1. Verizon Wireless has revised its organizational structure, following reports the company is moving from 20 regional offices to six. The carrier has named its six market leaders:
Ken Dixon, market leader for the Northeast region.
Greg Haller, market leader for the Pacific region.
Roger Tang, market leader for the Southeast region.
Krista Bourne, market leader for South Central region.
John Granby, market for the Great Lakes region.
Russ Preite, market leader for the North Central region.
2. Wireless carriers could pay less to attach small cells to utility poles, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC adopted an order that brings parity to the amounts telcos, wireless carriers and cable companies pay to attach equipment to utility poles. The order was first presented to the FCC more than four years ago, but the agency revisited the issue this year. The FCC regulates pole attachments in some states, and in others the state government has this authority.
3. Mobile devices were used to make more than one-third of all online purchases during the first two days of the holiday shopping season. Those figures come from Adobe, which has been tracking cyber shopping for several years. Adobe says that U.S. consumers used mobile devices to spend $1.5 billion on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Most of those purchases were made using smartphones rather than tablets.
4. The National Security Agency has ceased bulk collection of U.S. phone records in order to comply with the Freedom Act. The government will now need a court order to scan carrier records to see what numbers were called and when the calls were placed.
5. Korea Telecom is using Altair Semiconductor’s LTE chipset for “Internet of Things” applications. Altair says it has the first chipset designed and optimized exclusively for LTE CAT-1 operation. The low-power chip is meant for applications such as smart gas and water meters, which require multiyear battery life.
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