lte - page 4

Verizon Wireless has been hard at work rolling out LTE on its network over the past three years or so, but the company announced today that the nationwide 4G LTE rollout is ‘substantially complete.’

With support for over 500 LTE markets, Verizon’s 4G LTE network now covers 95% of the U.S. population. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer says the company isn’t totally done just yet. As reported by PC Mag, Palmer says the company plans to add more services to LTE over the next few years and open new markets:

There’s a new hacked carrier update available for iPhones running on AT&T, which delivers HD Voice, support for Release 7 HSDPA speeds on the iPhone 4S, and a number of other improvements. As always, you don’t even need a jailbroken iPhone to install it.

EE has today announced that its speedy 4G LTE network is now available in an additional 11 towns across the United Kingdom. EE now covers 85 towns and cities, reaching more than 55% of the U.K. population just eight months after its 4G LTE network first launched.

Hutchison Whampoa, owner of Three U.K., has today acquired O2 Ireland in a deal worth €850 million ($1.1 billion). Telefonica, O2’s parent company, believes the move will “create a new competitive dynamic in the Irish market,” which Three can now claim 37.5% of with 2 million active subscribers.

Virgin Mobile has today announced that it will be launching the iPhone 5 on Friday, June 28. The handset will be available on its Beyond Talk plans, which offer unlimited 3G and 4G LTE data and unlimited messaging for $35 per month. Prices for the iPhone 5 itself start at $549.99.

If you’re dying for AT&T to roll out more bars into your area – so you can actually use the LTE on your iPhone 5 – then you’ll be happy to know that AT&T is activating its 4G LTE services in four new markets across the U.S. today.

According to AT&T’s New Room, the following areas are now covered by AT&T 4G LTE:

The demand for 4G LTE connectivity has never been higher, and companies are pulling all the tricks out the bag to try to fulfil the high demand. Last night, Sprint announced that it has turned on high-speed 4G LTE data in 22 new locations. The announcement was made in a single press release on the U.S. carrier’s website.

Several technologies on your iPhone, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular data, are made to continually check for signal when you’re out and about. Continual checking requires power, which comes from your iPhone (or iPad, or iPod touch) battery.

It makes sense, then, that turning these different wireless features off when you don’t need them can help your battery last a little longer. Here’s how to do just that.

Vodafone has confirmed that it will roll out its new 4G LTE network in the United Kingdom this summer, ready for a launch “later this year.” The move follows the carrier’s £790 million ($1.2 billion) acquisition of a chunk of 4G spectrum back in February.

EE has expanded its rapidly-growing 4G LTE network yet again to cover an additional 12 markets across the United Kingdom. This expansion brings the total number of markets up to 74, and EE claims its 4G services now covers more than 50% of the U.K. population.

EE is currently the United Kingdom’s only 4G LTE network – it launched back in July 1 2010, under the name Everything Everywhere, which the management team decided to shorten to EE in September 2012. EE thrives on providing super fast 4G LTE internet to customers based in the UK, and starting today it launched its first 30-day SIM-only plans for smartphones.

We’ve already seen hacked carrier updates for iOS devices on AT&T and T-Mobile, and now there’s one for customers on Verizon, too. Like the others, this one promises to increase the 3G and 4G data speeds on your iPhone 5, iPad, and iPad mini — and it doesn’t require a jailbreak.

AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid service has never been friendly to the iPhone. In fact, AT&T has tried to keep iPhones off it for years, hoping that iPhone users will pay for bigger data contracts instead. It looks like AT&T is starting to feel some pressure from T-Mobile and other prepaid networks though, because starting today you’ll be able to use an iPhone on the GoPhone network.

After preventing data access for iPhones for years, AT&T is enabling iPhone support to GoPhone, along with 4G HSPA+ and LTE access, and Visual Voicemail.

Earlier this month, a hacked carrier update for the T-Mobile iPhone 5 that brought increased data speeds was released by Joe Brown and Sky Zangas, two developers behind iTweakiOS. Now the duo have released a similar hack for AT&T devices, only this time, it’s not just for the iPhone.

The hacked carrier update also supports the iPad and promises to improve data performance on both LTE and HSPA+.

Last week we reported that AT&T was planning to launch a new pre-paid brand to compete with T-Mobile and other pay-as-you-go carriers, and it looks like it’s finally here.

AT&T just pulled back the curtain on its new pre-paid BYOD service provider that’s a subsidiary of AT&T called AIO Wireless. The new pre-paid nationwide service is launching in Houston, Tampa, and Orlando today but new markets should be opened up in the U.S. over the next year.

T-Mobile finally started selling the iPhone back in April, and it has already been a successful move. In its financial report for the first quarter of 2013, which was published this week, the carrier reveals that it sold half a million iPhones in less than a month.

Rogers is the latest Canadian company to broaden its horizons with the introduction of LTE. This week the carrier introduced LTE to 7 new markets, keeping the promise it made a fortnight ago.

Only T-Mobile lets your iPhone 5 be as great as an iPhone 5. That’s according to the carrier’s new commercial, which has begun airing today to celebrate the launch of the iPhone on T-Mobile. It’s taken almost six years, but Apple’s popular smartphone is finally available on America’s fourth largest carrier. Watch the new ad below.

Speaking at a conference for the National Association of Broadcasters conference, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam mentioned that he had talked to Steve Jobs about the power of LTE in a meeting with the late Apple CEO. McAdam said that he spent some time trying to convince Jobs to add an LTE radio to Apple’s then-unreleased iPhone.

“I was really trying to sell him and he sat there without any reaction. Finally, he said, ‘Enough. You had me at 10 Mbps. I know you can stream video at 10 Mbps,'” said McAdam.

EE has announced plans to double its 4G LTE network speeds in ten U.K. cities by the summer. The move will boost headline speeds to 80Mbps, and increase the average speed to 20Mbps for both new and existing subscribers. The carrier says this is part of its ambition to “stay one step ahead” as rival carriers prepare to launch their own 4G networks in the coming months.

True to its word, T-Mobile just pushed out an update for all unlocked iPhones on their network that enables LTE, Visual Voicemail, HD Voice and more.

Users can get the update via OTA or manually updating through iTunes. The update doesn’t change the software version on your device, so if you’re worried about losing your jailbreak, this should be safe.

Here are the official notes from T-Mobile:

Apple and T-Mobile have begun pre-orders for the iPhone 5. The launch date for the iPhone 5 is scheduled for April 12th, so if you’re eager to jump the gun on the T-Mobile iPhone 5, here’s your chance.

T-Mobile is the last of the four major carriers in the U.S. to start selling the iPhone. To attract new customers, T-Mobile is selling the iPhone 5 for $99 without a cellular service contract. Although the carrier is still working to expand its LTE network as fast as possible, customer might not mind the service renovations in exchange of a cheaper monthly bill.

Source: T-Mobile

Last night AT&T broadened its horizons by expanding its LTE connectivity services to 14 new locations. This announcement was made in a sequential series of press releases on the carrier’s official website, but you can see which locations are now supported in the list below.

The only way to get an iPhone on T-Mobile the past few years was to go out and buy an unlocked iPhone and put a T-Mobile SIM card in it. Now that T-Mobile has become an official carrier, a lot of iPhone users that are already on the carrier want to be able to use LTE but can’t.

To make things better, T-Mobile says they’re going to rollout an update for all unlocked iPhones on the network starting April 5th. The update will flip the switch on features that aren’t currently available, like LTE and Visual Voicemail.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile announced that it will finally begin selling Apple’s iPhone next month, almost six years after the device first made its debut in the U.S. When you buy an iPhone 5 on T-Mobile, it will come with support for AWS bands, so that it can be used on the carrier’s LTE network.

Existing iPhone 5 handsets already in circulation don’t have this, but it can be enabled on the AT&T and unlocked models. And if your iPhone 5 is jailbroken, you can enable it yourself. Here’s how.