Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News goes all in for “Throwback Thursdays,” tapping into our archives to resuscitate the top headlines from the past. Fire up the time machine, put on those sepia-tinted shades, set the date for #TBT and enjoy the memories!
AT&T Mobility joins ‘4G’ fray, accelerates LTE plans
LAS VEGAS — It was only a matter of time before AT&T Mobility jumped into the “4G” marketing game, and that time has come. The nation’s second largest operator today unveiled “accelerated” LTE plans that call for the carrier to begin launching LTE services by the middle of this year and complete its nationwide LTE plans by the end of 2013. That would allow the carrier to equal rival Verizon Wireless’ plans for nationwide LTE coverage by the end of 2013, though it does have a near six month head start. “2011 is going to be a defining year for our industry and our country because of 4G,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO at AT&T Mobility, as he kicked off the morning keynote at the carrier’s developer conference. AT&T has the “best transition path to 4G in the industry,” he said. “We will deliver an experience that our competitors cannot match.” AT&T Mobility said that its “4G” plans will include both the continued expansion of its HSPA+ network as well as the roll out of LTE services. The carrier noted that it has completed HSPA+ upgrades across basically its entire network, providing “4G speeds when combined with Ethernet or fiber backhaul.” That qualification appears important as the carrier then notes that it expects to have these backhaul capabilities across two-thirds of its network by the end of the year. … Read more
Qualcomm pays $3.1B for Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros
Recognizing the pervasiveness of Wi-Fi technology, Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) said it plans to buy Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros Communications Inc. (ATHR) for $3.1 billion. Qualcomm said the acquisition will help it expand to new businesses beyond cellular. Both stocks were slightly up in trading this morning. Wi-Fi connectivity is increasingly popular in portable consumer and enterprise electronics, including the digital home. Also, wireless operators, which earlier dismissed Wi-Fi solutions because the technology runs in the unlicensed spectrum bands, have started to embrace Wi-Fi as a way to offload traffic from the macrocellular network. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Atheros makes a full line of Wi-Fi chips, including fixed, portable and mobile solutions. The fabless semiconductor company formed in 1998. Qualcomm will pay $45 per share in cash for Atheros. The acquisition should close in the first half of this year. While Qualcomm said it bought the company for its technology, the acquisition should boost earnings slightly in fiscal year 2012, the first full year of combined operations. … Read more
Three carrier crossroads for 2011
While there has been a lot of hype about this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and how it will launch the rebirth of telecom, I’m not buying it. In fact, outside the industry group hub, which was Verizon Communications Inc.’s keynote, the content of most of the announcements leads me to believe that it’s going to be a very difficult road for the carriers in 2011. There are three crossroads (used in this sense to indicate a critical decision) that the carriers face, and, if answered correctly, their 2011 objectives can be fulfilled.
Crossroad No. 1: Selling tablets embedded with carrier capabilities. Tablets were hot at the show, and with electronics as its middle name, they should be. Did a carrier, wireless or wireline, step up, however, to announce a new business model for tablet consumption? Where is the vaunted “family plan” that allows all tablets, phones, and cards to consume 5/10/15 gigabytes of information? Maybe that comes at CTIA. That plan, however, could be the catalyst to the wireless data industry that “Friends and Family” was for a struggling MCI twenty years ago. When we wrote about tablet sales in retail stores in November, several of you who know this area much better than I wrote back to confirm my hypothesis: Tablets and carrier retail stores do not mix. In fact, absent aggressive discounting and subsidization, they are a distant fourth place location for destination purchases (behind Apple Inc.’s stores, Amazon.com, and then Best Buy/Wal-Mart). … Read more
NVIDIA and ARM team up to make CPUs
Graphics maker NVIDIA announced on Wednesday that it would be working with mobile chipmaker ARM to build a non X86 CPU, on the same day that Microsoft announced its Windows software stack would now work on ARM chips. For years the industry has been rife with speculation about NVIDIA’s plans to enter the CPU space, dominated by fellow Silicon Valley giant Intel and smaller Austin based AMD. Until Wednesday, however, NVIDIA – which does not own an X86 license – had to content itself with making powerful GPU graphics cards. But that was before “project Denver” became a reality. By teaming up with British chip shop ARM, NVIDIA sneakily gets passed the issue of not having an X86 License and has finally found a legal loophole to push itself into the space. The initiative features an NVIDIA CPU running the ARM instruction set, which will be fully integrated on the same chip as the NVIDIA GPU. … Read more
Is Verizon Wireless’ iPhone finally upon us?
If Verizon Wireless does what it’s expected to do tomorrow and announces plans to finally launch Apple Inc.’s iPhone on its network there will be a collective sigh of relief throughout much of the wireless industry. For the better part of at least the last couple years, the most frequently asked question in mobile has been: “When is Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone?” Come tomorrow, that question should be answered once and for all. In true pre-Apple announcement fashion, every analyst, mobile junkie and Apple fanboy is making claims as to what Apple and Verizon Wireless will announce tomorrow at a press event scheduled for 11 a.m. (EST) in New York City. … Read more
Check out the RCR Wireless News Archives for more stories from the past.
