verizon wireless

Could Verizon and Vodafone be getting closer to ending their joint ownership of Verizon's wireless business?

Reuters reported Wednesday that Verizon has hired banking and legal advisers to put together a $100 billion bid for Vodafone's share of Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 wireless carrier in the U.S., and that Verizon's board is expected to discuss details of a potential buyout next week, at a meeting prior to its annual shareholder meeting.

Unnamed sources told the news agency that Verizon is confident it can raise about $50 billion from bank financing and that the rest of … Read more

AT&T on Tuesday reported a slight gain in profit amid growth powered by its tablet business.

The Dallas telecommunications provider posted a first-quarter net profit of $3.7 billion, or 67 cents a share. In the year-earlier period, it posted a profit of $3.6 billion, or 60 cents a share. Excluding the impact of the sale of its advertising business and a tax settlement, the carrier reported earnings of 64 cents a share, up from 59 cents a share from a year ago.

Revenue, meanwhile, fell 1.5 percent to $31.4 billion, also affected by loss … Read more

Verizon subscribers awaiting Samsung's Galaxy S4 will be able to pick one up next month.

The carrier tweeted late yesterday that the S4 will arrive in May, and it promised to reveal more details soon via the Samsung Mobile US Twitter account.

Verizon is the last major U.S. carrier to chime in with a time frame for the Galaxy S4.

Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile recently confirmed that the phone will hit stores later this month. Meanwhile, AT&T and U.S. Cellular kicked off preorders for the S4 this past Tuesday.

Verizon hasn't yet revealed its … Read more

Verizon bounced back from a tough fourth quarter and started the year off strongly.

The telecommunications provider today posted a first-quarter profit of $1.95 billion, or 68 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $1.67 billion, or 59 cents a share. Revenue rose 4.2 percent to $29.42 billion from a year ago.

Analysts, on average, projected per-share earnings of 66 cents and revenue of $29.55 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Growth, as usual, was driven by the Verizon Wireless unit, which generated $19.5 billion in revenue, up 6.8 percent from a … Read more

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to capture and store Americans' confidential text messages, according to a proposal that will be presented to a congressional panel today.

The law enforcement proposal would require wireless providers to record and store customers' SMS messages -- a controversial idea akin to requiring them to surreptitiously record audio of their customers' phone calls -- in case police decide to obtain them at some point in the future.

"Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity," Richard Littlehale … Read more

Verizon Wireless will soon put to use spectrum it bought from the cable companies last year, according to its chief technology officer, Nicola Palmer, who was interviewed by Fierce Wireless.

Palmer told the blog in a one-on-one interview published today that the company will soon complete deployment of its 4G LTE service in the nationwide 700MHz spectrum it bought in a Federal Communications Commission auction in 2008. Verizon covered about 90 percent of the U.S. with its 700MHz spectrum last year, Palmer said. And starting the middle of this year, Verizon will add capacity to the network using the … Read more

It appears HTC got all the major U.S. wireless carriers to play ball.

Verizon Wireless, initially the lone carrier that skipped carrying the flagship HTC One phone, will actually sell the phone after all, according to a report by AllThingsD.

A representative from Verizon declined to comment. An HTC representative declined to comment, saying that this falls under rumor and speculation.

HTC had been attempting to get all carriers to sell its single high-end smartphone in a bid to follow Apple's iPhone and Samsung Electronics's Galaxy S3. It's part of the company's strategy to simplify … Read more

AT&T may not have the largest 4G LTE network but it has the fastest, at least according to new data from Root Metrics.

Among the top four U.S. mobile carriers measured by Root Metrics, AT&T took the top spot with an average LTE-only download speed of 18.6 megabits per second and an average upload speed of 9Mbps. Its maximum download speed averaged 57.7Mbps, while its fastest upload speed averaged 19.6Mbps.

Root's researchers were able to connect to AT&T's LTE network 81.7 percent of the time, a rate … Read more

Verizon and Vodafone want to square away their long-standing relationship -- tied together by Verizon Wireless -- this year, according a report from Bloomberg.

Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by Verizon and Vodafone, has long been a source of questions over when the two telco giants would resolve the arrangement. Verizon has for years sought to buy out Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless, while Vodafone has agitated for a better return from the fast-growing asset.

Verizon and Vodafone now are exploring a range of options, from ending the joint venture to merging the two companies. The two have … Read more