Nokia has agreed to acquire French infrastructure player Alcatel-Lucent in a massive deal. The two companies on Tuesday confirmed they were in discussions, and on Wednesday morning Nokia confirmed details in a press release. Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France […]
Wheeler Takes Controversial Title II Pitch on the Road
What will FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler say next? That was the question on everyone’s minds Tuesday evening as Wheeler took the Mobile World Congress keynote stage. Having just announced his aggressive Internet rules in the United States, and with rumblings of possible regulatory hijinks afoot in Europe, Wheeler’s talk was timely to put it mildly. […]
Orange, Ericsson hit 300 Mbps on LTE
Orange and Ericsson are reporting a successful trial of FDD carrier aggregation using the 3.4-3.6 GHz (3.5 GHz) frequencies. The live LTE-Advanced FDD trial was authorized by the French regulator ARCEP and was carried out from October through November of this year on Orange’s network in Bordeaux using Ericsson’s pre-commercial equipment. The first phase of […]
AT&T pauses fiber build on Title II concerns
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company couldn’t afford to continue its fiber buildout until regualtory uncertainties were resolved. “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to one hundred cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed,” Stephenson said during an investor conference that was broadcast online. […]
AT&T’s in-flight LTE service aborts takeoff
AT&T’s LTE network will apparently not be taking flight, but things are looking up at GoGo. Runway Girl Network reported Monday that AT&T is abandoning plans that it announced back in April to bring in-flight LTE network service to airlines in 2015. AT&T had previously announced that it was preparing to build an “air-to-ground network” to […]
Apple Pay makes debut with today’s iOS 8.1 release
Apple today launched its new Apple Pay service via the company’s latest iteration of iOS 8. Once the update is downloaded, Apple’s iOS 8.1 will allow users to make payments using the NFC-capabilities of the iPhone 6. Apple Pay will allow iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users to pay for goods and services using their […]
Ericsson buys majority stake in Apcera
Ericsson Monday announced that it has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Apcera, a U.S.-based enterprise services company and creator of a platform as-a-service (PaaS) called Continuum which works across cloud, on premise and hybrid environments. The companies did not offer financial details on the transaction. Ericsson said the acquistion of Apcera’s PaaS will […]
Verizon expands XLTE to 22 more markets
Verizon today announced that it is expanding XLTE to 22 new markets. After substantially completing its nationwide LTE buildout on 700 MHz, Verizon began supplementing that with an AWS LTE deployment. The carrier is promising XLTE will deliver double the LTE bandwidth and faster peak speeds. Verizon has said that devices that automatically access the […]
Apple’s larger iPhone poised to drive phablet market
Carriers may be giving more shelf space to devices with larger screens, but many consumers could be waiting for a larger iPhone before they snatch up a “phablet.” According to new research from NPD Group, carriers in the United States devoted about a third of their shelf space to devices with a 4.7-inch or […]
New Facebook tracking aimed at helping advertisers understand mobile habits
Facebook is looking to offer advertisers more insight around its customer’s shopping habits. The social network giant will apparently now let advertisers know where a promotion was first viewed and whether it led to a purchase by tracking users across their devices. In a blog on its website, Facebook explained that marketers will be able to see the number […]