Dropped calls and spotty service, particularly for iPhone owners, made AT&T the most hated wireless carrier in America. Here's the surprise twist: widespread, under-the-radar improvements to the company's network have quietly helped AT&T move past its infamous struggles.
A year and a half after Google admitted that it had inadvertently collected unsuspecting people's personal information sent over the Internet via their wireless routers, the company has implemented a way for people to opt-out of having their routers tracked in the first place.
Forget the 4G marketing hype. Which U.S. carriers really offer the fastest mobile-data networks? According to a new report from RootMetrics (a company which conducts its own field tests of wireless networks), Verizon Wireless currently offers the nation's fastest 4G -- by far.
Job growth is widely hailed as a necessary component of the U.S. economic recovery. A new Deloitte report contends that by 2016, faster 4G wireless networks could directly create from 371,000 to 771,000 U.S. jobs.
Apple, Google and Microsoft have finally cleared up most of the mysteries about how and why the smartphones their software runs track and store your location.
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, but it isn't a long-term solution to the nation's wireless problems.
Once again, there are rumblings that the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers may merge to form a larger combined No. 3. But would this be enough to keep the U.S. wireless market competitive for consumers?
If you've followed broadband discussions in Washington, DC, then you've heard that wireless is the future of communications.
According to a new Cisco forecast, in just four years two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic will be video.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop. At a table against the opposite wall is a guy named Michael C. I've never seen him before. However, I know his name (including his last name, which I'm deliberately not saying here) because right now we're using the same Wi-Fi network and he's logged in to his Facebook and Google accounts.
It's more powerful than your current home network -- able to leap through tall buildings from a single port.
Watch out AT&T, Sprint and Verizon: A whole host of super-fast wireless services could be coming down the pike.
If your smartphone seems more like a slowphone, hang in there. The next generation of wireless technologies, known as 4G, promises blazing-fast data transmission speeds.
AT&T is offering free public Wi-Fi hot spots to help it deal with increasing congestion on its wireless network.
Verizon Wireless could make good on its promise to get 4G wireless broadband to rural America.
Apple is acknowledging complaints that its new iPad computer has trouble connecting to the Internet.
Users who rushed to snap up Apple's iPad are complaining within days of the slate computer's highly anticipated release that they're having trouble connecting it to the Internet.
The 4G revolution in wireless won't just make Web surfing on your mobile phone faster; it could help you say good-bye to traditional cable and DSL broadband.
It was a record-breaking performance that slowed taxi traffic across Seoul on Wednesday when figure-skating darling Kim Yu-na took to the ice in Vancouver at the Winter Olympic Games.
Despite claims from mobile phone carriers, the next generation of mobile technology, or 4G, will only be slightly faster than current 3G speeds, at least initially.
There's been a lot of talk in 2009 about the next generation of wireless technology, known as 4G wireless broadband, but the current generation of 3G wireless technology is far from dead.
Sprint is betting the farm on the WiMax standard. The U.S. mobile phone carrier's customers are melting away. Yet it has scrimped on cellular network capex to double down on wireless broadband. Putting another $1 billion into cash-burning partner Clearwire, while a rival technology is catching up, amounts to a binary bet for shareholders.
updated: Tue Aug 11 2009 13:33:00
CNN's Phil Black sees just how easy it is for hackers to dupe unwary Wi-Fi users into logging onto rogue access points.
You're sitting in an airport lounge and seize the chance to check your e-mails before your flight departs. You log on and are tempted by a wireless Internet provider offering free Internet access. So, do you take it?
Verizon Communications has had a change of heart about using Wi-Fi to extend its wireless broadband offering as the company announces free access to Wi-Fi hot spots for its Fios and DSL Internet customers.
Verizon Wireless will start selling Netbook computers from Hewlett-Packard starting May 17, the company said in a statement released Thursday.
I use a wireless router at home, but it seems that other people on my block do as well! I can see their access point IDs show up in my list. Can they see mine, too -- and is this a problem? What are some things I need to keep in mind when it comes to wireless home network security?
I'm zipping through the streets of Portland, Ore., in a Lincoln Navigator while a "Knight Rider" episode streams over the Internet to a screen mounted to the car's dashboard.
Move over, Korea and Japan. Australia may soon be the envy of the world when it comes to advanced wireless networks and services.
For the last couple years, depending on who you asked, WiMax was either bound for spectacular success or it was dead on arrival.
Plenty of big companies - from Google to Earthlink - have tried setting up citywide Wi-Fi networks and failed. San Francisco-based Meraki, a wireless company spun off of a research project at MIT, is taking a different tack.
updated: Tue Aug 05 2008 14:41:00
Delta will become one of the first airlines to let passengers surf the Internet. CNN's Rusty Dornin reports.
Just over a year after Apple birthed the first iPhone, the long-awaited, next-generation iPhone 3G has arrived bearing a mildly tweaked design and a load of new features.
Review: Forget the rocky launch. Once you get the iPhone 3G up and running, it lives up to expectations
Almost one year after the original Apple iPhone went on sale, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced a 3G version of the device, finally putting to rest months of rumors and speculation.
Steve Jobs unveils Apple's latest incarnation of its revolutionary device, with a fanfare that seems justified
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company
As the bloody battle over subscribers between Comcast and its phone and satellite rivals continues at a virtual draw, the cable giant is looking ahead to a new wireless broadband arena: WiMax.
Apple's AirPort Express Base Station has always been remarkable in that it is networking hardware that people actually seem to get excited about.
WiMax may not be dead after all.
Intel's got a big problem. With component prices falling amid weakening computer spending, the giant chipmaker is betting heavily that WiMax is the future of wireless broadband. That's an expensive gamble.
JetBlue Airways Corp. will start offering limited e-mail and instant messaging services for free on one of its planes next week as airlines renew efforts to offer in-flight Internet access
A few weeks ago, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, an upstart wireless company backed by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, severed plans to jointly build wireless broadband services, a venture that was supposed to accelerate the nationwide rollout of a technology called WiMax.
Forget the price cut on the iPhone. The potentially big deal for the wireless industry was Apple's announcement Wednesday of the iPod touch, a music player that also can access the Internet over Wi-Fi networks.
It has always been easy to spot Ryan Jarvis. He's the one consistently in front of the wireless broadband scrum. In 2000 he started Megabeam, a pioneering Wi-Fi hotspot operator. Three years later he joined BT, spearheading its Wi-Fi operations. Today you can find the 36-year-old entrepreneur on a rooftop.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about plans by Google and other Silicon Valley companies to make the next generation of wireless networks more Internet-like: Customers would be able to use any mobile device on any network, and access all online content on their cell phones.
LM Ericsson, the world's largest maker of wireless networks, reaffirmed its expectation that the GSM and WCDMA mobile handset market will continue to show mid-single digit growth in 2007.
An ambitious plan to blanket Chicago with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it
An ambitious plan to blanket the city with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it, Chicago officials said Tuesday.
Google Inc. has made its biggest move yet on the U.S. mobile Web market by signing a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. that positions the Internet company to build services to run on Sprint's planned WiMAX high-speed wireless network.
Apple Inc.'s flashy new iPhones may be jamming parts of the wireless network at Duke University, where technology officials worked with the company Wednesday to fix problems before classes begin next month
Bad call reception at home? A new mobile service allows you to seamlessly place calls on both your cellular network and on any open Wi-Fi hotspot cell phones, which are supposed to let you call from anywhere, often work worst in your own home; signals can't penetrate walls as well as they travel urban canyons and the great outdoors.
Civil rights and privacy rights groups have opposed radio frequency identification, or RFID, for years. But now, researchers in the field and some lawmakers are beginning to voice concerns about the security of the technology.
As a business, you want to keep track of your inventory. But as an individual, you don't want anyone keeping track of you.
Top-of-the-line cell phones may offer Internet access, but not even the do-it-all Apple iPhone comes with the ability to make calls over Wi-Fi.
Apple's answer to the digital media adapter is finally here.
In its debut as a public company Thursday Craig McCaw's Clearwire proved it was no Vonage: unlike its fellow telco provider, whose shares sank the day of its initial public offering - and kept sinking - Clearwire, which raised $600 million, saw its stock end the day pretty much where it started.
You'd think that people already watch enough television in their homes and offices. But no: increasingly companies, especially outside the United States, are trying to find ways to pipe television to us wherever we are.
Will 2007 be the year American consumers can finally watch live football wherever and however they want? Judging by the onslaught of mobile TV-related announcements and demos (the majority of which made reference to the current football season) at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, the answer is a resounding "Yes."
"What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"
AT&T's bid to acquire BellSouth has run into a few snags lately, but make no mistake: The $81 billion deal will happen - and when it does, the impact will be far bigger on corporate America than on consumers.
Imagine this: a worldwide network of radio-tagged pharmaceuticals, weeding out the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug market with a universal security system.
To airline industry insiders, the hours spent idling in airport terminals because of delays or extended layovers are known as "dwell time." To millions of time-constrained business travelers, the e...
Wi-Fi phones were the talk of the town this week.
The Disruptor: Clearwire
Niklas Zennstrom is a populist Web hero. The 40-year-old Swede has twice co-founded companies that rattled powerful industries by giving away important things to consumers.
Sprint Nextel saved WiMax. Now it's up to WiMax to return the favor.
Craig McCaw, it appears, has done it again.
For a man who doesn't own a wireless laptop, Nandoor Sala spends a lot of time looking for Wi-Fi signals. One clear morning this spring, Sala is driving stick-shift around Midtown Manhattan with an...
Imagine being overseas and your identity being available for the taking - your nationality, your name, your passport number. Everything.
Radio frequency identification has been heralded as a breakthrough in tracking technology, and denounced as the next Big Brother surveillance tool.
Think your computer is secure when you log onto a Wi-Fi network at a major hotel?
Municipal wireless is still in its infancy, but new technology from Israel could give budding citywide networks the growth spurt they've been waiting for.
Want to get a sense of where wireless technology is headed? Think back to where the Internet stood at a similar point in its development - say, sometime around 1998. Back then the computer had alre...
The next generation of wireless networking devices is now arriving in stores, promising faster data transfers and longer-range service, but those new routers and adapters are based on a proposed st...
There's a long line of mayors hankering to get their cities wireless broadband. Garry Betty knows how to give them what they want. EarthLink, the nation's biggest independent ISP, is rolling out wi...
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - The first-quarter earnings that EarthLink announced today illustrate its plight. While the Internet service provider is still profitable, dial-up revenues dropped 18 percent from the same period last year, broadband revenues increased a mere 6 percent, and earnings-per-share dropped nearly 50 percent to 12 cents per share.
Amid much fanfare, several big cities have announced plans to build wireless broadband networks using Wi-Fi to provide fast Internet access broadband services for free, or at deep discounts to those offered by cable operators or phone companies.
More evidence has emerged that Google is getting ready to blanket the U.S. with free Wi-Fi, as Business 2.0 senior writer Om Malik reported last year. Now, the company has filed for three patents related to offering wireless Internet access. Search Engine Roundtable points out that the patents all have to do with serving up advertising through a wireless Internet connection maintained by a third party, whose brand Google would include in the presentation of those ads. Sounds a lot like Google's latest plan to unwire San Francisco, where it has teamed up with EarthLink. By teaming up with partners who would build the actual Wi-Fi infrastructure, Google could complete a nationwide Wi-Fi network much more quickly than if it had to build it itself.
Someday soon, radio-frequency identification (RFID) will allow workers at Ballantine Produce to monitor the temperature of a box of peaches wherever it stops along the supply chain, from a sun-dren...
Microsoft has long set its sights on the living room. But the Xbox 360 could be the Trojan Horse that carries out its invasion plans into the world of entertainment. Take last week's announcement that pop star Natasha Bedingfield would release her next music video exclusively on the Xbox 360, the first in a year-long deal with music label Epic Records. Then, at this week's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, the software giant announced that it would open up its Xbox Live online service to independent game developers so that they can program multiplayer online games for the new Xbox 360 console. With Xbox Live now offering online chat, video downloads and multiplayer games, Microsoft just needs one more thing to complete its hold on the Xbox's young, mostly male audience: the long-rumored Xbox Portable.
It is every regular flyer's nightmare -- you arrive at your destination only to discover your luggage is somewhere else entirely.
Much to the telephone company's chagrin, there are now plenty of ways to get phone service for a fraction of the price you're used to. The cable industry is one new competitor, but the cheapest alt...
Someday soon workers at Ballantine Produce will be able to to monitor the temperature of a box of peaches wherever it stops along the supply chain, from a sun-drenched loading dock in central Calif...
If you're looking for access to a public wireless network, you'll have the best luck finding one in Seoul, according to a company that tracks locations where Wi-Fi service is available.
WiFi is one area where you probably don't have to wait for faster and better technology.
For those in the technology industry, the real holiday season starts on January 5, when the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas.
Home is where the Wi-Fi is. and the more Wi-Fi you get in your home, the bigger the business opportunity becomes. With a raft of new Wi-Fi-hungry devices arriving for the holiday season, consumers ...
THE WORLD MAY BE FLAT, ACCORDING to a popular Western business book about the flow of jobs to China and other Asian nations, but it certainly isn't square. That's the lesson from Lenovo's new Z60t ...
WHAT IS A CITY OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE for its citizens? Well-maintained streets, traffic lights, sewer and water, police and fire--okay, sure. As for taverns, gas stations, and peep shows, most folks...
Nintendo game enthusiasts now have a new hangout.
Computer users in many urban and university areas have come to expect connectivity 24/7. There's a cable modem or DSL at home, a high-speed connection in the office and Wi-Fi for the places in between, from the commute to the coffeehouse.
Despite the growing availability of wireless computer access in airports, hotels, airplanes, cafes and public spaces, the technology has failed to attract business travelers.
From checking your e-mails, or listening to music, to making home movies, you might think your brand new mobile phone model does everything you need it to, and more.
When a new technology becomes a commodity, margins fall and profits drop, driving all but the biggest producers out of business.
Brian Stolar was watching a presentation on Asian real estate development in a downtown Tokyo conference room when he received an urgent e-mail over his wireless tablet PC. A potential customer in ...
United Airlines Monday said it received government approval to install equipment on planes that eventually will give passengers wireless Internet access on flights.
Nokia Wednesday introduced a hand-sized portable device for browsing the Web and checking e-mail over wireless Internet connections.
WiMax is finally ready for prime time.
It's always on your mind: the next business trip. But what you're thinking about is closing the next deal--not the mundane details of your travel arrangements. So we've done that for you. Our down-...
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|