Sprint and T-Mobile US helped boost Nokia Networks' financial results last quarter. Nokia said today that its fourth-quarter North American sales increased 95%Â over last year. Nokia is an LTE vendor to both Sprint and T-Mobile US, and both carriers are in the process of...
RCR Mobile Minute
Verizon job cuts reported
About 1,000 Verizon Communications employees will get buyout offers for the holidays, according to a report from Bloomberg. The report cites an unnamed source who said Verizon wants to complete the job cuts by the end of year, and...
Cisco adds HD voice to Wi-Fi access points
Cisco says it's ready to help mobile operators offer voice over Wi-Fi. The network equipment giant is adding HD voice to its popular Wi-Fi access points, and says that now millions of Wi-Fi devices will be able...
Qualcomm is buying England's CSR in an effort to expand its mobile chip business beyond smartphones and tablets. CSR makes Bluetooth and audio processing chips, and Qualcomm says it is making the purchase to add products, channels and customers in the "Internet of Everything"...
Alcatel-Lucent and Accenture have formed the Accenture Alcatel-Lucent Business Group to design and build customer care operations for IP networks. The group will focus on mobile customer care solutions based on Alcatel-Lucent's Motive Line of products. Motive was a Texas software startup acquired by...
A town in the heart of Silicon Valley looks like a pioneer in facilitating outdoor distributed antenna systems (oDAS). The city council of Mountain View has voted to allow AT&T and DAS provider ExteNet Systems to place antennas atop utility poles, even though it...
Mobile Minute
Update: Verizon Wireless said today that it will not implement the LTE network optimization that was set to take effect October 1.
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Original story:
October 1 — Starting today, Verizon Wireless customers who use more than 4.7 GB of monthly data on an unlimited plan...
Alcatel-Lucent, currently ranked as the leading vendor of small cell equipment, has a new partnership that will put more small cells on urban "street furniture," such as bus stops, benches and billboards. Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with its neighbor in Paris, JCDecaux, which calls itself...
RF engineers are learning that experience with DAS can open doors when it comes to finding a new position. Twenty-seven percent of the RF engineering jobs posted on telecomcareers.net include DAS (distributed antenna systems) in the job description. Employers like KMB Design Group and...
Mobile Minute
AT&T is accelerating its march into video ahead of its planned purchase of DirecTV. The company's Otter Media venture will buy control of one of the largest YouTube content networks, Fullscreen.
Fullscreen claims 4 billion monthly views, and says it now wants to launch...
Mobile Minute
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus broke previous iPhone launch records this weekend, with 10 million models sold between Friday morning and Sunday night. The new phones are available now in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico,...
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NXP Semiconductors made headlines this week on reports that Apple has partnered with the Dutch company for NFC (near field communication). An NFC chip inside the new iPhone would mean the smartphone could be used for contactless payments, replacing a credit card in...
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Mobile security experts say that one in 10 Americans is a victim of smartphone theft, and now the state of California is taking action. This week California became the first state to pass a "kill switch" law requiring all smartphones sold in the...
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Flush with cash after selling its stake in Verizon Wireless, Vodafone is investing in broadband in Southern Europe. The carrier will spend $96.5 million to boost its stake in Hellas Online to 91%, and plans to eventually buy the rest of the Greek...
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Samsung could be shopping for acquisitions soon — the South Korean government has told the company to put its cash to work or risk a fine. The government has its eye on Samsung's $60 billion cash pile and would like to see that...
T-Mobile says it will slow data speeds for users who break the rules
Mobile Minute:
T-Mobile US is the latest carrier to confirm plans to "throttle" some LTE customers. According to an internal memo obtained to TmoNews, the practice will start Sunday and will only impact...
Mobile Minute:
Verizon Wireless has reiterated its plan to launch voice-over-LTE late this year. Speaking at the Oppenheimer Technology, Internet & Communications Conference, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that VoLTE is coming to Verizon in the fourth quarter.
AT&T and T-Mobile US have already launched VoLTE...
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Microsoft's Nokia is apparently taking a high-low strategy when it comes to mobile phones. The company is NOT exiting the basic mobile phone business, despite last month's announcement that "all Mobile Phones-related services and enablers are planned to move into maintenance mode, effective...
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Keeping data flowing in even in the most crowded environments is an important goal for Japan's SoftBank Mobile, and to that end the company has partnered with Ericsson. SoftBank Mobile will deploy Ericsson's "mobility-based" policy solution, which directly connects the mobility management entity...
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In another sign that the smartphone patent wars may be moving towards a ceasefire, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that parts of one of Apple's key patents are invalid. Apple had patented a way of "auto-correcting" words that are typed...
Mobile Minute:
Sprint is not the only company making executive changes this week as Microsoft said yesterday that is has hired Qualcomm's Peggy Johnson to lead business development. At Qualcomm, Johnson served as EVP of Qualcomm Technologies and president of global market development. She has...
The Mobile Minute is sponsored by SpiderCloud Wireless.
Crown Castle sees strong carrier spending, adds small cells
Tower giant Crown Castle International (CCI) reported second quarter revenues of $916.3 million, up 25% from the year-ago quarter. The company noted continuing network investment by all four major...
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The Mobile Minute is sponsored by SpiderCloud Wireless.
Microsoft launches low-end Lumia
Windows may be the language of corporate America, but Microsoft clearly wants to translate it to consumers around the world. The software giant's newest smartphone offering is a $115 Windows smartphone called the...
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The Mobile Minute is sponsored by SpiderCloud Wireless.
"Pay-as-you-go" has worked well for T-Mobile US when it comes to its service offerings for customers, and the carrier says it's choosing that same strategy when it comes to mobile backhaul. While some carriers are using...
