Typically, transmitting data across this band has required large, power-hungry equipment. But now researchers in Japan have managed to do it with far less complex equipment, and in doing so, have broken the terahertz wireless-transmission speed record.

Using a device called a resonant tunneling diode, Tokyo University researchers were able to achieve a 3 gigabits-per-second data transmission over the terahertz band — double the speed of the previous record set back in November by chipmaker Rohm.

Truly an impressive speed, though, as is often the case with advanced technologies like these, it comes with a caveat. The connection over which the data is transmitted is only good over distances of about 30 feet. So it’s not really an outright replacement for Wi-Fi. That said, there are plenty of short-range applications for which it would be perfect — transmitting media among home entertainment devices, backing up a PC to a wireless hard drive, etc.

iStockphoto | italianestro

Typically, the major carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, see some shift in their share but manage to post a cumulative gain in so-called postpaid customers.

This quarter, though, gains at Verizon and AT&T weren’t enough to offset the steep losses at T-Mobile, Sprint and other carriers. T-Mobile alone lost half a million contract customers in the January-to-March quarter, while Sprint lost 192,000 contract customers.

The Associated Press did the math and calculated a drop in the industry of 52,000 contract subscribers at the top seven carriers. That contrasts with the prepaid industry (both from the Big Four carriers and smaller players such as MetroPCS, Cricket and TracFone), which saw gains of two million customers in the quarter.

As brokerage Jefferies & Company noted ahead of the earnings report season, the cellphone industry tends to face a tough few months after the initial bump that follows the introduction of a new iPhone.

(Image courtesy of iStockphoto | italianestro)

The two sides still have until 5 p.m. Monday to reach a deal that would keep LightSquared out of bankruptcy court, and there were some indications over the weekend that a final decision hadn’t yet been reached on the company’s fate. Still, the two sides remained far apart and people involved in the negotiations expected LightSquared to begin making bankruptcy preparations in earnest.

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First of all, it adds technology that can help users when logging in to unprotected hotspots. Traditionally, so-called virtual private networking (VPN) software was used to log in to a corporate firewall. But VPNs also serve another important purpose — they help secure the data that is being sent.

Secondly, Boingo is adding data on a whole bunch of new hotspots — some 70,000 — that its users have sniffed out during the past year. The software adds only those networks that people have been successful at connecting to.

Indeed, Boingo has learned a lot since introducing the software a year ago.

For instance, it now knows some of the most popular Wi-Fi network names. In addition to AT&T’s vast network, among the most popular networks are Denver’s airport, Hilton hotels and United’s airport clubs, as well as the default names of popular router vendors like Netgear and D-Link. Good old “Internet” is also in the Top 10.

As for countries where Boingo users found the most free hotspots, the U.S. was, naturally, first, followed by the U.K., Canada, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and South Korea.

In the U.S., the most crowdsourced free hotspots were found in Miami, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. San Francisco did not make the Top 10.

As for who contributed the most data, Boingo isn’t naming names, for privacy reasons. But it did say the top contributor connected to 69 different networks in a 100-day period, generating more than 2,000 connections.

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Mr. Falcone’s compromise is expected to prompt LightSquared’s lenders to approve a one-week extension on a debt-term violations waiver that expires Monday morning, the people said.

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The engineer, whose name hasn’t been disclosed, explained his plans to other engineers and at least one senior manager involved with the project, known as Street View, in 2008, the FCC report states. Nevertheless, it says, Street View managers told the agency they didn’t learn the Google cars were collecting the personal information until 2010.

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The lenders are in talks with representatives of Mr. Falcone, the founder of Harbinger Capital Partners LLC and LightSquared’s main backer, over possibly extending a waiver on debt-term violations that expires Monday, the people said.

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A less talked-about issue is the fact that many smartphone apps are constantly pinging the network, like a kid asking his or her parents every few seconds, “Are we there yet?”

Only smartphone apps are even more annoying. Some ping the network as often as 2,400 times an hour. The result is network congestion and signal loss, as well as a far more rapid drain on battery life.

“Wireless signaling is a tricky topic because oftentimes it’s hidden, happening in the background without any user knowledge. But it’s growing bigger by the minute, as more users download more connected applications” said Isabelle Dumont, head of marketing at Seven Networks, which pitches a solution to help reduce the issue.

If current trends continue, the constant pinging of the network could eventually amount to 25 trillion signaling events per hour, Seven says.

The company, which has a product designed to reduce some of the noise, has put together a handy infographic on the issue, a portion of which is included below.

Update: One of the the things we were wondering was just how much difference there is among platforms, since much of Seven’s graphic seems to relate to Android.

“Whether it’s Android, iOS, or Windows Phone, they tend to be always-on, checking for content updates on a frequent basis, even if there is no content update to be delivered,” Seven said. However, there are some important things that make over-pinging a bigger issue on Android.

One, lots of apps operate all the time on Android. Also, Seven notes, “Many more apps on Android monetize through advertising, which by itself can be one cause of additional data and signaling traffic.”

Also, Google’s store allows all apps to be published, regardless of how “noisy” they are.

“By contrast, there appears to be much tighter control on the iOS side,” Seven said. “Any app on Android can operate in the background and take advantage of all services and APIs available on the operating system and the device. iOS comes with a much tighter control over which app can operate in the background and be ‘always-on.’”

As for Windows Phone, Seven said, “These devices are still in the early stage of adoption, and because of the relative low volume of applications available for Windows Phone, the signaling storm related to Windows Phone has mostly been ignored if there is one.”

In addition, as a developer reminded me in an e-mail, Windows Phone today just does a whole lot less in the background and has a different means for getting updates (pushed down vs. polling).

In some cases, such as with Skype, there are some downsides to the way apps can live in the background, but it does make them potentially far less noisy.

He calls it “the highest-performing handset on the market, as far as we can tell.” It has taken a few years to get to this point, but there’s a two-billion-unit addressable market to be carved out.

In the video below, Otellini also talks about the competitive threat — though he seems not to consider it much of a threat at all — coming from Microsoft’s Windows 8 and its variant that will support chips running the ARM architecture. How much market share does he expect to lose? None. Intel’s chips can offer the same performance and power efficiency that ARM chips do, while being 100 percent compatible with existing PC software. See the full interview below:

On the heels of our recent hiring of Mike Isaac to cover social tech for this site, Bonnie Cha will be joining the staff of All Things Digital as a senior reviewer.

She joins Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret, as well as recent hire Lauren Goode, as part of our expanded All Things Reviewed site.

Cha has been covering technology since 2002, most recently spending eight years at CNET reviewing various consumer electronics, including printers, software and smartphones, as well as reporting on the wireless industry.

She also wrote for the Crave blog there, covering such topics as robotics and science, and served as a technical editor on several how-to books for McGraw-Hill.

When not tinkering with the latest gadgets, Cha enjoys spending her free time surfing or checking out live music. She is a graduate of Emory University with a degree in English and of the University of Southern California, where she got her masters in journalism.

Most of all, we think she’s a perfect fit for our ever-growing staff, so get ready for some insightful reviews and more when she starts in May.

Earlier this month, Mr. Falcone said he was considering seeking bankruptcy protection for LightSquared, a venture that has consumed billions of dollars from his funds. Mr. Falcone began amassing spectrum — or rights to use the nation’s airwaves — last decade in an ambitious plan to build a nationwide, high-speed network from scratch. But the plan hit a roadblock when the U.S. military and others complained that the planned service would disrupt global positioning system equipment.

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Today there are wireless, Bluetooth-enabled speaker docks that are smaller than a shoebox and allow you to play thousands of tracks from a single mobile device. Since I’m not really an audiophile, a speaker that works with my iPhone and gives good sound is good enough for me. But even some of those cost a few hundred dollars. That’s where Soundfreaq’s Sound Kick might come in handy.

This new portable Bluetooth speaker, which has an expandable chamber that pops out in the back for fuller sound, hits the market today at $99. It’s available exclusively through Target stores and through Soundfreaq’s Web site, to start. The Los Angeles-based company says the device will be available on Target’s Web site in a couple weeks; it will eventually be sold through other mass retailers, as well.

After five days of using the Sound Kick, I preferred its sound over that of its main rival, the best-selling $200 Jambox speaker. But the Sound Kick is a bit wobbly when standing upright, and isn’t nearly as portable as the compact Jambox, making it a tweener when it comes to being both an at-home dock and portable speaker.

The Sound Kick works with a variety of Bluetooth-friendly devices, including iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry, iPad and some laptops. And unlike the Jambox, it has a USB port for charging devices while you’re playing music or audio.

Made of plastic, with a steel-coated front grill, the Sound Kick is a rectangular-shaped device weighing 1.6 pounds and measuring 10.5 inches by 4.2 inches. When closed, its thickness is actually the same as the Jambox; when the extra sound chamber is extended, the device is 2.5 inches wide.

Like some of Soundfreaq’s other products, it has smooth, indented, touch-sensitive buttons for adjusting volume and controlling music tracks. The speaker is available only in black, though Soundfreaq plans to introduce carrying cases in a variety of colors.

To test the sound quality of the speaker, I connected both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 via Bluetooth, then set my entire music library to shuffle on my iPhone, which means some audio files would be higher-quality than others. (This was also a good reminder that I’ve downloaded some really bad music in the past. And I can probably ditch the Christmas tunes when it isn’t the season.) I also played Pandora Internet radio songs from an app on an Android smartphone. I set the volume on my phones to around 75 percent, and the Sound Kick’s volume was at about two-thirds of its capacity.

The songs playing through the Sound Kick easily filled the small living room of my apartment at mid-to-high volume levels, without losing quality or starting to sound harsh. Some songs sounded tinnier than other, but that likely had to do with the music files themselves rather than the speakers.

Soundfreaq says the Sound Kick provides optimal sound quality through two techniques: The extra chamber on the speaker set, and a digital-enhancement button, called the UQ3 button. The pop-out chamber in the back is meant to help the resonance of the acoustics of the speaker, while the digital enhancement gives the listener the impression that the speakers inside the dock are spaced further apart, more like surround sound.

When I pressed the UQ3 button, some songs did sound fuller, with stronger bass. With other, more layered songs, instrumental sounds that had previously taken a backseat to the vocals got a slight boost.

Otherwise, the digital enhancements weren’t that noticeable to me. I also watched videos from “The Daily Show” on the iPad, and patched the audio through the Sound Link speaker. Since mobile phone and tablet speakers can be relatively weak, I liked the added oomph I got from the Sound Kick. But when I pressed the UQ3 button, it had little to no apparent impact on the sound quality.

The Sound Kick outputs at a higher decibel level than the Jambox does — 92 decibels, compared to the Jambox’s 85 — but this is a way to measure the amplitude of sound, and is not an indication of better quality. Basically, the Jambox’s amplitude peaks at a lower level than the Sound Kick’s does.

The Sound Kick has a lithium-ion rechargeable battery that the company says should last approximately seven hours with an iPhone 4 or iPod Touch connected via Bluetooth, with the volume turned up 66 percent. During my test, I had the speaker turned up to around two-thirds of maximum volume, and the battery lasted about eight hours.

But there were a few things about the Sound Kick that lowered its grade for me. Unless you have the back portion of the speaker fully extended, the Sound Kick won’t power on at all. Also, while I liked the touch buttons, I sometimes accidentally stopped a music track or jacked up the volume when I was moving the speaker around.

Unlike the Jambox, the Sound Kick isn’t a two-way Bluetooth speaker, so when my iPhone rang during testing, the Sound Kick wouldn’t patch my calls through the speaker.

The Sound Kick’s biggest design problem is that it didn’t feel very stable. The extra speaker space makes the device back-heavy, so when I propped it upright, it fell back; when positioned at an angle — as it’s supposed to be for better sound — it tipped over if I bumped my arm against it. Soundfreaq says that when it’s in the “kicked” position, the Sound Kick should be stable, but in the event that the speaker is knocked over, its steel front grill is meant to protect it from scratching or breaking.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive speaker dock with good sound quality that works with mobile devices and could be considered portable in a pinch, you might want to consider the Sound Kick. But, as I’m planning for my next couple trips, I realize I’m more likely to take something like the Jambox with me during travel. It’s just that much easier to carry around, also has good sound and acts as a two-way speaker, whether in the conference room, car or at home.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120416/sound-kick-solid-sound-but-a-shaky-speaker/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20120411/teardown-shows-nokias-lumia-900-costs-209-to-build/ http://allthingsd.com/20120411/teardown-shows-nokias-lumia-900-costs-209-to-build/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:30:46 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=195170 As smartphones go, the Lumia 900 has a lot of hopes tied up into it. It represents the collaboration of Microsoft, the software behemoth on the PC that has struggled in recent years to make a go of the smartphone business, and Nokia, once the king of wireless phones, period, now struggling to get back in the game versus Apple and Google.

So far, the launch hasn’t gone quite so well. First there was a lackluster review. Then, days after going on sale on Easter Sunday, the company has admitted to a software glitch and is offering people who bought one a $100 credit in addition to a software patch. The credit makes the phone free to buyers willing to take a two-year service contract.

Now the market research firm IHS iSuppli has taken a Lumia 900 apart and, in a report shared with AllThingsD that will be released later today, has determined that it costs Nokia about $209 to build. And, judging from the parts being used, it’s not exactly built like the most cutting-edge phone on the market.

In fact, it seems like Microsoft and wireless chipmaker Qualcomm are both making an effort to showcase how efficient Windows Phone 7 for mobile can be; at the same time, they seem to be aiming to entice other hardware manufacturers by demonstrating that a full-featured smartphone can be built using components that are about a generation behind the current high end, and therefore cheaper, says Andrew Rassweiler, the iSuppli analyst who supervised the teardown.

For example, the teardown found that the Lumia 900 uses a single-core Qualcomm chip that costs $17 as its main applications processor; a phone with similar features running Google’s Android OS, such as Samsung’s Galaxy SII Skyrocket, uses a higher-end dual-core processor that costs $22.

“It appears what Microsoft and Qualcomm and Nokia are trying to do here — and this is being driven by Microsoft more than anyone else — is streamline the OS so it can run on a lighter processing platform,” Rassweiler told me. “The point being is to undercut the higher end phones.”

The choices don’t end with the processor. The phone contains only 512 megabytes of DRAM memory, where most phones would use one gigabyte. And the trend is expected to continue, as the next generation of Microsoft’s mobile OS will require even less memory.

Another example: The Bluetooth chip. Nokia is using a slightly older chip from Broadcom, and not the latest, greatest Bluetooth part. The difference between them is only $2.50, but it serves as another example showing that Nokia is aiming to compete on price.

For Nokia, the strategy seems to be one of aiming to compete against other phones on price, while offering similar features. The Lumia is thought to sell for $450 at retail without a subsidy, or about $200 lower than Apple’s iPhone 4S, which starts at $649 without a contract, depending on model, and costs between $188 and $245 to build.

Microsoft is also thought to be helping Nokia out, says iSuppli’s Wayne Lam, who also participated in the teardown analysis. While software costs are not considered in a teardown analysis, he says Microsoft is thought to be making less than $5 per phone in licensing fees on the Windows Phone 7 operating system, far lower than the $15 per device it is said to want. That would be in line with the $3 per phone price that Nokia is thought to have paid in licensing fees for the Symbian OS it used previously, and of which it was a partial owner. “Nokia is getting a fantastic discount,” Lam told me.

One place where Nokia didn’t skimp? The gyroscope chip, which determines how the phone is being moved. It contains the same gyroscope chip from STMicroelectronics that goes into the iPhone 4S. There are, apparently, some things on which you simply can’t compromise.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120411/teardown-shows-nokias-lumia-900-costs-209-to-build/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120410/carriers-band-to-fight-cellphone-theft/ http://allthingsd.com/20120410/carriers-band-to-fight-cellphone-theft/#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:40:20 +0000 Rolfe Winkler http://allthingsd.com/?p=194820 The nation’s major wireless providers have agreed to a deal with the U.S. government to build a central database of stolen cellphones — part of a broad effort to tame an explosion of thefts nationwide.

The database, which the wireless companies will build and maintain, will be designed to track phones that are reported as lost or stolen and deny them voice and data service. The idea is to reduce crime by making it difficult or impossible to actually use a stolen device, reducing resale value.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120410/carriers-band-to-fight-cellphone-theft/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120409/t-mobile-leap-wireless-swap-some-spectrum-but-still-just-good-friends/ http://allthingsd.com/20120409/t-mobile-leap-wireless-swap-some-spectrum-but-still-just-good-friends/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:54:47 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=194456 T-Mobile and prepaid carrier Leap Wireless said Monday that they will swap some spectrum in a few cities.

“Pending regulatory approval, T-Mobile will receive spectrum from Leap in several markets in Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota, and Leap will receive spectrum from T-Mobile in Phoenix, AZ and Houston, Galveston and Bryan-College Station, TX,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “Additionally, the companies will exchange spectrum in Philadelphia, Wilmington, DE and Atlantic City, NJ as well as several markets in Texas and New Mexico.”

The move will help T-Mobile as it looks to modernize its network and add LTE service by next year, T-Mobile said.

T-Mobile said that the two companies jointly filed an application for the spectrum transfer with the Federal Communications Commission last week.

For its part, Leap said the move would also help with its LTE efforts. Leap sells wireless service under the Cricket brand name.

“As we have previously announced, we plan to cover approximately two-thirds of our current network footprint with LTE technology over the next two to three years,” Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson said in a statement. “In addition the transactions will allow us to re-align spectrum in key markets into contiguous channels thereby optimizing our delivery of wireless services.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Leap and T-Mobile have been mentioned (along with many other combinations) as potential deal partners in the wake of AT&T’s failed T-Mobile acquisition. However, Monday’s deal was a fairly small-scale arrangement limited to exchanging some frequencies.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120409/t-mobile-leap-wireless-swap-some-spectrum-but-still-just-good-friends/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120405/it-spending-this-year-almost-four-triiilllion-dollars/ http://allthingsd.com/20120405/it-spending-this-year-almost-four-triiilllion-dollars/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:40:18 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=193546 The growth rate in global spending on information technology is slowing down a bit, but, well, it’s still growing, and will total $3.7 trillion, according to the latest forecast on the topic by the tech research house Gartner.

It’s not so much about any shifts in sentiment or intention for spending among large companies, it’s just that the dollar is currently strong against other currencies, so U.S.-domiciled companies are in a weaker position when selling to customers in other countries. When accounting for that discrepancy, Gartner says it expects overall growth in spending of 2.5 percent, but on a constant currency basis, the digits would be transposed for a healthier 5.2 percent.

Spending by governments will likely contract, thanks in no small part to the austerity measures being put in place in the euro zone.

The highest rate of growth will be in the telecommunications equipment sector, which will grow by nearly 7 percent, Gartner says. A lot of that is thanks to mobile going to mobile, but also to speeding up networks. See the rest of the segments and their expected rates of growth in the table I screengrabbed from the press release, below:

Earlier this week, Gartner singled out IT spending in emerging economies, which it said will amount to an impressive trillion and change by itself. And last week we got a glance at the sentiment from 100 CIOs at large enterprises, courtesy of J.P. Morgan, indicating that growth is likely to tick upward this year. Up is good.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120405/it-spending-this-year-almost-four-triiilllion-dollars/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120405/next-chapter-in-lightsquared-saga-could-be-chapter-11/ http://allthingsd.com/20120405/next-chapter-in-lightsquared-saga-could-be-chapter-11/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:00:31 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=193382 After failing in its bid to launch a wholesale wireless network, LightSquared may be headed for a bankruptcy filing.

Chief backer Phil Falcone acknowledged the possibility in several interviews on Tuesday, including an email to The Wall Street Journal.

“Spectrum value does not decrease in bankruptcy,” he said in the email. Falcone earlier mentioned the possibility of a bankruptcy filing to Reuters.

LightSquared has spent billions to try to build a 4G wireless network that it could lease out to others. However, regulators revoked their tentative approval for the plans amid concerns that there would be unavoidable interference with existing GPS devices.

The company had signed several deals ahead of the regulatory move, including a pact with Sprint that has since been terminated.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120405/next-chapter-in-lightsquared-saga-could-be-chapter-11/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120327/u-s-proposes-sharing-airwaves/ http://allthingsd.com/20120327/u-s-proposes-sharing-airwaves/#comments Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:02:53 +0000 Amy Schatz http://allthingsd.com/?p=190630 Obama administration officials proposed requiring the Defense Department and other federal agencies to share a chunk of the airwaves they currently use with wireless companies after concluding it could be too expensive and time-consuming to move the federal agencies to other airwaves.

Commerce Department officials released a report Tuesday on a band of government airwaves long coveted by wireless carriers saying that while it would be possible to switch the block to commercial use, it could cost $18 billion and take a decade. Instead of moving federal agencies off of the airwaves and auctioning them off to wireless carriers, Commerce officials instead proposed that commercial and government users share them.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120327/u-s-proposes-sharing-airwaves/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120322/t-mobile-usa-to-cut-1900-jobs-as-it-consolidates-its-call-centers/ http://allthingsd.com/20120322/t-mobile-usa-to-cut-1900-jobs-as-it-consolidates-its-call-centers/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:20:52 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=189345 T-Mobile USA said on Thursday that it plans to cut thousands of jobs as it closes seven customer service facilities across the country.

About 3,300 people work at the call centers being closed, but T-Mobile said it plans to hire up to 1,400 people at the remaining facilities, resulting in 1,900 net job cuts. The facilities set to close by the end of June are: Allentown, Pennsylvania; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Frisco, Texas; Brownsville, Texas; Lenexa, Kansas; Thornton, Colorado; and Redmond, Oregon.

“Concentrating call centers is an important step to achieve competitive cost structures to successfully compete as [a] challenger and value player in the wireless market,” said Philipp Humm, CEO and President of T-Mobile. “These are not easy steps to take, but they are necessary to realize efficiency in order to invest for growth.”

T-Mobile has been losing customers in recent months, resulting in a decreased need for call center staffers.

The move comes in the wake of T-Mobile’s failed bid to sell itself to AT&T, a deal scuttled by objections from regulators. T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom said earlier this year that it will invest further in the No. 4 U.S. carrier, including a $4 billion effort to build a next-generation LTE network using a combination of existing spectrum and that acquired from AT&T as part of the failed deal.

Humm said earlier this year that T-Mobile would look to resume the “challenger” brand image it had crafted before its AT&T merger plans, noting that there isn’t another AT&T-like deal to be had.

As for the job cuts, T-Mobile is not stopping with the call centers.

“T-Mobile will restructure and optimize operations in other parts of the business, which will take place by the end of second quarter of 2012,” the company said in a statement.

The bulk of those cuts will take place by the end of May and will be in areas other than the call centers. They also won’t take place among front-line workers at the company’s retail stores or its network technicians, T-Mobile said.

The call center cuts were reported earlier on Thursday by The Verge, a technology news site.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120322/t-mobile-usa-to-cut-1900-jobs-as-it-consolidates-its-call-centers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120322/verizon-comcast-defend-spectrum-purchase-plan/ http://allthingsd.com/20120322/verizon-comcast-defend-spectrum-purchase-plan/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:26:23 +0000 Amy Schatz http://allthingsd.com/?p=189141 WASHINGTON—Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. executives defended Verizon’s proposal to buy airwaves from cable companies for $3.6 billion, arguing at a Senate hearing Wednesday that it wouldn’t hurt competition and would improve Verizon’s wireless service.

“It’s critical that this previously unused spectrum be put to good use,” Randall Milch, executive vice president of Verizon Communications, said during a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Consumers in some markets could begin experiencing capacity problems by 2013 if Verizon doesn’t acquire more airwaves soon, he said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120322/verizon-comcast-defend-spectrum-purchase-plan/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120320/video-speed-trap-lurks-in-new-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20120320/video-speed-trap-lurks-in-new-ipad/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:29:22 +0000 Anton Troianovski http://allthingsd.com/?p=188620 Brandon Wells got the new iPad last Friday, started wirelessly streaming March Madness games the next day and by Saturday night was out of gas.

Two hours of college basketball — which he viewed mounted to his car dashboard and live at tournament games — had burned through his monthly wireless data allotment of two gigabytes.

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