Lawmakers criticize Google Voice for rural call-blocking
Updated
The legal issues continue to grow around Google Voice, the company’s application for directing calls from a single number to multiple phones. The Federal Communications Commission is already investigating Apple’s rejection of Voice (or its “continued study,” to use Apple’s phrase). Now a group of legislators has asking the FCC to investigate Voice itself, specifically its practice of blocking calls to expensive rural telephone exchanges.
Google doesn’t deny that it blocks calls to some numbers that… Continue Reading
Dell building an Android phone for the US (report)
It looks like computer maker Dell is building its first mobile phone for the United States, one that will use Google’s Android operating system. Since the phone will reportedly run on AT&T’s network, not only does this news add to Android’s roster of device manufacturers, but it also means the mobile OS will be on all four major mobile networks in the US.
The new phone will be a modified version of the Android phone for… Continue Reading
AT&T: Just kidding! VoIP apps like Skype can run on our network
AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive wireless carrier in the United States, said it has paved the way for Apple to let voice-over-Internet-protocol apps like Skype run on its 3G network instead of only on nearby Wi-Fi connections.
VoIP technology allows voice calls to be treated as data, making them significantly cheaper per minute.
The “iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la… Continue Reading
AT&T turns on iPhone multimedia messaging: Should I be excited or scared?
AT&T activated multimedia messaging (MMS) for iPhone owners in the United States today, as planned. This should silence some complaints about how the carrier is lagging behind iPhone carriers elsewhere, but could also lead to howls of frustration if it puts an even greater strain on AT&T’s much-criticized network.
If you want to turn on MMS, which allows you to send photos, videos, and audios through your text messaging application, see the instructions here. I’ve just… Continue Reading
Ultraband: The U.S. could match South Korea’s 1Gbps network — for $300 billion
South Korea’s government has pledged to roll out gigabit ethernet to homes by 2012. Korea also plans wireless networks of one-tenth that capacity, or 100 megabits per second. Could Americans get some of that?
At this morning’s Mobilize 09 conference in San Francisco, panelists from the the worlds of broadband backbone, wireless networks and consumer services humbly spun big visions of a not-too-distant future in which networks are 100 times faster than today’s during a panel discussion… Continue Reading
AT&T to upgrade network, but San Francisco, NY iPhone users are out of luck
After constant complaints about the crummy service on its 3G network (a problem linked to its exclusive support for the iPhone), AT&T just announced that it’s boosting network speed in six cities. This is great news — assuming you don’t live in San Francisco or New York.
AT&T says it’s rolling out support for the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami by the end of this… Continue Reading
Loopt works around Apple, AT&T to add always-on location tracking for iPhone
When location-based social network Loopt debuted its early-to-market iPhone app last year, then-VentureBeat writer MG Siegler dubbed it “nifty, but crippled.” The handicap: Apple wouldn’t let Loopt’s app run in the background while you used other apps or pocketed your phone. Apple blocks apps from running in the background to keep them from running down the phone’s battery. So if you were on the move, Loopt didn’t keep up with your changing location.
Loopt’s engineers and… Continue Reading
AT&T says multimedia messaging for iPhones will go live September 25th
[Correction: This post originally and incorrectly implied that AT&T does not have MMS support for other phones already.]
AT&T has officially declared that MMS (multimedia messaging) service for the iPhone will begin on the 25th of this month. iPhone owners will finally finally finally be able to send and receive pictures, audio and video as easily as they now send text messages. One reason iPhone owners begrudge the delay is that AT&T has supported MMS on… Continue Reading
Roundup: Mystery laptops, AT&T overload, Google’s fingers in everything
AT&T’s network under heavy strain from iPhone users with unlimited data plans — “They don’t even realize how much data they’re using,” Piper Jaffray’s oft-quoted analyst Gene Munster told The New York Times. AT&T’s global network operations center (pictured) displays a 250-foot-wide dashboard of just how whacked things are. The Times followed an iPhone user around to see the results:
Taylor Sbicca, a 27-year-old systems administrator in San Francisco, checks his iPhone 10 to 15 times… Continue Reading
Wireless carriers cautiously spending again on infrastructure
AT&T customers may finally get the iPhone service quality they expected when they spent $200 or more on a phone. U.S. wireless carriers have let reporters know that they’ll be spending more in the second half of this year to add capacity. They need to: Wireless traffic increased tenfold from 2007 to 2008, and is still growing.
Dallas, Texas-based AT&T plans to boost its capital expenditures, from 7.4 billion in the first half of this year… Continue Reading
Apple — not AT&T — holds off on Google Voice for the iPhone
AT&T-bashers should take pause. It was Apple, not the wireless carrier, that held off on approving Google Voice for the iPhone.
Apple “continues to study” the application and hasn’t approved it because it may “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality,” according to a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.
Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your voicemail. It… Continue Reading
FCC investigating rejection of Google Voice apps from iPhone store
Regulators from the Federal Communications Commission have sent letters to AT&T and Apple, demanding to know “the who, what and why” of Apple’s rejection of Google’s official Google Voice app for the iPhone, according to a report by Wired News reporter Ryan Singel. AT&T has been widely rumored to have demanded that Apple remove all Google Voice apps from its store.
The FCC’s rapid-fire questions get down to the details:
“Are there any terms in AT&T’s customer… Continue Reading
AT&T’s $375 subsidy boosts Apples’ iPhone profit margin to 60 percent
Turley Muller, who writes the Financial Alchemist blog, has laid out the math on Apple’s iPhone costs and pricing. Muller calls attention once again to something VentureBeat has reported before: AT&T is nearly buying its customers their iPhones. Customers now pay $99 to $299 for their phone. AT&T kicks in another $375 to bring iPhone prices down so low that the feature-packed device becomes a better buy than a cheaper but less-subsidized phone from another… Continue Reading
AT&T adds customers, but drops profits 15% in Q2
AT&T’s second quarter profits fell far short of last year’s, coming in at $3.2 billion. That’s 15 percent off from last year’s second quarter, when AT&T brought in $3.8 billion.
The company’s revenue stayed the same as last year, at $30.7 billion, but the makeup of that 30 billion has changed a lot. Home and business customers continue to abandon landlines in favor of mobile phones and Internet telephony.
AT&T’s wireless division reported 10% higher sales totaling… Continue Reading
AT&T to deliver data to Plastic Logic e-reader
They’ve done it again. AT&T, the company that beat Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile to land an exclusive three-year contract as the iPhone’s network provider, announced today that it’ll be the sole wireless provider for Plastic Logic’s e-reader, with which Barnes & Noble announced a partnership on Monday.
Plastic Logic’s attractively slim e-reader, with a black-and-white screen that’s optimal for reading text in varying lighting conditions, gets tech fetishists giddy in a way that Amazon’s Kindle readers… Continue Reading
Leaked AT&T memo: Michael Jackson, iPhone set new traffic records
AT&T’s PR department gets the net. It knows the best way to get its press releases published verbatim is to send them around the company in an easily-leaked format. MacDailyNews received several forwarded copies of the internal memo (below) that confirms that last week was the Internet’s busiest ever.
Most analysts thought the 3GS launch would fall short of sales on launch day last year for the 3G, but they were wrong. With AT&T’s contract with… Continue Reading
AT&T improves iPhone pricing: Maybe I’ll buy the 3G S after all
AT&T is trying to soothe cranky iPhone owners today with an announcement that the new iPhone 3G S may not be as expensive as you think — specifically, iPhone 3G owners who are eligible for cheaper, “upgrade” pricing in the next few months (through September) will be able to pay the lowest upgrade price starting this Friday, when the 3G S goes on sale.
The original pricing announcement spurred lots of complaints from existing customers, including… Continue Reading
AT&T knows a lot about you, and now it wants you to know that
For most people (including me), privacy policies fall into the same category as “terms of service” documents — they contain important information, but are usually so long and impenetrably written that they’re not worth the effort of reading. AT&T says it’s trying to take a different approach with a draft privacy policy that it published this morning, one that’s actually comprehensible to your average reader.
AT&T’s Chief Privacy Officer Dorothy Attwood tells The New York Times… Continue Reading
Study: Wireless carriers aren’t offering enough sync options
Now that we carry so much of our lives on our easy-to-lose phones, the ability to sync personal data between the phone and a reliable storage service is more important than ever. According to a new study by Funambol, which provides “cloud sync” services for smartphones, there’s a big gap between the services offered by wireless carriers and what’s available on consumer desktops. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile offer little, if anything, beyond address book syncing…. Continue Reading
As if iPhone users didn’t hate AT&T enough already
Apple discussed two new features for the iPhone today at its developer conference that many people have been wanting for a long time. One is tethering, where you can access the internet on your computer through your phone’s connection (which hadn’t been announced before). The other is multimedia messaging, or MMS, which lets you send media like audio or video within text messages.
AT&T, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the United States, will not… Continue Reading