The advocacy group Free Press issued a complaint with the FCC yesterday, stating that Verizon is blocking tethering choices on their LTE phones. Verizon has remained cagey on the subject, but if that’s true sparks are gonna fly.
Brits have patiently twiddled their thumbs while the US talks about super-fast connections, but finally there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile’s parent-company) and BT will be testing 4G LTE this September, in Cornwall.
If and when an iPhone update arrives this year, it may do so with a small suffix and some new carrier friends. Mainly, you can expect an “iPhone 4S” in September, with support for Sprint and T-Mobile.
Bet you thought you were pretty slick there, using a tethering app to turn your Android phone into a mobile hotspot while sidestepping the additional carrier charges. What, you thought your carrier wouldn’t notice? Well, you’re not, they did, and now the free-mobile-hotspot party is over.
Here’s what Dan Hesse had to say about the pending AT&T-Mobile merger and the looming state of mobile communications when he sat down with CNBC’s Jim Cramer: “Well, I think what it, in essence, a lot – what a lot of people have said is, if you basically – if you approve this deal, AT&T-T-Mobile, in essence you’re approving the possibility of Sprint and Verizon. It’d be pretty hard not to do that one. And then that number of 79 per cent [of mobile market share]becomes 94 per cent in the hands of two.” [CNBC]
A $US39 billion deal that would create the biggest wireless carrier in the US; it’s hard to imagine keeping that kind of fiasco a secret. But AT&T had to, otherwise opposition would start before the ink was even dry – even for the biggest corporate donor in Washington. Here’s how it went down. [WSJ]
