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 the sepia-tinted shades, set the date for #TBT and enjoy the memories!
House passes bill to set locked phones free
With rare bipartisan support, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow consumers to unlock their cellphones, making it easier to switch carriers and keep their device. President Obama is expected to sign the “Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act” soon. It’s a victory for the consumer rights advocates who first gathered the 114,000 petition signatures to bring the issue to the White House’s attention, but they don’t plan to stop there. Their next aim is to reform the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which is the underlying copyright law that caused the problem in the first place — and may cause it to occur again. The law that Obama signs will only be in effect until the next copyright ruling by the Library of Congress in 2015 … Read more
Carlos Slim picks up AT&T’s América Móvil stake
AT&T has a price and a buyer for its 8.2% equity stake in América Móvil. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, majority owner of América Móvil, will buy AT&T’s stake for $5.6 billion. The deal makes good on AT&T’s promise to divest its América Móvil stake, a pledge it made when announcing its $48.5 billion bid for DirecTV. The América Móvil sale will raise cash to help fund the takeover, and it should also help AT&T with regulators, since DirecTV and América Móvil are competitors in Latin America … Read more
Tech companies try to make nice with their engineers
More than 64,000 engineers are suing some of the biggest employers in mobile for conspiring to keep them in their jobs, and now those companies have offered a settlement. The class action lawsuit was brought against Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe. It claims that executives at those companies agreed not to recruit one another’s employees in secret deals that took place between 2005 and 2009. The settlement offered is $324 million, according to The New York Times, which says the plaintiffs had originally asked for $3 billion. If the plaintiffs do not accept the settlement, the case could go to trial … Read more
AT&T’s network spend is a rollercoaster for contractors (not in a fun way)
What goes up must come down … and may go back up again. That’s the message AT&T wants its contractors to hear as some of them struggle with a sudden drop in AT&T’s wireless infrastructure spending. “Any changes in spending activity with our vendors are typical of the ebbs and flows of our regular spending cycles,” the carrier told RCR Wireless News. More specifically, AT&T said it remains committed to Project Velocity IP, a plan to invest $8 billion in wireless infrastructure and $6 billion in wireline between 2013 and 2015. And Project VIP is just part of the carrier’s overall capital budget; AT&T says it is still on track to invest “in the $21 billion range in 2014.” AT&T capital expenditures in the first quarter were $5.8 billion, but a $21 billion annual budget would suggest spending of $5.25 billion per quarter. So the carrier may be paring back to bring spending in line with its budget. Vendors will almost certainly be keeping a close eye on AT&T’s capex when it reports second quarter results next month. If they come in at $4.7 billion or less, AT&T will be back on track to spend $21 billion this year. But that doesn’t mean the carrier will be able to return to first quarter spending levels … Read more
Oracle drops $5.3 billion on Micros
Oracle Communications this week unveiled its Application Orchestrator, which it said was designed to manage the lifecycle of virtualized infrastructure, as part of the push into network function virtualization. … Oracle this week also announced plans to acquire Micros Systems, which is a provider of software and hardware solutions targeting the hospitality and retail sectors. The deal is valued at $68 per share, or $5.3 billion in total. Oracle said the inclusion of Micros will extend its offerings into the hospitality and retail sectors, “combining Micros’ industry specific applications with Oracle’s business applications, technologies and cloud portfolio.” Oracle added that the combination will focus on helping “hotels, food and beverage facilities and retailers” to roll out new services for customers … Read more
First VOLTE call for Kuwait
Kuwaiti operator Zain said it completed that country’s first voice over LTE call with network partner Nokia Networks and using Zain’s commercial LTE network.
The call included the use of both high-definition voice and video capabilities using Nokia Networks’ VoLTE platform. The call showed simultaneous use of both voice and data services over the LTE network. The Nokia Networks platform includes its IP multimedia subsystem, Subscriber Data Management and Open Telecommunications Application Server, which offer “supplementary services that are applicable for voice, messaging and video sessions for subscribers in LTE and other broadband networks.” … Read more
Check out RCR Wireless News’ Archives for more stories from the past.
