T-Mobile 3G Handsets to Be Rendered Obsolete by AT&T Merger

by Kevin Krause From: http://phandroid.com/

In case you have been resting under a rock somewhere, AT&T is in the process of buying out T-Mobile and merging the two companies into a singular (no, not Cingular) wireless conglomerate. As part of the deal, AT&T plans to re-purpose all of TMo’s 3G towers for the roll out of their LTE network,which should cover 95 percent of the country within two year’s time. The catch? Your 3G T-Mobile handset will be obsolete when that time comes, as confirmed by AT&T.

Seeing as how far off the problem is there is no news to share as to whether AT&T plans to compensate TMo subscribers locking into new two-year deals, but if you are a fan of magenta it may be wise to consider shorter-term contract options if you plan on picking up a new handset anytime soon.

[via Gizmodo]

AT&T Relabels Their Data Network, Proves '4G' Doesn't Really Mean Anything

Posted by Joshua_Kopstein

From: http://motherboard.tv/

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To the average consumer, the intricacies of the wireless technologies used by cellphones and other mobile devices are confusing. Fortunately, cell phone carriers have made it easier on us by inventing the “G,” a nebulous standard that makes people think they understand what they’re getting when they sign up for that two-year contract. The bad news: The carriers themselves typically don’t care about what a 3G or 4G network should actually be. And now, as proof of concept, AT&T has re-branded their existing 3G network as a 4G network.

At least now we’re clear on exactly what ‘4G’ means: Essentially, nothing.

By definition, 4G network “standards” like LTE (Long Term Evolution) run at speeds of 1 Gbit/s for low-mobility connections like cellphones. But it doesn’t mean they have to. That doesn’t matter much to carriers, however, since most consumers don’t know enough about how cellular tech works to wonder or even care about the actual capabilities of the network they’re shelling out for. After all, chances are that even if they could, those under-trained representatives aren’t going explain to you the difference between HSPA Plus (what AT&T uses currently) and LTE. Like always, they still only want to do two things: Sell you a phone, and sell you a contract with a network that operates on muddied and arbitrary wireless standards.
Threatened by other providers touting presumably faster networks, AT&T’s new ‘4G’ branding will run on the same old HSPA Plus tech that you’ve been using to get oft-congested connections on your iPhone. Their excuse for doing this? “We won’t notice.”

“The whole industry has come to equate more speed with 4G,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless unit. He says consumers generally won’t notice the difference in speed between AT&T’s HSPA-plus and upcoming LTE networks, so it makes sense to call both 4G.

John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, said speeds on HSPA-plus and LTE phones will feel similar now, but users will start to notice a difference in the two technologies once richer applications become available.

I had to re-read that first part at least 3 times because it is so absurd that I could not wrap my brain around it. Essentially this is AT&T saying, “we don’t need to wait for a faster network, because we’ve been sufficiently awesome this whole time — we just forgot to give to tack on that cool name that everyone’s using.” And as for applications not being “rich” enough, that too sounds like a massive cop-out. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that’s seeing the apps on their smartphone choke on current data speeds.

AT&T’s not the only one making semantic upgrades, however — T-Mobile, which still runs on the same ‘3G’ HSPA Plus networks as AT&T, has also recently switched to the “4G” nomenclature. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly possible to get faster speeds on a 4G handset using the same old networks, but it’s hard to imagine the boost being anything but marginal.

So in the end, it’ll be up to us to find out just what the heck our carrier’s ‘4G’ network actually is. Lifehacker’s got a pretty decent guide. Read up and don’t be a sucker.

Samsung Epic 4G preview

By Joanna Stern

From: http://www.engadget.com/

We've seen our fair share of Samsung Galaxy S phones in the past few weeks, but the Sprint Epic 4G version (or the Galaxy S Pro, as we'd previously suspected it would be known) looks like it could take the cake. The phone has all the same specs as the others family members -- including a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, 5 megapixel cam, a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, and Android 2.1 -- but it also boasts a front facing camera and a physical keyboard. So, is the new slider as epically amazing as we've been imagining? We got to spend some time with a unit this afternoon, so hit the break for some early impressions and a quick video.

Samsung Epic

• Hardware: The Epic may not have a 4.3-inch screen like the Droid X or EVO, but at 4 inches, it's close -- and for all practical purposes, it appears to be just as large. The slide-out physical keyboard doesn't add as much girth as we expected, though it still adds to the height of the phone. While the curved edges give it a similar look to the Galaxy S we've seen overseas, it has four touch sensitive buttons along the bottom instead of those physical buttons. Oh, and about that physical keyboard, it's pretty glorious -- the keys are slightly raised and there's a bit of space between each of them. We have to admit it looks a bit odd to have a keyboard with such a big screen, but if anything it's a throw back to UMPCs or MIDs.

• Screen: The Epic 4G has the same 4-inch Super AMOLED display as the Galaxy S and Captivate. But we aren't letting that diminish our love of it -- every time we see it we are pretty blown away by the crispness. Yet again, we didn't get to test the display in sunlight, but indoors it was seriously bright, albeit glossy. (Oh, and if you missed it, check out our head-to-head between Samsung's Super AMOLED screen and Apple's Retina display.)

• Software: The Epic 4G will run Android 2.1 at launch, but Sprint tells us it will be rolling out the 2.2 update not too long after it hits the market. Just like the Captivate, it has the latest version of Samsung's TouchWiz skin, which isn't too distracting and actually polishes up Android a bit. It's also preloaded with Swype and Qik as well as a few Sprint applications -- including the mobile hotspot app, notably. Speaking of Qik, we did confirm that the Epic 4G has a VGA front facing cam, while the one on it's backside will take 5 megapixel shots.
  

• Performance: Unlike the early version of the Captivate that we saw, the Epic 4G's 1GHz Hummingbird CPU was zippy. As you will see in the video, scrolling was super snappy and there was no noticeable lag in opening applications like Amazon's Kindle app or firing up the camcorder. Video playback also looked super smooth. Sprint's still not giving out information on pricing or availability, though we're told the price will be aggressive and the handset will be available before the end of Summer.

On that note, until we get our hands on a review unit, we leave you with a brief, standard def video of what's clearly shaping up to be Sprint's Android phone of the month:

Sprint HTC EVO 4G - As Good As It Looks? Yes!

intomobile.com — The Sprint HTC Evo 4G is the kind of Android phone that will probably be the talk of the town even after the next iPhone launches. That should say a lot about Evo’s badass-ness.

Click here for the full in-depth review: Sprint HTC EVO 4G - As Good As It Looks? Yes!

HTC EVO 4G is Sprint's Android-powered knight in superphone armor, we go hands-on

By Paul Miller
From http://www.engadget.com/
We've been rumoring a WiMAX "HTC Supersonic" for a while now, and Sprint just dropped the hard news: the phone will be dubbed the HTC EVO 4G, will be released this Summer and it's easily the best specced phone we've ever witnessed. The hardware is of quite obvious HD2 descent, but with Android onboard and some nice aesthetic tweaks, the EVO 4G takes on a life of its own. The handset is centered around a 480 x 800 4.3-inch TFT LCD, with a Snapdragon QSD8650 1GHz processor under the hood (the CDMA version of the QSD8250 in the HD2 and Nexus One), and even a helpful 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM -- hello app storage! Even the battery is bigger than the HD2, and the camera is an 8 megapixel monstrosity with flash, that's capable of 720p video, and is augmented by a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for good measure. The phone features HDMI out (though you'll need an adapter for turning it into a TV-familiar HDMI plug), 802.11b/g WiFi, and an 8GB microSD card. There's that still-rare Android 2.1 underneath an updated version of HTC's Sense UI. But... despite all these wild features, what actually sets the EVO 4G apart is the fact that it's Sprint's first 4G phone. The handset runs a combo of EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX, with calls still being made over CDMA and the EV-DO / WiMAX options for data. Interestingly, it sounds like concurrent data and voice use might be possible for the first time on CDMA carrier in this way (killing AT&T's well-advertised differentiator), though Sprint says that's still in the testing phase. One other new feature is the Sprint hotspot app, another MiFi-style connection sharing number, which is obviously aided greatly by the WiMAX on board and can support up to eight concurrent users. Follow after the break for our hands-on impressions and videos of the phone in action, including an up-close-and-personal test of the touchscreen keyboard. Below you'll find galleries of the phone by its lonesome and up against the Nexus One and iPhone 3G.

Update: We've got a graph comparing the Nexus One and Droid with the EVO spec for spec, and there's also a pictorial shootout with the Desire and HD2. Pick your comparo poison!
HTC EVO 4G press shots



HTC EVO 4G hands-on



HTC EVO 4G vs. iPhone vs. Nexus One



We got to play with the phone for an all-too-brief matter of minutes, but everything we saw was frankly breathtaking. The camera does seem to be indeed of a high quality (though we'll still be holding on to our compact shooter, thank you very much), the screen is naturally gorgeous, and the Sense UI was as responsive as we've seen it, and frankly delicious at this jumbo size. The capacitive face buttons are flat and almost a little difficult to see due the thin chrome icons, but the physical buttons (a volume rocker and a power button up top) are very large, tactile and friendly. Around back there's strong, chrome kick stand, and when you pop off the cover the battery is surrounded by beautiful "Ferrari red" plastic. The touchscreen keyboard is positively ginormous, though we're not sure we're feeling some of the recent things that have been crammed in there like huge cursor buttons and the voice recognition button -- just because you can fit stuff in there doesn't mean you should, and they look a little comical at this size. In our testing we weren't really able to get a feel for the browsing speed on WiMAX, but at this point we're primarily enthused that it's even an option, and obviously the theoretical speeds are far beyond 3G, with a bunch of new markets due to go online this year. Battery life is stated as "comparable."

Our biggest questions at this point are availability and pricing. Sprint is keeping mum, just stating a "Summer" availability, and interestingly clarified that not only is it not announcing device pricing, but it's not announcing plan pricing yet either -- sounds like a 4G-on-a-phone surcharge could be somewhere in our future.

Sprint

New Sprint ad shows iPhone using WiMAX... via Overdrive

By Darren Murph

Your existing iPhone (yeah, even the original) can surf the information superhighway at 4G speeds. Today. Who knew, right? Sprint's Overdrive -- which creates a WiFi hotspot that enables nearby devices to cruise on Clear's 4G (or 3G, if you're not in a 4G locale) network -- can theoretically enable any WiFi-capable phone to surf on WiMAX, but Sprint's taking a pretty bold approach by actually touting the feature in a new spot. Befuddled? Hop on past the break and mash play. Too bad this is about as close the iPhone will ever get to Sprint's shelves...

See more video at our hub!

TUAW

YouTube

4G Goes Live in Sweden and Norway

By Zee

4G network technology has arrived in Oslo and Stockholm thanks to wireless carrier TeliaSonera.

As of Tuesday, people in Norway and Sweden will be able to buy a mobile dongle that supports the long-term evolution (LTE) of 4G.

The technology can deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second–ten times faster that its 3G predecessor.

In a press conference in Stockholm on Monday, Karlberg said LTE makes it possible “to do everything that you can do on the fixed network, but on top of that, [the network adds] the mobility dimension”. He said this combination of mobility and fixed-line-quality speeds and bandwidth would allow for “applications that we haven’t seen so far”.

At launch, TeliaSonera’s LTE services cover around 400,000 people in the centres of Stockholm and Oslo. However, the operator said it is adding base stations every day. That aside, users primary frustration will lie in the fact that no handsets can yet use 4G meaning customers will initially only be able to connect via a dongle and a laptop.

Until July 1, consumers keen to try out the technology will receive the modems for free and pay a subscription price of just 4 kronor a month. The price will then will increased to 500 kronor a month.

TeliaSonera said it expected the boost in speed to drive many novel applications including gaming on the move and much greater viewing of video on laptops.

Boston / Seattle get To test high-speed 4G cellular network

By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff / August 13, 2009

Verizon Wireless has selected Boston and Seattle as the first two US cities to test its new wireless data service, with speeds five to 10 times faster than the service used today by such popular handsets as Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

The new network could mean big changes in the ways people use their smartphones or laptop computers, at home and on the road. Today’s networks, known as 3G, are good enough for checking e-mail or visiting websites, but they’re too slow for high-quality video or real-time video gaming. They can’t match the speed of the hard-wired Internet services offered by telephone and cable TV companies.

Verizon Wireless’s new network, called 4G, will have the ability to display crystal-clear videos and allow users to play complex multiplayer games, or hold two-way videoconferences. Consumers might replace broadband Internet services from cable and phone companies with the new wireless service, in the same way some have ditched their traditional, hard-wired telephone lines in favor of cellphones.

Verizon Wireless will not say what it plans to charge for the new service, or reveal the speeds it will provide consumers. News of 4G’s debut cities came in a Verizon Wireless conference call for investors on July 27, and the company said it is not yet ready to speak publicly about it.

But Godfrey Chua, research analyst at IDC Corp. in Framingham, said it would almost certainly deliver enough speed to offer serious competition to traditional Internet services. “If you have cable modem at home, it gets us up to that level,’’ Chua said.

Cable TV and Internet giant Comcast Corp. said it does not believe that 4G poses much of a threat. Spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook noted that the nation’s first 4G service, offered in several cities by Clearwire Corp. of Kirkland, Wash., can’t measure up to Comcast’s higher-speed Internet products. “Our services are so much faster than that today,’’ Westbrook said.

Verizon Wireless will use a technology called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, to build its new 4G network. Some carriers are adopting a separate system called WiMax.

“The hope with LTE and WiMax is at some point, they could start displacing your DSL and cable providers,’’ said Allen Nogee, an analyst at In-Stat, a technology research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

A report issued in February by the company’s chief technology officer, Dick Lynch, said Verizon Wireless’s LTE system has been tested at speeds almost 60 times faster than the company’s current 3G network.

The Boston and Seattle deployments are just the beginning, according to Verizon Wireless president Denny Strigl, who said in the conference call that the company intends to launch the new services in up to 30 markets next year, making the service available to as many as 100 million potential subscribers.

The new 4G networks will be a boon for consumer electronics makers, because today’s cellphones and laptops won’t work with the new technology. Millions of subscribers will need to purchase new phones and plug-in computer adapters to connect to the new networks.

While Verizon Wireless is moving quickly toward 4G, the second-biggest cellphone carrier in the US - AT&T - is taking its time. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said that his company won’t even begin testing a 4G service until 2011. Instead, this year it will upgrade its existing 3G network to deliver about seven times the current speed.

“3G is going to be around for a long, long time, even as 4G is deployed,’’ Siegel said.

T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest cell carrier in the country, is also taking a go-slow approach to 4G. The company hasn’t even finished building its 3G network yet. Like AT&T, T-Mobile will boost its 3G performance through a technology upgrade, though T-Mobile won’t say how much speed it expects from the improved network.

Clearwire, which used the WiMax technology to build its 4G network, has signed up residential consumers in Baltimore, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Portland, Ore., and charges $20 a month for Internet service at home. For an additional $30 a month, Clearwire subscribers can get a mobile broadband service that lets them connect laptops wirelessly when they’re on the road. Comcast offers hard-wired service at one-sixth of Clearwire’s speed for $25 a month, or a much faster service for $43.

Mike Sievert, Clearwire’s chief commercial officer, said that many users have unplugged their wired Internet providers, and use the Clearwire service as their only broadband source.

That’s not necessarily bad news for Comcast, which is a major investor in Clearwire.

Comcast markets Clearwire’s 4G service as part of a “quad play’’ bundle, along with Comcast telephone, cable Internet, and cable TV service. Another major Clearwire investor is cellular carrier Sprint Nextel Corp., which already sells Clearwire-compatible laptop cards, and plans to introduce a 4G phone sometime between now and 2010.

The lure of wireless broadband service is even attracting smaller players. MetroPCS Communications Inc., the sixth-largest US cellular carrier, serves 5.4 million subscribers in eight states, including Massachusetts. MetroPCS specializes in prepaid cellphone services which have traditionally been favored by low-income users who generally don’t buy wireless data services. But MetroPCS plans to launch a 4G network in the second half of 2010.

“Cellular operators are making less and less on voice,’’ said analyst Nogee. “They’re looking for new revenue streams.’’ But Nogee added that in a year or two, with so many 4G options available, wireless data service could become a lot cheaper for consumers.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Breakthroughs in Post-4G (12.5Gb/s) Wireless Communications

ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2009) — With much of the mobile world yet to migrate to 3G mobile communications, let alone 4G, European researchers are already working on a new technology able to deliver data wirelessly up to 12.5Gb/s.

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The technology – known as ‘millimetre (mm)-wave’ or microwave photonics – has commercial applications not just in telecommunications (access and in-house networks) but also in instrumentation, radar, security, radio astronomy and other fields.

Despite the quantum leap in performance made possible by combining the latest radio and optics technologies to produce mm-wave components, it will probably only be a few years before there are real benefits for the average EU citizen.

This is thanks to research and development work being done by the EU-funded project IPHOBAC, which brings together partners from both academia and industry with the aim of developing a new class of components and systems for mm-wave applications.

The mm-wave band is the extremely high frequency part of the radio spectrum, from 30 to 300 gigahertz (GHz), and it gets it name from having a wavelength of one to 10mm. Until now, the band has been largely undeveloped, so the new technology makes available for exploitation more of the scarce and much-in-demand spectrum.

New products from Europe

IPHOBAC is not simply a ‘paper project’ where the technology is researched, but very much a practical exercise to develop and commercialise a new class of products with a ‘made in Europe’ label on them.

While several companies in Japan and the USA have been working on merging optical and radio frequency technologies, IPHOBAC is the world’s first fully integrated effort in the field, with a lot of different companies involved. This has resulted in the three-year project, which runs until end-2009, already having an impressive list of achievements to its name.

It recently unveiled a tiny component, a transmitter able to transmit a continuous signal not only through the entire mm-wave band but beyond. Its full range is 30 to 325GHz and even higher frequency operation is now under investigation. The first component worldwide able to deliver that range of performance, it will be used in both communications and radar systems. Other components developed by the project include 110GHz modulators, 110GHz photodetectors, 300GHz dual-mode lasers, 60GHz mode-locked lasers, and 60GHz transceivers.

Truly disruptive technology

Project coordinator Andreas Stöhr says millimetre-wave photonics is a truly disruptive technology for high frequency applications. “It offers unique capabilities such as ultra-wide tunability and low-phase noise which are not possible with competing technologies, such as electronics,” he says.

What this will mean in practical terms is not only ultra-fast wireless data transfer over telecommunications networks, but also a whole range of new applications (http://www.iphobac-survey.org).

One of these, a 60GHz Photonic Wireless System, was demonstrated at the ICT 2008 exhibition in Lyon and was voted into the Top Ten Best exhibits. The system allows wireless connectivity in full high definition (HD) between devices in the home, such as a set-top box, TV, PC, and mobile devices. It is the first home area network to demonstrate the speeds necessary for full wireless HD of up to 3Gb/s.

The system can also be used to provide multi-camera coverage of live events in HD. “There is no time to compress the signal as the director needs to see live feed from every camera to decide which picture to use, and ours is the only technology which can deliver fast enough data rates to transmit uncompressed HD video/audio signals,” says Stöhr.

The same technology has been demonstrated for access telecom networks and has delivered world record data rates of up to 12.5Gb/s over short- to medium-range wireless spans, or 1500 times the speed of upcoming 4G mobile networks.

One way in which the technology can be deployed in the relatively short term, according to Stöhr, is wirelessly supporting very fast broadband to remote areas. “You can have your fibre in the ground delivering 10Gb/s but we can deliver this by air to remote areas where there is no fibre or to bridge gaps in fibre networks,” he says.

Systems for outer space

The project is also developing systems for space applications, working with the European Space Agency. Stöhr said he could not reveal details as this has not yet been made public, save to say the systems will operate in the 100GHz band and are needed immediately.

There are various ongoing co-operation projects with industry to commercialise the components and systems, and some components are already at a pre-commercial stage and are being sold in limited numbers. There are also ongoing talks with some of the biggest names in telecommunications, including Siemens, Ericsson, Thales Communications and Malaysia Telecom.

“In just a few years time everybody will be able to see the results of the IPHOBAC project in telecommunications, in the home, in radio astronomy and in space. It is a completely new technology which will be used in many applications even medical ones where mm-wave devices to detect skin cancer are under investigation,” says Stöhr.

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Adapted from materials provided by ICT Results.