AT&T could acquire a European carrier as it looks to expand its business overseas, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company is reportedly looking at way in which it can escape the growth constraints in the United States by entering a new wireless market where it can “upgrade technology and rollout more lucrative pricing strategies.”
Although AT&T is only identifying targets at this point, it’s though the company could announce a deal before the end of the year.
AT&T has been dancing around its FaceTime restrictions for several months now. Before iOS 6 even went public, it was discovered that the carrier would block FaceTime calls over a cellular connection at its own discretion. AT&T later confirmed that users would have to be on one of its new shared data plans.
Public outcry caused AT&T to then backtrack and extend the feature to anyone with a tiered, traditional data plan and a LTE device. That still didn’t cut it. Now AT&T has updated its policy again, and subscribers with grandfathered unlimited data plans are the only ones still left out in the cold.
A day after AT&T announced its “best-ever” quarter for smartphone sales, rival operator Verizon Wireless is doing exactly the same thing. The carrier has announced that it expects to have reached a record 9.8 million sales during the fourth quarter of 2012, and it’s attributing that success to the popularity of the iPhone.
T-Mobile USA will finally start selling the iPhone and enforce its plan to eliminate subsidies in “three to four months,” according to the company’s chief executive, John Legere. It will be the first time T-Mobile has offered in the iPhone in the United States since the handset was first released launched in 2007.
Retail giant Walmart announced today that it will be offering a prepaid iPhone in its stores starting January 11th. The iPhone will run on a $45 to $60 per month no contract, unlimited talk, text and data plan from the Straight Talk reseller, exclusively through Walmart.
Walmart is also offering a no interest fixed-monthly payment financing plan for the iPhone, if purchased with the Walmart credit card. Yes, you will be able to finance an iPhone 5 with unlimited talk, text, and data through Walmart (assuming approved credit) and Straight Talk ( a TracFone brand) for a whopping $70 a month. No word on how much you’ll actually be paying for the device after the financing has completed, though. This is a zero percent financing deal, so the $25 will never go up, and will end once the full cost of the iPhone is paid off.
AT&T will announce its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012 later this month, but the carrier has today confirmed that the quarter saw its “best-ever” sales of both Android and iOS devices. More than 10 million smartphones were sold during the three-month period, with an average of more than 110,000 smartphone sales a day.
Michigan readers, rejoice, as AT&T announced today several new 4G LTE markets in the eighth most populous state in the US.
Users in the following areas of Michigan should start to see the little LTE symbol at the top of their iPhones and Android handsets very soon.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Beverly Hills, Michigan
Birmingham, Michigan
Monroe County, Michigan
Kent County, Michigan
Ottowa County, Michigan
Even for a guy like Steve Jobs, you don’t just wake up one day knowing how to build a phone, let alone the iPhone. So when Jobs had questions about the nitty-gritty of mobile phone design back in 2006, he called up AT&T (then Cingular’s) COO, Ralph de la Vega, for help… but in typical Steve fashion, he became angry when Cingular told him his phone needed to have physical keys.
If you’re an AT&T subscriber and are having problems accessing your visual voicemail, it’s not just you. We’re hearing reports that a widescale problem is preventing AT&T subscribers from accessing their visual voicemail.
T-Mobile recently announced that they’ve reached an agreement with Apple to start selling the iPhone in 2013. Coming on the heels of their iPhone announcement, T-Mobile says they plan to stop subsidizing smartphones in 2013 to give customers more freedom.
All four of the major U.S. carriers offer smartphones at a subsidized price, giving subscribers a discount in exchange for tying them to a two-year contract. The contract helps the carriers retain customers, and the lower price point of the smartphone makes customers happy, but it also ramps up costs and restricts customers from upgrades. T-Mobile says they want to get rid of that system entirely.
The Big Four US mobile carriers–AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile–have just sent out a press release committing to push the issue of text to 911 capabilities, hopefully sooner than, but at least by, 2014.
These major players, plus The 911 Association and the Association for Public-Safety Communications Officials International, have decided to work together on standards and procedures to make this happen with a seamless transition to text to 911 services across the US.
So, Facetime over cellular data networks has been available to some AT&T unlimited data customers since late November.
What about you? Is your iPhone able to use this much-anticipated feature? How do you know? Well, read on, and we’ll show you.
If you’re an AT&T iPhone customer living in Pennsylvania, you may have woken up this morning to discover your handset had been inhabited by a mysterious being known only as “Dan.” He lives inside your iPhone and comes out when you’re asleep. While he’s awake, the AT&T name in your status bar changes to “Dan” — but it usually changes back before you get a chance to catch him.
Scary, isn’t it? Fortunately, that’s not true. Your iPhone isn’t inhabited by an unknown being that forgot to disappear before you woke up; it’s just a glitch on AT&T’s network that’s affecting users in Pennsylvania.
Each month I get my AT&T bill there are usually some small charges hidden away somewhere and I have to hunt through the endless pages of info trying to find out why my bill is off. The cascade of frustration usually results in me calling AT&T asking for an explaination on why this bill is different from last month if I didn’t have any overages.
AT&T customer care is probably tired of talking to people like me, so to make things easier they’re creating monthly personalized videos that will explain all of the charges on your wireless bill.
Here’s an example of what the videos will look like:
You would think that after year’s of continually being ranked the worst US carrier, AT&T would have done something to pull itself from the bottom. Unfortunately, they haven’t. According to Consumer Reports’ latest rankings, AT&T once again holds the title for overall worst US carrier. AT&T shouldn’t feel too bad as not a single major US carrier scored above an overall satisfaction score of 72.
Just two months after it made its much-anticipated debut, the iPhone 5 is already available from AT&T starting at just $99 — that’s $100 off its regular price. That price is for the 16GB model — in black or white — while the 32GB and 64GB options are also available for $199 and $299 respectively.
A hacker has been found guilty of a massive security breach that exposed the emails of more than 114,000 iPad owners back in 2010. Andrew Auernheimer was one of two Goatse Security members who were arrested for exposing the major flaw in AT&T’s database, and he now faces two five-year charges.
AT&T has notoriously been stingy, which made it no surprise back in August when they announced that they would only allow subscribers on Shared data plans — and not grandfathered plans — to utilize the new FaceTime over Cellular feature in 2016.
Call it an early Christmas present, call it a change of heart, but AT&T has now opened up FaceTime over Cellular to grandfathered unlimited data plans.
Well, today appears to officially be launch day of the iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular at carriers around the country. Hot on the heels of the announcement that Sprint would be selling iPad minis with LTE support in store starting today, AT&T has followed suit. Press release below.
The last few weeks have been a bit rocky for Apple and its new CEO Tim Cook, but that hasn’t stopped it from enjoying record breaking successes thanks to the iPhone 5 and iPad.
Every year the people at Fierce Wireless rank the top 25 most powerful people in the U.S. wireless industry, and for their rankings this year Tim Cook managed to grab the number one spot.
The Jawbone UP wristband first launched back in 2011, and it became quite a popular product. Everyone wanted to get their hands on the fitness- and sleep-tracking iPhone accessory, which came with plenty of promise. Unfortunately, it launched with all kinds of problems, too — including water leaks and inflexible components that broke too easily — and Jawbone was forced to pull it.
The company’s now giving the device a second shot. Today it announced the second-generation Jawbone UP, which is now shipping for $129.99.
When you order an iPhone 5 from Apple’s website the current shipment timeline is 3-4 weeks. Foxconn’s chairman Terry Gou recently said that they’re having a hardtime keeping up with the demand because the iPhone 5 is the most complex gadget they’ve ever assembled.
It doesn’t sound like Apple is able to catch up with the demand for the iPhone 5 in a timely manner, but one analyst at BTIG Research says that supply of the iPhone 5 is “almost in balance.”
Following its change in policy regarding FaceTime over cellular, AT&T has announced a new holiday promotion for tablets, including the iPad. Beginning this Friday, November 9th, AT&T will discount any tablet by $100 with the purchase of a two-year Mobile Share or tiered data plan.
Any tablet purchased at an AT&T retail location or through the carrier’s online store will receive the discount if a two-year plan is also purchased.
AT&T received a lot of negative attention in the press when it announced that it would restrict the use of FaceTime over cellular on Apple devices running iOS 6. Instead of letting anyone use the video chat feature no matter the device or data plan, AT&T decided to keep FaceTime limited to customers with new Mobile Share plans. This meant that traditional data plan customers, including those with grandfathered unlimited data, were out of luck.
Today AT&T announced a change to its FaceTime over cellular policy, and things are looking better for iPhone 5 and LTE iPad owners on tiered data plans.
AT&T had the fastest 3G network in the country, but when it comes to 4G LTE service, they’ve been way behind Verizon. It looks like AT&T is finally ready to play catchup with Verizon though as they announced this morning that they plan to invest $14 billion into their LTE network over the next three years.
AT&T is calling their investment and LTE expansion plans, “Project Velocity IP,” and is hoping that the investment in the network will drive continued increases in revenues from existing products and services.
