T-Mobile Archives - VR World

Analysis, Auto, Breaking, Business

72% of All Cars to be Connected by 2021?

It is estimated that in 2015 over 88 million new cars were bought. Almost 53 million came out of just six manufacturers: Toyota, Volkswagen Group, General Motors, Renault-Nissan, Hyundai and Ford. If you add five million from FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), that’s almost 60 million vehicles. It is of no surprise that traditional PC and mobile names such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel all see the automotive industry as a key battlefield. Tens of millions of processors promise advanced telemetry, self-driving or automated driving capabilities, new level of infotainment, and ‘always online’ vehicles. In a research document called Automotive Safety and Autonomous Driving Service, ABI Research put out a

VR World

Vevo Decouples from YouTube and Launches Independent Apps

VEVO is mostly known as a YouTube channel that receives over 12 billion views each month (and that’s without all the Facebook freeloaded / pirated videos), carrying over 150,000 music videos. However, what is typically not known to the general public is that Vevo is not a part of YouTube. In fact, the channel is owned by Vevo, Inc., a joint venture of Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group with Abu Dhabi Media and Google itself. Originally, Vevo was funding itself through advertisements before and during its music videos, but the company faced Google’s decision to launch YouTube Music App, and subscription service which technically,

Android, Business, Hardware, Mobile Computing, Operating Systems, Software Programs, VR World

Why is AT&T's Samsung Galaxy Note Edge $100 More than Sprint's?

For some reason, AT&T’s Galaxy Note Edge is costing consumers $105.99 more than the Sprint version, yet Sprint’s version sells for $40 more on-contract.

Analysis, Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

French Telecom Company Iliad Pulls T-Mobile Offer

French telecom company Iliad today announced their intention to pull their second offer for the acquisition of T-Mobile from parent company Deutsche Telecom

Analysis, Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

Sprint to Dump T-Mobile Bid and Replace CEO

Today is not a good day in Sprint land as according to a report the Wall Street Journal, the company’s board of directors has voted to abandon the acquisition of T-Mobile USA amid insurmountable regulatory hurdles. Sprint originally made an offer to buy T-Mobile USA to the tune of $32 billion dollars with the parent company of Sprint, Softbank, leading the negotiations and discussions about where the combined company would move post-merger. The problem with this deal was that it was met with a lot of regulatory concern from virtually every single governmental agency involved, not to mention tons of public outcry. The Department of Justice (DOJ),

Analysis, Business, Enterprise, Mobile Computing, VR World

T-Mobile US Gets Offer from Iliad for $15 Billion

A French telecom company roughly 1/6th the size of T-Mobile US (in revenue and about 1/2 by market cap), by the name of Iliad has just put up an offer to buy 56% of T-Mobile US for an approximate $15 billion in cash. This would theoretically still leave some shares of T-Mobile US in Deutsche Telecom’s hands, but would mostly wash them of the company and give them cash (instead of a mixture of cash and shares, which is what Sprint is supposedly offering). As of right now, there are still no official figures for the T-Mobile/Sprint merger deal, so we don’t exactly know what T-Mobile

Analysis, Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

T-Mobile Launches New Low-Cost Family Plan

T-Mobile is going after AT&T once again, and this time they’re trying to compete with them (and Sprint) on their family plans. Family plans generally save families a lot of money because not all of the users in the household use tons of data nor do they all need that much. Generally speaking, most parents use very little data while the children tend to hog up most of the data. T-Mobile’s new plan is designed to deliver 10 GB of 4G LTE data to a family of four for the low price of $100. As you can see from T-Mobile’s own table, their plan is

Android, Event, Hardware, Mobile Computing, Operating Systems, Software Programs, VR World

BSN* and Snapdragon Contest Winners Announced!

Hello everyone, we managed to pick the winners of our BSN* and Qualcomm Snapdragon contest giveaway where we picked, at random, two winners to give an HTC One M8 smartphone. Many of you left us very thoughtful and heartfelt responses and we read them all. Some of you should seriously consider careers in writing if you don’t already have them. Either way, we’re glad to have gotten a lot of feedback from you all about the giveaway and the review and we’ll continue to push forward with more of these kinds of giveaways in the future. We also wanted to thank Qualcomm for being so

Android, Gaming, Hardware, Mobile Computing, Operating Systems, Software Programs, VR World

Nvidia Announces Tegra K1 Shield Tablet for Gaming

Nvidia has been doing a lot of their own consumer products lately, with the original Shield handheld gaming console and the Tegra Note 7 tablet. Each of these devices was actually surprisingly good and they were very good values for the money, especially if you got them at their cheapest ($199 each). Nvidia has learned a lot of lessons from each device and they’ve done a fantastic job of updating both the Shield and the Tegra Note 7. Their updates are so frequent and regular that I almost feel like they’ve got the leg up on almost every other Android manufacturer out there. They are

Analysis, Business, Cloud Computing, VR World

650,000 Comment on FCC's Net Neutrality Rules

Nearly 650,000 people have left comments on the FCC’s website regarding their proposed Net Neutrality rules, which were proposed roughly 2 months ago. The comments have been open since May 15th, and will be closed on July 15th, likely with over 650,000 comments on the topic, many of which are criticizing the FCC for not taking a strong enough stance to protect consumers. The FCC’s very own Chairman Tom Wheeler even tweeted about the milestone on Friday, reminding people to continue to leave their comments. We’ve received about 647k #netneutrality comments so far. Keep your input coming — 1st round of comments wraps up July

Breaking, Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

T-Mobile Has Been Ripping Customers Off by "Cramming" Bills

So, while we really love what T-Mobile has been doing with their uncarrier moves, giving consumers exactly what they want, they have also secretly been screwing customers out of money for no reason. Sure, you can stream music for free (even though this is questionably violating Net Neutrality), but T-Mobile has actually been “cramming” consumers for the past 4 years, from 2009 through 2013 according to an FTC complaint. The FTC claims state that T-Mobile has been billing customers with unauthorized charges and hiding them deep within customers’ bills where they wouldn’t see them. An example of this was posted to the FTC’s website using an actual

Business, Mobile Computing, Opinion, Software Programs, VR World

T-Mobile's New Free Music Streaming Violates Net Neutrality

Normally, when a company violates something such as Net Neutrality it generally is in the company’s best interest and they are looking for ways to make things more profitable and less valuable to consumers. A perfect example of that is with what Comcast is doing to Netflix (and others) in terms of requiring them to pay for prioritization in violation of Net Neutrality. This ultimately hurts Netflix and Netflix users that might be on Comcast, resulting in everyone but Comcast losing. Now, T-Mobile as part of their Uncarrier 5.0 and Uncarrier 6.0 initiatives made an announcement that they would be allowing users to stream music for

Business, Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, VR World

T-Mobile's New 7 Day Test Drive, Wideband, VoLTE and Free Music Streaming

So, last night T-Mobile made a lot of announcements with their new Uncarrier 5 event, that follows their Uncarrier 3.0 and 4.0 which eventually rolled into their Uncarrier 6 strategy as well. So, we can call last night’s event Uncarrier 5-6. Anyways, last night T-Mobile made three big announcements, mostly circled around their network and how they plan to make their network the best in the US at the most reasonable prices of all their competitors. Let’s talk about one of the most interesting things T-Mobile has announced so far at the event, and that’s their 7 day free test drive of T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile’s

Business, Hardware, Opinion, VR World

Comcast's New Evil Plan: Turns Home Routers Into Public Wi-Fi

As if Comcast couldn’t get even more evil, they just have. The company is turning people’s home routers and internet connections (that they pay for) into public Wi-Fi hotspots for their customers. One might ask, why would an ISP be doing such a thing in an age where we already have fantastic 3G and 4G coverage on most carriers in the US? Well, its all part of Comcast’s evil new plan to compete with the wireless carriers and deploy their own wireless service using Wi-Fi, something akin to what RePublic wireless is doing with their most basic plan. However, Comcast has quietly built this feature

Business, VR World

Sprint and T-Mobile Tentatively Agree to $32 Billion Deal

Once again, the T-Mobile and Sprint deal continues to move forward now that we have an actual purchase price. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the general terms of the deal between Sprint and T-Mobile have been worked out and that the two companies have agreed to a $32 billion sale of T-Mobile, which actually seems a bit low when you consider that T-Mobile’s current market cap is $27 billion and they are getting a mere 20% premium over their current price. This deal has gotten a lot of regulatory flak before it ever happened and will likely continue to as the two companies try

VR World

T-Mobile Overtakes Sprint as No.3 Buyer of Smartphones in US

Since most people’s contracts are usually 2 years long, you don’t usually see any significant movements of subscribers from one carrier to another. They happen slowly and quarterly, after all, it would take at least 8 quarters for a company to theoretically lose all of their subscribers if every single person wanted to leave. So, it comes as little surprise that Sprint still holds the numbers 3 spot in terms of subscribers when compared to T-Mobile. Based on T-Mobile’s last earnings call, they ended the first quarter of this year up 2.4 million with nearly 50 million customers, coming ever closer to Sprint’s 54 million.

Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are Launching VoLTE This Week

T-Mobile is the first to roll out their VoLTE network starting with Seattle today, followed by AT&T and Verizon tomorrow. However, these are not nation-wide deployments as they will be slowly rolling VoLTE (Voice over LTE) out slowly across their networks in very specific markets little by little, eventually reaching full network saturation. Additionally, it appears as though there are only certain devices on each network that will be able to utilize VoLTE and those devices also vary from carrier to carrier. But ultimately, the good thing about VoLTE deployments is that it does mean that users on all three carriers will be able to

Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

Boost Mobile Introduces $40 "Unlimited" Plan, Thanks T-Mobile

Boost Mobile, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint, today announced that they would be offering new plans for those looking to get cheaper unlimited pricing. Boost Mobile has traditionally been Sprint’s budget carrier offering, offering cheaper devices and cheaper plans, so it comes as no surprise that they are now coming out with an offering designed to compete with T-Mobile’s latest ultra-cheap offerings. However, keep in mind that Boost Mobile is Sprint’s biggest pre-paid user base, which does not help with post-paid numbers but does ultimately affect the bottom line. In the past, Boost Mobile offered users to lower their bills by $10 a month

VR World

T-Mobile Locks Up A-Block 700 MHz Spectrum Deal

Today T-Mobile announced the closure of their deal to acquire 700 MHz A-Block spectrum from Verizon, which was originally announced back in January. This A-Block of spectrum was purchased from Verizon to the tune of $2.4 billion and gives T-Mobile some very high-quality spectrum in areas where it is most needed. The deal also supposedly gives T-Mobile some AWS spectrum as well, to help them shore up any holes they might have in their existing AWS spectrum holdings. Ultimately, though, T-Mobile wants this A-Block spectrum so that they can enable much higher speeds and better overall bandwidth to their customers. They will likely accomplish this

Business, Mobile Computing, VR World

Kill Switch for Smartphones Bill Dies in California Legislature

Back in February California State Senator Mark Leno proposed a smartphone kill switch in conjunction with multiple law enforcement agencies and the smartphone carriers. While they claimed that this bill would reduce smartphone theft and crimes that result from attempted smartphone theft, it really would give absolute power into the hands of the carriers in ways that would overstep consumers’ rights. Sure, smartphone theft is an increasing form of theft, but the amount of smartphones out there relative to the amount of smartphone thefts is minuscule. But according to CNET, the bill died in the California State Senate because it would be ‘bad for business’