Editor’s Note: Wireless operators are a busy bunch, and as such RCR Wireless News will attempt to gather some of the important announcements that may slip through the cracks from the world’s largest carriers in a weekly wrap-up. Enjoy!
–SK Telecom continued to push the LTE-Advanced envelop, announcing its has successfully developed “LTE-Advanced 3 band carrier aggregation” that aggregates three bands of spectrum to support network speeds of up to 300 megabits per second. The aggregation includes a band of 20 megahertz and two bands of 10 megahertz for a combined 40 megahertz of spectrum.
SK Telecom said the offering is currently undergoing global standardization procedures, and that it expects the offering to be commercially available by the end of this year. The carrier also said it plans to demonstrate an aggregation of three 20 megahertz bands that can provide up to 450 Mbps in network speeds at the upcoming Mobile World Congress event.
SK Telecom first launched LTE-A services last summer combining a pair of 10 megahertz channels to offer network speeds up to 150 Mbps. The carrier followed that up with the addition of more spectrum resources to support speeds up to 225 Mbps, and then onto 300 Mbps.
The aggregation of separate bands is one of the promising aspects of the LTE-A standard as it will allow carriers to group together disparate swaths of spectrum in order to provide increased capacity.
–BT and Alcatel-Lucent announced the trial of a new “flexible grid” infrastructure for an existing core fiber connection that produced speeds of up to 1.4 terrabytes per second. The firms noted that the test is believed to be the fastest speed ever achieved using “commercial grade” hardware in a real-world environment.
The test was conducted using an existing 410-kilometer fiber link between the BT Tower in London and BT’s Adastral Park research campus in Suffolk, England. The so-called Flexgrid architecture is designed to “vary the gaps between transmission channels, usually set at 50 gigahertz. By increasing the density of channels on the fiber, this approach achieved up to 42.5% greater data transmission efficiency compared to today’s standard networks.”
–AT&T Mobility announced this week that existing customers on a two-year contract as of Jan. 18 could move to the carrier’s recently launched Next device financing program once they are six-months into their contract. The carrier said customers can upgrade to a new device for no-money down as well as migrate to a Mobile Share Value plan that AT&T Mobility unveiled last month.
The Next program allows customers to purchase a smartphone or tablet with no down payment and agree to pay for the device in monthly installments ranging from $15 to $50 per month depending on the device. After 12 months of payments, customers would then be able to trade in that device, in good working condition, on a new device with similar payment terms.
The Mobile Share Value plans allow customers to select a no-contract option that the carrier said will save smartphone users $15 per month compared with the original Mobile Share plans. That savings is tied to consumers selecting AT&T’s Next option, which calls for customers to make monthly payments towards the full price of a mobile device; bringing their own smartphone to the plan; purchasing a smartphone at full retail price; or when a device is no longer under contract and the customer switches to the new “value” offering.
The value offering begins at $45 per month for a single smartphone line with access to unlimited calling, messaging and 300 megabytes of data. Customers can sign up additional smartphone lines to share the data bucket for $25 per month; add a “basic or messaging” device for $20 per month; or can add a tablet for $10 per month. Customers looking to start a plan with just a basic or messaging device can tap into unlimited calling, messaging and 300 Mb of data beginning at $40 per month.
–The California Public Utilities Commission voted to extend that state’s Lifeline Program, which provides affordable telephone service to low-income consumers, to include wireless carriers.
“More and more Californians are using wireless as their main telephone access, and communities of color are particularly dependent on wireless phone services. Today’s decision will be a huge benefit to members of our communities who are low-income,” explained Greenlining Institute Energy and Telecommunications policy director Stephanie Chen.
A number of wireless carriers cater to Lifeline programs across the country. The program is the part of the universal-service program aimed at providing low-income consumers access to telecommunications.
The Federal Communications Commission late last year issued a number of fines to operators connected to violating rules of the government’s Lifeline program. The FCC noted that carriers had violated rules limiting Lifeline connections to one account per household, thus receiving payments for “thousands of consumers that already were obtaining Lifeline service from the same company.” The FCC explained that each operator knew or should have known based on internal data that the “consumers were ineligible because they were already receiving service from that carrier.”
–Leap Wireless, which is in the process of being acquired by AT&T, said it would begin offering Kyocera Wireless’ Hydro Plus smartphone to consumers. The waterproof device includes a 3.5-inch touchscreen, runs Google’s Android 4.0 operating system and is powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Leap said its Cricket brand will offer the device for $140 without a contract and that it will be eligible for its smartphone rate plans beginning at $50 per month.
Kyocera Wireless’ director of marketing John Chier set down with RCR Wireless News at the recent CES event to discuss the handset maker’s ability to grow market share in the ultra-competitive domestic device space, as well as taking a look at how the company differentiates itself in the market.
Additional carrier news can be found on the RCR Wireless News “Carriers” page.
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