The executive says that the company's HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) network will be improved from the theoretical peak downloads of 3.6 megabits per second common across most of the network today to about 20 megabits per second in 2009.
more
04/03, 10:35pm
Verizon 700MHz 4G Access
Verizon will use its recent 700MHz wins to setup a nationwide 4G cellular network, the company declared tonight. A lift of the FCC's ban on discussing the 700MHz auction results reveals that the telecoms firm will introduce a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network on its share of the frequency, providing much faster Internet access than the carrier's existing 3G, EVDO Revision A-based network.
more
04/03, 10:25pm
AT&T using LTE 4G
AT&T today held a conference call regarding its acquisitions in the 700MHz spectrum, and confirmed that it will use the Long Term Evolution system for its upcoming 4G telecommunications infrastructure. Representatives during the call told MacNN its B-block acquisitions of the 700MHz spectrum would allow it to cover 87 percent of the US populace with its 4G architecture, and would give it finer control over its network and applications. Since it is a closed system, it allows AT&T to enable or restrict certain devices.
more
03/26, 12:50pm
250Mbps cellular broadband
Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has managed downlink speeds of up to 250Mbps in field testing of LTE (Long Term Evolution), a company announcement claims. LTE, often dubbed 4G broadband, is expected to eventually replace the current worldwide 3G standards, HSDPA and HSUPA. LTE should allow individual cellphone users to reach download speeds of up to 20Mbps; this at least two and a half times faster than the fastest 3 and 3.5G deployments, still used in a minority of public networks. Most 3G connections are over five times slower.
more
03/20, 3:20pm
Verizon 700MHz Wins
Verizon was the winner of the nationwide license for the crucial 700MHz wireless auction as well as most regional licenses, the FCC has revealed. An initial list of winners shows the telecoms giant to have successfully won both the national license as well as 11 out of 12 of the local licenses available for the "C" block that is likely to be used for wireless data. The licenses supply the company with coverage across all of the US and would allow it to launch any future service with few gaps in its network. Only AT&T Mobility has managed to win a major regional "C" block bid for coverage in the Mississippi Valley, according to government documents.
more
03/20, 12:00pm
Sprint Unified Network
Sprint intends to be one of the first carriers in the US to offer a truly unified cellular network based on the same structure as the Internet, the company's core technology VP Ben Vos said at a conference today. The provider hopes to break from the conventional use of old and new technologies at different stages of the network and will use an IP (Internet Protocol) network for its entire backbone as well as its multimedia systems. The switch will let all of Sprint's devices share a common platform and let them talk to each other the same way: programmers could write a program that works properly on Sprint's upcoming Xohm WiMAX network that behaves the same way on its CDMA or iDEN phone networks, Vos said.
more
03/12, 11:10am
Ericsson 700MHz Gear
Swedish electronics giant Ericsson today revealed that it will already be set with technology that will support new 700MHz Internet access when it becomes an option in the US and elsewhere by 2009. The company says it is already developing chipsets that will natively use the upcoming Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard for extremely quick 4G Internet access; the new technology should allow download speeds up to 326Mbps on the carrier's end (20Mbps for each user) while still providing the advantages that come with the 700MHz airwaves, such as longer range and better signals when indoors.
more
02/12, 11:35pm
China Mobile backs LTE
In what seems to be an enormous shift in the race for a 4G wireless standard, China Mobile on Wednesday is expected to show its support for the LTE, or Long Term Evolution, 4G wireless technology. Should this prove to be true, LTE will have accrued support from China Mobile, Vodafone, Verizon, and, peripherally, AT&T, according to Yahoo News. Arun Sarin, CEO for Vodafone, expects that WiMax – one of LTE's competing standards – will be rolled in to the LTE standard, as the UK-based company deploys its 4G networks in 2010.
more
02/07, 10:30am
Qualcomm Multi-Mode 4G
Qualcomm today said it would be the first company to produce chipsets capable of supporting multiple 4G Internet standards. Three of its chipsets will now not only support the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard that will be used many larger world carriers but also competing and bridging standards: the top two chipsets, the MDM9600 and MDM 9800, will support the upcoming EVDO Rev. B and Ultra-Mobile Broadband (UMB) standards for CDMA networks even as they support LTE networks once they appear. Each will be powerful enough to handle downloads as quick as 50Mbps and uploads as fast as 25Mbps, Qualcomm says.
more
02/06, 12:30pm
ATT 3G Expansion in 2008
AT&T today said it would rapidly expand its third-generation (3G) cellular data network over the course of 2008, greatly improving coverage of the relatively fledgling service. The carrier intends to introduce its HSPA-based Internet access to 80 new cities throughout the year to include a total of 350 areas. Many if not all of these current and future areas will be upgraded to use the faster HSUPA (High Speed Upload Packet Access) format, AT&T adds. Practical speeds for these networks are estimated to range between 600Kbps and 1.4Mbps with downloads and between 500Kbps and 800Kbps for uploads, enabling video uploads as well as more two-way Internet features.
more
02/04, 4:20pm
HSPA Plus Chipset
Texas Instruments today said it had reached a major milestone by introducing a new platform for HSPA+, a new form of "3.5G" high-speed cellular Internet access that builds on today's normal HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) connections. The technology, currently based on a new signal processing chip, would effectively turn a cell tower's base station into a standard IP (Internet protocol) router that uses standard Ethernet to make its connection. This plus other optimizations should permit downloads as quick as 42 megabits per second and uploads at 11 megabits per second; the uplink speed would be roughly double that of already advanced 5.8Mbps HSPA uploads, while downstream access would be as much as six times faster.
more
01/29, 3:20pm
Sprint Clearwire WiMAX
Both Sprint and Clearwire are back to discussing a previously-ended deal that would see a shared WiMAX effort, according to people speaking with the Wall Street Journal. In spite of ending talks just last year after failing to come to an agreement, both companies are reportedly once again prepared to explore a deal that would let customers of either Clearwire or Sprint roam on each other's WiMAX networks, saving both companies from having to build out an entire national network themselves. The new strategy would see Sprint's WiMAX service, named Xohm, spun off as a separate entity and merged with Clearwire to create a single, unified service.
more
01/25, 5:10pm
LTE vs WiMAX Report
The Intel-backed Xohm WiMAX service from Sprint is unlikely to survive as a fourth-generation (4G) cellular Internet standard in the face of its main challenger Long Term Evolution, according to a new analyst report from Maravedis. Although Intel has generally backed the service and expects to make WiMAX a staple of its Montevina notebook platform in mid-year, both troubles inside Sprint and opposition from other cell carriers backing LTE are believed in the report to be sinking Xohm's hopes for future success.
more
01/22, 2:35pm
3GPP Finalizes LTE Spec
The specifications for the upcoming fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) have been finalized, the wireless standards group 3GPP says. In its final form, the 4G cellular technology will use the same basic multiple-in, multiple-out antenna concept as 802.11n Wi-Fi to greatly improve the bandwidth over today's 3G technology. By piecing together multiple signals the technology can achieve as much as 326 megabits per second in downloads on a 20MHz slice of the wireless spectrum; uploads peak at 86MHz, says the standards body. The finished version of LTE also cuts latency down to 10 milliseconds between the tower and the user, allowing relatively time-sensitive activities such as video calls or games.
more
12/19, 10:00am
LTE Hits 173Mbps
Setting a new record for long-range wireless, Nokia Siemens Networks today revealed that it has completed a test of fourth-generation cellular data that proves the service quick in real-world conditions. Using the upcoming Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard, the company has successfully reached wireless download speeds as high as 173 megabits per second in a downtown Berlin environment where interference would normally reduce the signal strength and hurt connection speed. The service crests above 100 megabits per second even with multiple users wandering as far as a kilometer (0.6 miles) away from the tower providing the signal, according to Nokia Siemens.
more
12/11, 3:00pm
Sprint WiMAX This Week
Sprint removed some concerns about its wireless projects today and confirmed the initial rollout of Xohm, one of the first true networks using Intel's fourth-generation WiMAX technology. The plans reiterate the carrier's plan to soft-launch its 4G service and will quietly make available networks in downtown Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.; new to the announcement is word that the provider will expand based on existing cellular traffic, building out the WiMAX service based on customers already making heavy use of Sprint's existing services. About 100 million Americans will be within range of WiMAX by the end of 2008.
more
