Tag Archives: Telecom

AT&T Employee Says Company Turns “Blind Eye” To Lying Customer Service Reps

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Mike Mozart, Flickr

Okay, so you’ve been promised a discount or some other benefit from the rep, but it doesn’t show up on your bill because it was a false promise. Maybe you were smart and got the rep’s ID so you can hold them accountable for this failure, but the insider says it isn’t so. Having the ID number, says the rep, “does not help, as every account is noted with the ID of the rep, and management does nothing to discourage the reps’ behavior (as the manager’s pay also is negatively affected by each disconnect their rep does).” – Chris Morran, The Consumerist

Sprint’s offering a year of free service for DirecTV customers

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Engadget

Sprint is running a promo that gives DirecTV customers a year of free cell service by switching to the Now Network. Of course you need to either be a new customer or adding an additional line of service through the telco, and even then it has to be either a Sprint Lease, iPhone Forever, Easy Pay or you have to cough up full retail price for a phone to take advantage of this. – Timothy J. Seppala, Engadget

Telstra Taps Roku for New Streaming TV Service

Posted on by Leave a comment
Logo: Worldvectorlogo

Logo: Worldvectorlogo

Telstra is the latest provider to join Roku Powered, a licensing program announced last fall in which pay TV operators tap Roku hardware and customized interfaces to deliver apps and services to the TV. Sky UK, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia are the other announced Roku Powered partners. Roku is using the program to enter the pay TV arena and to expand beyond its bread-and-butter retail business that counts competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon. – Jeff Baumgartner, Multichannel News

Sprint announces new ‘unlimited’ plan with ridiculous 600Kbps streaming video cap

Posted on by Leave a comment

The plan itself is $60 per month, then you add $20 for a leased phone. That means you give Sprint the phone back at the end of your two year lease. The total $80 per month cost (taxes not included) gets you unlimited talk, text, and high-speed data — sort of. There’s a footnote on Sprint’s announcement page, and when you pop down to the bottom to see what it says, there’s an admission that All In includes a permanent limit of 600Kbps on streaming video. So things like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO NOW will only run at this reduced speed. Sprint says this “may impact quality.” You think, Sprint? – Ryan Whitwam, Geek.com

Report: Google Wireless cellular announcement is imminent

Posted on by Leave a comment

Google will have a hard time being “disruptive” when it’s only reselling someone else’s service. Any Sprint and T-Mobile MVNO would be at the mercy of… Sprint and T-Mobile. Google Fiber is disruptive because Google is using a different data delivery technology—fiber optic—and doing all the hard work of ground-up network building, which gives it full control over everything. By owning everything, Google can sell high speeds for low prices, and shake up the competition in cities it offers service. Reselling service on Sprint and T-Mobile’s existing networks doesn’t leave that much room to be different. Some customers might have a lower bill, but we don’t see how it will be the “10x” improvement Google usually shoots for. – Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica

Telesur signs partnership with YuppTV to offer Internet TV Services in Suriname

Posted on by Leave a comment

teleSUR, a full telecommunications service provider for the South American nation of Suriname, and YuppTV, the world’s leading over-the-top (OTT) content player for South Asian Content, have signed an agreement to deliver OTT internet television services in Suriname. Through the partnership, YuppTV will provide a full turnkey technology solution to Telesur that will aggregate existing local, Dutch and foreign content from various ethnicities and also bring premier Bollywood content to the people of Suriname. – Business Wire
(Full Story: http://ift.tt/1Lelnro )

Despite A Year To Prepare, Wireless Carriers Struggle To Adhere To Weak And Voluntary Cell Phone Unlocking Guidelines

Posted on by Leave a comment

Interestingly it’s Verizon Wireless and AT&T, arguably the worst of the major carriers when it comes to attempts to stifle openness over the years, that come out ahead in adhering to all six guidelines (though your mileage may vary, and since the rules don’t require much, this may not mean much). For Verizon, that’s in part thanks to the Carterfone conditions placed on its 700 MHz spectrum, though that hasn’t stopped the company from fighting openness in general tooth and nail in other ways. As I’ve noted previously the conditions have plenty of loopholes — and anti-competitive behavior is allowed just as long as companies ambiguously insist that what they’re doing (like blocking Google Wallet, or locking bootloaders) is for the “safety and security of the network.” – Karl Bode, Techdirt
(Full Story: http://ift.tt/17UKDRY )

5G pilots to kick off in Estonia next year

Posted on by One comment

Estonian mobile operator EMT is set to start piloting 5G in the second half of next year. […] Ahead of the rollout, EMT staffers visited Ericsson’s innovation studio in Stockholm to test out the company’s first 5G networking kit, which will theoretically enable download speeds of up to 100Gbps. Estonian testers saw real-world speeds of up to 4.4Gbps. […] In January the company also started to offer new mobile data packages with no limits on connection speed (depending on where the user is, they could theoretically reach 300Mbps for downloads and 50Mbps for uploads) with data allowances of either 1.5G , 5GB, 10GB, or 20GB a month. The cost varies from €7.49 ($8.47) to €22.99 ($26.01) per month. – Kalev Aasmae, ZDNet
(Full Story: http://ift.tt/1KxhZCi )

This is big: Cablevision launches Wi-Fi-only mobile phone service

Posted on by Leave a comment

Next month, the cable operator is going to introduce a low-cost mobile phone service dubbed Freewheel that’s based entirely on Wi-Fi connectivity. Freewheel will offer existing Cablevisión internet service subscribers unlimited talk, text and data for a mere $9.95 per month. […] Freewheel customers [will] have access to some 300,000 hotspots across the country, courtesy of the CableWiFi initiative that brings together Wi-Fi access points from big cable companies like Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable. And of course, the device will also work with any other Wi-Fi network a user has access to, whether it’s at home or at their office. – Janko Roettgers, Gigaom
(Full Story: http://bit.ly/1D8dmfu )
« Older Entries Recent Entries »