1. AT&T is using its Cricket prepaid brand to take aim at T-Mobile US. Cricket is offering customers who switch from T-Mobile a $100 bill credit when they sign up for its new $70 per month unlimited plan. That $70 plan includes unlimited data, voice and text service on a single smartphone line.
Cricket accused the “un-carrier” of being “very uncool” by offering customers a similar service for $25 per month more than Cricket is charging, and delivering that service on a “smaller 4G LTE network.”
Like T-Mobile, Cricket will offer its unlimited service without an annual contract. The new offer also includes a $5 credit for customers who use AutoPay, bringing the cost to $65 per month.
This is not the first time Cricket has lured T-Mobile customers with a $100 bill credit. Cricket made that offer for the first time in August 2014.
2. Mitel has reached an agreement to buy PolyCom for $1.96 billion. Mitel is a leading provider of cloud-based services with a heavy emphasis on enterprise mobility, and PolyCom is a provider of video conferencing solutions. The companies said that they were in negotiations for ten months before finally striking a deal. PolyCom shareholders will receive a combination of cash and stock so the final value of the deal will depend on the price of Mitel’s stock at closing.
The combined company will be headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, and will operate under the Mitel name. Richard McBee, Mitel’s CEO, will lead the combined organization.
3. Ixia warned investors that revenue and earnings for the current quarter will be lower than previously forecast. After the market closed yesterday the company said that first quarter revenue will be between $108 million and $111 million, versus a previous forecast of $121 – $126 million. Ixia also said that earnings per share will be $0.05 – $0.08 versus previous guidance of $0.10 – $0.14.
4. The nation often described as the bridge between east and west will become a 5G testbed. Türk Telekom will make its network infrastructure available to Nokia for real-time testing to accelerate the introduction of 5G in Turkey. The companies said they will work together on testing 5G and Internet of Things technologies for tracking, metering, smart cities, smart home and latency-sensitive applications. Nokia is already deploying LTE-Advanced for Türk Telekom and the carrier is also a customer of Nokia’s Motive analytics service, which Nokia acquired as part of Alcatel-Lucent.
5. AT&T continues to sunset parts of its wireline network as customers move to wireless. This week the carrier told the FCC that it wants to discontinue services that have no subscribers in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.
AT&T has been working to streamline its network investments by moving away from services that have very few subscribers. In some areas the carrier is expected to try to discontinue wireline service altogether. The California Public Utility Commission is opposing proposed state legislation that would set a timeline for AT&T’s sunsetting of wireline telephone service in parts of the state. The five member commission voted 3-2 to oppose the bill, which is making its way through the state legislature.
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