Carriers

A week after Clearwire, Comcast, and Sprint announced their WiMax expansion, Verizon has continued the 4G fun with today's news that its 4G LTE network is now live in what it calls nine new markets.

These are Mobile and Montgomery, Ala.; Greater Fairfield and New Haven, Conn.; Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee, Fla.; Fayetteville-Lumberton, N.C.; and Bryan-College Station and Temple-Killeen, Texas. Verizon also expanded its existing LTE coverage in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. In total, Verizon says it now offers 4G wireless in 55 U.S. metropolitan areas.

As we learned in early May, the Samsung Infuse 4G will be the first AT&T smartphone to allow for applications outside of the Android Market, and it looks like more are on the way.

Citing a desire to open up a bit, AT&T indicated it would be embracing third-party app stores and the side-loading of apps and games. At the time of the announcement, I was hopeful that the carrier would adopt this policy going forward with all of its Android phones. It appears my suspicions are correct, as AT&T plans to enable this … Read more

Google gets serious about putting an end to fragmentation at its 2011 I/O conference with the official announcement of the next generation of Android: Ice Cream Sandwich. At the same time, the tech giant adds another layer of complexity to its big picture with another big push behind Chrome OS with the announcement of a series of Chromebook devices. Will Android and Chrome OS end up going head to head or can we all just get along? We try to find the answer to that question, plus get hands on with Google's new movie rental and cloud music … Read more

Clearwire, Comcast, and Sprint have jointly announced an expansion of the Clearwire 4G network today. The network now includes much of the greater Bay Area. The communities are San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Sunnyvale, San Ramon, Fremont, San Leandro, Newark, Campbell, Daly City, Pleasanton, Danville, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Hayward, Walnut Creek, Mountain View, Cupertino, Milpitas, Pleasant Hill, Santa Clara, and San Bruno. The Bay Area 4G coverage is said to cover around 4.4 million people.

Clearly, this is an advantage for those who want to use 4G devices from the aforementioned carriers. Sprint's 4G phones include the … Read more

Last week, I received a notice from the San Francisco Planning Department that AT&T Mobility is proposing to install a "wireless communications facility" (read, cell phone tower) within 500 feet of my house.

The notice says it will consist of 12 panel antennas and won't be visible from the street. I'm also invited to attend an "informational community meeting" with the city and AT&T reps and call an AT&T hotline to leave questions or comments.

In a city like San Francisco where complaining about AT&T is … Read more

HTC Inspire 4G and Motorola Atrix 4G owners, your slow-upload woes are almost over.

AT&T just sent CNET a note letting us know that it has started rolling out an update for the Inspire 4G that will enable the HSUPA radio on the smartphone, along with a number of other bug fixes and performance improvements. The carrier has completed testing on the update for the Atrix 4G as well and will begin deploying the software soon.

The updates will roll out in batches over the coming weeks, and users will receive a message on their phones when it'… Read more

Nielsen thinks that Android phones are finally more desirable than iPhones, but Antuan could have told you that based on less than scientific observations. Justin shows us a phone that he does not desire, the HTC Droid Incredible 2. The unlikely Barnes & Noble Nook Color is rapidly becoming the most desirable Android tablet thanks to a new firmware update. Meanwhile, Motorola plans to give hardcore users what they truly desire, quad-core processors and more hacker friendly Android phones. All of that plus more news and the answers to your emailed questions on this week's episode of Android Atlas … Read more

After suffering a network outage that affected its customers for most of yesterday, Verizon Wireless announced via Twitter that its 4G LTE network is back up and running.

The carrier acknowledged on Wednesday that it had determined the cause of the service interruption, but did not provide further explanation today as to what caused the outage.

When asked for more specifics, Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney told CNET in an e-mail, "Our 4G LTE network is up and running. Our network engineers and vendors quickly identified the issue and solved it."

Raney went on to say that HTC Thunderbolt … Read more

Verizon Wireless planted a bigger flag in prepaid this week with the announcement of its new "Verizon Unleashed" plans. Though only available in Southern California and most of Florida for the time being, the plans offers unlimited services for $50 per month.

Verizon Unleashed will offer subscribers unlimited calling minutes regardless of time of day, unlimited calls to other Verizon subscribers, unlimited domestic messaging, and unlimited messaging to select carriers in Canada and Mexico. Unlimited mobile Web is a feature as well, though the plan is not available on handsets that have full HTML browsers.

Verizon has long … Read more