The way mobile operators market devices and design service plans could change dramatically if a reported collaboration between carriers and device makers comes to fruition. According to the Financial Times, AT&T, Apple, Samsung and several European carriers are close to announcing an agreement to...
The APAC region currently has half of the world’s mobile connections
SHANGHAI – The Asia-Pacific mobile industry contributes more than $1 trillion per year to the area economy, mainly due to the increasing penetration of mobile broadband and smartphones, according to a GSMA report.
The report...
Australian telco aims to cover 600,000 premises with LTE technology
SHANGHAI – NBN Co, the Australian company rolling out the country's National Broadband Network, expects to commercially launch LTE service in the fourth quarter of the year. The announcement was made by Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary...
Fiber expansion to add 350 route miles to the network
Continuing to expand its fiber footprint, Colorado-based Zayo Group Holdings plans to hook up some 500 Seattle-area towers to fiber as part of a mobile infrastructure expansion strategy.
Zayo is providing the fiber-to-the-tower connections in service...
Tower climber fatalities, lack of standards, LTE technology and need for formalized apprenticeships are driving material changes in tower climber training and certification programs
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Tower climber training programs were the focus of this week's episode of "Inside Telecom Careers". JP Jones, Vice President...
Some 35 hot spots now available but the $2 per hour charge is 10% of monthly median income
As the United States eases economic and diplomatic relationships with Cuba, one of the least connected countries in the world is slowly ramping up connectivity with the...
FBI investigating Internet cable vandalism impacting AT&T service
It appears Internet cable-snipping vandals have struck again in California. AT&T service in San Joaquin County has been restored after a severed main fiber-optic line left customers without service for 22 hours. The outage affected thousands throughout...
Swedish equipment maker partners with Softbank and Turkcell on road to 5G
Telecom powerhouse Ericsson is aggressively laying the groundwork for eventual "5G" deployments via partnerships with Japanese-based SoftBank and Turkish carrier Turkcell.
With SoftBank, Ericsson is working on field trials of 5G in Tokyo, specifically...
This webinar looks at how VoLTE, RCS and WebRTC are being used and will be used by operators to remain competitive. The webinar will glean insight from mobile operators that have already begun to rollout these services or are planning to rollout services, vendors supporting the...
China currently represents one-third of Huawei’s small cell business
SHANGHAI – Telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei expects to ship approximately 400,000 small cells this year, the company’s president of small cell product line Yuefeng Zhou said during this week's Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015.
Zhou said that...
Earlier this year Huawei announced the creation of the 5G Vertical Industry Accelerator testbed in Munich. The experimental system is being developed in partnership with the Bavarian State Government, the city of Munich, Technische Universität München and M-Net.
The live testbed is expected to allow...
Wireless industry leaders gathered at the White House on Wednesday to meet with representatives from the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, the White House National Economic Council, the White House Chief Technology Office, the Department of Labor, the Veterans Administration, the Department...
According to a recent report by media and communications analyst firm, SNL Kagan, active tower sites declined for the first time ever in 2014. The report points to carrier consolidation as a key factor for the contraction.
The decommissioning of now-defunct Nextel towers and the sidelining...
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has made improving Internet access in the city a hallmark of his time in office. The latest iteration could involve equipping some of the city’s sidewalk trash bins with Wi-Fi hot spot technology.
Massachusetts-based Bigbelly, which specializes in...
Mobile operators are feeling increased pressure from over-the-top players to provide additional features and services that consumers have come to expect from the application world. Three ways they are looking to counter the OTT threat is through the implementation of Voice over LTE (VoLTE),...
According to the study, the Asian nation will reach 1B 4G connections by 2020
SHANGHAI – China is expected to have 913 million smartphones by the end of the year, up compared to 805 million at the end of the first quarter of 2015, according to GSMA...
Verizon Wireless could not control the weather at this year's MLB All-Star Game, but the carrier did try to plan for every contingency related to mobile data use. Like the other nationwide carriers, Verizon has a distributed antenna system to keep subscribers connected at...
Japanese mobile operator plans to use equipment from multiple vendors
SHANGHAI – Japanese mobile operator SoftBank expects to carry out a technical trial of "TDD+" in Tokyo by the end of this year, the company’s senior director for wireless city planning, Hidebumi Kitahara, said at...
The Chinese company expects the solution to be commercially available in 2016
SHANGHAI – Huawei has launched its new TDD+ solution in collaboration with its industry partners China Mobile and Japanese telecom operator SoftBank. The telecom equipment manufacturer announced the new tech at Mobile World...
"Due to the popularity of cable, satellite and Internet TV, the UHF spectrum is one of the most underutilized portions of the wireless spectrum in the United States. That's a bitter irony because the demand for mobile data services is expected to grow tenfold...
Critical communications are moving with the times. Having been largely based on systems that support ultra-reliable voice, such as Tetra, they are now shifting to IP and broadband. The choice of platform is not a simple one when a lost connection could mean a...
Following years of collaborative development, the Wi-Fi Alliance has released Wi-Fi Aware, a sort of always-on mechanism for device-to-device discovery that doesn't requires a GPS, cellular or hot spot connection.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, founded in 1999, is a global nonprofit dedicated to furthering Wi-Fi technology...
Four years ago, Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park installed a distributed antenna system to make sure it could keep up with mobile data demand. Today that demand has surpassed most forecasts, and AT&T's ball park DAS has undergone a major upgrade ahead of the...
Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville next up for Gigabit fiber-to-the-home
Google Fiber, the tech giant’s ambitious project to offer fiber-to-the-home beginning in major metro markets, has started construction of its network in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
On June 25, Google Fiber notified locals of the construction phase...
