Court case in Berkeley; carrier aggregation in Europe, and Sprint’s network upgrade
5 things to know today:
1. Carriers have a lot riding on a California court case scheduled for today. The city of Berkeley wants mobile phone retailers to share information about RF energy absorption at the point of sale. CTIA vs. City of Berkeley will not be heard in Berkeley, but across the bay by a federal judge in San Francisco.
2. Ericsson said it provided Swisscom with Europe’s first fully commercial LTE-Advanced three-carrier aggregation solution that combines LTE in FDD and TDD modes. The demonstration used three carriers in two bands in a radio access network and used Qualcomm commercial-grade chipsets.
3. Smartphone sales in China fell for the first time ever, according to research firm Gartner. The analysts said the market is reaching smartphone saturation, and that sales fell 4% during the most recent quarter.
4. The slowing Chinese economy is also impacting Chinese carriers. China Mobile said that profit slipped in the most recent quarter, although the world’s largest carrier did add almost 100 million “4G” subscribers. China Telecom also reported lower profits, saying the government had pressured it to cut mobile data prices.
5. And Sprint has finally confirmed its network upgrade plans, saying it will deploy thousands of macro sites and tens of thousands of small cells. The carrier said it has been working closely with engineers at parent company SoftBank.
And our featured job today comes from MasTec Network Solutions. The company is hiring an associate RF engineer to work in Maryland. Find hundreds of jobs and thousands of resumes at telecomcareers.com.