wireless

Wireless companies up and down the East Coast have been preparing throughout the weekend to ensure that wireless service remains up and running for communities affected by Hurricane Sandy. But will it be enough?

Hurricane force winds, torrential rain, and tidal surges as a result of the storm are expected to wreak havoc along the coast on Monday and into Tuesday. Millions of people from Virginia to New England are expected to lose power. But the wireless phone companies are working to ensure their networks hold up during the storm.

Sandy has already caused some wind and flood damage in … Read more

Vodafone, one of the larger carriers in the world, is bringing a mobile-payments service to its customers next year.

The companies announced the plans today, saying that CorFire -- the mobile-commerce arm of SK C&C, a South Korea-based IT service provider -- will deliver the technology behind it. According to CorFire, Vodafone customers will be able to make payments from their smartphones, just as customers do with competing services, like Google Wallet.

The deal could be a major opportunity for CorFire, since Vodafone has over 406 million customers in 30 countries around the world.

However, CorFire needs to … Read more

Bluetooth speakers are all the rage these days, but when you stream your music library, Pandora playlists, and the like to a Bluetooth speaker, the audio gets compressed. And that makes audiophiles angry.

Plus, why listen to a relatively small sound system when you've already got a big, honking stereo? What you need is some Bluetooth-style way to beam your tunes from your iDevice to those sweet speakers -- but without the Bluetooth-style compression.

There's one way, and it's on sale! Through November 4, Shoptronics has the Nyrius NiAA300 Digital Wireless Audio Transmitter System for $59.99 shipped … Read more

Why do wireless carriers have to make everything so complicated? Wireless subscribers should be able to subscribe to the service they want and need and not be forced to take services they don't want or need.

This seems like a simple enough concept, and yet customers who want a smartphone but only want to pay for voice services can't get it. And customers who want to forgo voice service for data-only services are also not able to get what they want. In this edition of Ask Maggie, I offer some advice and explanation to a reader on this … Read more

There's no denying that Sprint Nextel is losing customers, but the company's CEO says it's all part of a natural, if painful, transition that he hopes will put Sprint in a much stronger position to take on rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse emphasized on the company's conference call -- and again in an interview with CNET -- that the loss of 459,000 contract customers sounds worse than it really is. He explained that these losses have been expected as the company goes through a massive network overhaul that will … Read more

Sprint Nextel's losses widened in the third quarter as the company prepares to shut down its older Nextel network. It also reported it sold 1.5 million iPhones in the quarter.

The company, which is being bought out for $20 billion by Japan's Softbank, reported today that it lost $767 million, or 26 cents per share, compared with a loss of $301 million or 10 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago. Net operating revenue was up for the quarter to $8.76 billion from $8.33 billion during the third quarter last year. Analysts … Read more

AT&T executives couldn't be happier with the company's progress in signing up customers to its Mobile Share Plan and its new LTE 4G wireless service, AT&T's head of mobility Ralph de la Vega said on the company's third quarter conference call with investors and analysts on Wednesday.

De la Vega was almost giddy when talking about the growth of the company's Mobile Share plan and how it's driving an uptick in data revenue.

"Two million customers signed up for Mobile Share in the first five weeks," he said. &… Read more

Verizon looks to be inching closer to announcing a 5-inch HTC smartphone, with pictures of said device surfacing over the weekend.

The handset will be known as the HTC DLX ("deluxe") and should arrive in time for the Thanksgiving shopping season, according to Android Central.

The source of the photos advised that the HTC DLX comes with 16GB internal storage and a 2500mAh battery, both matching previous rumors. Decked in the same red and black of the Droid Incredible series, the forthcoming device will boast a full 1080p HD display and quad-core processor. In fact, the DLX should … Read more

There's been a lot of hype around mobile payments over the past year, but the No. 1 problem that the mobile payments market faces is adoption. Consumers simply don't see a reason to replace their cash or plastic with a phone.

And yet one company after another is clamoring to get into the market. Technology companies, such as Google and PayPal have thrown their hats into the ring along with wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile. Banks, such as Barclays and Bank of America, have also announced plans for a digital wallet and mobile payments. … Read more