Archive: Telecom
AT&T Reveals iPhone 3G Prices
This morning, AT&T Wireless announced its pricing for Apple's upcoming iPhone 3G --and this news release reveals that the new model, due July 11, will be a little more expensive to use than previously thought. AT&T had earlier announced that "unlimited data" use on an iPhone 3G would cost $30...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 1, 2008; 10:06 AM ET | Comments (72)
T-Mobile Eases Early Termination Fees
Yet another wireless carrier has agreed to give customers a break on the early-termination-fees they must pay to liberate themselves from the one- or two-year contracts they agreed to when buying a phone. T-Mobile USA announced this morning that it would lower those fees for customers nearing the end of...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 23, 2008; 11:26 AM ET | Comments (10)
Verizon Slashes Usenet Access; Users Actually Notice
Last week, we covered Verizon's agreement, with other Internet providers, to stop providing access to Usenet newsgroups carrying child pornography. This week, details about how Verizon will do that emerged. The broadband provider, one of the two biggest services in the Washington area, will not just drop the relatively small...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 20, 2008; 08:54 AM ET | Comments (48)
Comcast, Time Warner Try Out Tiered Broadband
If you live in Warrenton, Va., Chambersburg, Pa., or Beaumont, Tex., you may soon face a different Internet experience. Cable-modem providers Comcast and Time Warner will be testing out new bandwidth limits that they say are meant to deter overuse of their connections. Cecilia Kang's story in today's Post describes...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 4, 2008; 12:33 PM ET | Comments (109)
Call, The Question: Your Wireless-Phone Choices
Full disclosure: I hate doing columns like this morning's guide to wireless-phone service. That's not because I don't like the subject matter, or because the people with whom I deal aren't pleasant individuals. No, it's because I have to spend so much time interrogating PR reps for data that ought...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 29, 2008; 11:20 AM ET | Comments (7)
Philadelphia's WiFi Network Shutting Down
One of the country's biggest experiment in citywide wireless Internet broadband has officially failed: On June 12, EarthLink will shut down the municipal WiFi network it had built across much of Philadelphia, then unbolt its transmitters from streetlights and ship them away. The Atlanta-based Internet provider gave notice to the...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 14, 2008; 12:10 PM ET | Comments (13)
T-Mobile Launches 3G Service - In NYC Only
About four and a half years after the first of its competitors began to offer wireless broadband, T-Mobile is starting to catch up. Yesterday, the company announced the start of its "3G" service in New York City. T-Mobile's service will debut with a technology called UMTS, with speeds only about...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 6, 2008; 10:54 AM ET | Comments (2)
Goodbye To 2007--And To Analog Cell Service
I hope the subject of this post isn't news to you--but if it is, get ready to shop for a new cell phone. By February 18, all of the nationwide wireless carriers will have turned off their analog signals for good, and some analog-based devices will become useless chunks of...
By Rob Pegoraro | December 31, 2007; 09:14 AM ET | Comments (50)
Verizon's Security Software: Any Good?
I've had a lot of readers ask me what security software they should use on their PCs once they get hooked up with Verizon's DSL or Fios broadband service: Verizon's current program or the "Verizon Internet Security Suite." Problem is, I've never subscribed to either Verizon's DSL or Fios. So,...
By Rob Pegoraro | December 7, 2007; 11:30 AM ET | Comments (23)
Verizon Wireless To Open Itself Up
Is this the Verizon Wireless we know: The control-freak carrier that habitually makes phone manufacturers disable features before it will sell their products? Yesterday morning, the Basking Ridge, N.J., firm announced that it would let customers use a far wider variety of phones -- and any software that they want...
By Rob Pegoraro | November 28, 2007; 11:10 AM ET | Comments (12)
Terminating Early-Termination Penalties
For all the grief I give the wireless-phone industry, it has at least shown the occasional willingness to drop some of its least-admired business practices. Not all these moves--for example, the "wireless number portability" that lets you take your cell-phone number with you when you change carriers--have been strictly voluntary....
By Rob Pegoraro | November 12, 2007; 10:13 AM ET | Comments (9)
Net Neutrality: The Plot Thickens
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that Comcast blocks one of the most popular file-sharing systems, BitTorrent. In essence, the cable-modem provider jams the usual conversation that occurs between two copies of the BitTorrent software at the start of a file transfer: Each PC gets a message invisible to the...
By Rob Pegoraro | October 22, 2007; 11:25 AM ET | Comments (64)
Broadbanned
I've finally had a chance to read all the e-mail that piled up in my inbox after last Thursday's column--travel and a nasty cold kept me from finishing that until last night--and one thing's clear: Verizon's got a serious public-image problem. Most of the dozens of e-mail responses that I...
By Rob Pegoraro | October 2, 2007; 12:05 PM ET | Comments (29)
Wilting Muni WiFi
Remember that glowing column I wrote about the prospects of city-wide wireless networks? It's looking a little ahead of its time--which is to say that "ahead of its time" could be my new synonym for "wrong." Since that piece ran in April, the Internet provider behind most of the largest...
By Rob Pegoraro | September 24, 2007; 11:06 AM ET | Comments (13)
Sprint Hates Spellcheck
Yesterday, Sprint held a conference in Tysons Corner to announce some new product initiatives. They included an upgraded version of its Direct Connect walkie-talkie service and a new voice/data package called Pivot that it well sell with cable-TV operators. But the big news was the name of its new WiMax...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 17, 2007; 09:38 AM ET | Comments (20)
Open Access Reactions
On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to impose "open access" rules on next year's auction of a valuable chunk of wireless spectrum. These conditions, as outlined previously here, would require companies that win this auction to let their customers use the devices and software of their choice--a big departure...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 3, 2007; 12:44 PM ET | Comments (3)
FCC Chairman's Open-Access Plan
An upcoming sale of a chunk of the wireless spectrum -- the kind of thing that ordinarily excites few people besides venture capitalists and telecom lawyers -- just might upend the wireless-phone business. This is a bigger sale than most. It will dispose of the spectrum now used by many...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 23, 2007; 12:19 PM ET | Comments (14)
Jerk Company of the Month: SunRocket
My colleague Kim Hart's story today describes the strange demise of SunRocket, the Tysons Corner-based Internet-telephony company. SunRocket's financial troubles were not a surprise, but the speed of its demise was. So was the notice provided to customers: next to none. A friend reported that the only hint he got...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 18, 2007; 08:56 AM ET | Comments (70)
Cell Esteem
A few months ago, I said we'd be doing a guide to cell-phone service--resuming what was once a yearly tradition in these parts. The results appear today, in the form of my column and the accompanying chart comparing the offerings of the five nationwide carriers: AT&T, Nextel and Sprint, T-Mobile...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 21, 2007; 08:38 AM ET | Comments (17)
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Downloading By Now
Yesterday, my colleague Kim Hart wrote a great piece about the uproar in a Loudoun County subdivision over a sole-source deal for TV and Internet access. To recap: Residents say the firm anointed under this contract, OpenBand, delivers lousy service at expensive prices and complain that they may be stuck...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 22, 2007; 09:56 AM ET | Comments (14)
Vonage Vexed By Verizon. And You?
Earlier this month, a reader e-mailed to ask a question: People are doubting Vonage's future because of today's ruling. I have had Vonage for a year and I love it and I know other people who like it as much as I do. If Vonage tanks, what do we all...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 25, 2007; 02:28 PM ET | Comments (29)
The Wireless World Widens
For years, I've had free WiFi on my street--courtesy of neighbors I know only as "Default," "Linksys" and "NETGEAR." Home wireless networks unintentionally left open are not too reliable or fast, but they can be a decent backup if your own Internet connection goes down. (I feel guilty about not...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 19, 2007; 09:04 AM ET | Comments (11)
The 411 on Google's Free 411
An experimental Google service that's drawn some blog chatter recently lets you use the search engine from your phone. Not your cell phone's measly little Web browser, but any old phone, even some rotary-dial antique. Google Voice Local Search, an automated directory-assistance system, operates by voice alone. You call the...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 11, 2007; 01:20 PM ET | Comments (4)
Cell Phones Will Stay Off On Planes; Now, Let's Keep Them Off the Can
For all its other indignities, at least commercial airline travel isn't subject to the racket of random strangers yammering away on their cell phones. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission moved to keep it that way. It voted (PDF) to drop a proposal that would have allowed some use of mobile...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 4, 2007; 08:00 AM ET | Comments (30)
A Big Deal For a Little Internet Provider
My inbox had a surprise this morning--a notice from the CEO of my Internet provider, announcing that Best Buy had acquired the company. That was upsetting news to me, and to many other customers of Speakeasy Network, a Seattle-based firm that has carved out a niche for itself among many...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 27, 2007; 05:04 PM ET | Comments (7)
The FCC Tunes Into HD Radio--And May Turn Off Distant AM
Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission gave a big boost to HD Radio, the digital technology that permits an FM station to broadcast multiple channels and allows AM stations to sound like FM. The FCC ruling (109 kb PDF) leads off by eliminating filing requirements for FM stations that want to...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 23, 2007; 06:37 PM ET | Comments (40)
Cut Off By Comcast
The Boston Globe ran one of those "wish I'd had that" stories yesterday--a look at how Comcast has been cutting off the Internet service of customers for violating an acceptable-use policy that the company won't spell out. The piece begins: Amanda Lee of Cambridge received a call from Comcast Corp....
By Rob Pegoraro | March 13, 2007; 04:48 PM ET | Comments (35)
Bluetooth Battles On
Yesterday, Michael Foley, the executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group trade association, stopped by the Post to show off an upcoming version of the Bluetooth wireless technologyfound in so many cell phones these days. He also talked about how Bluetooth is doing in the market. Foley's demo of...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 7, 2007; 09:41 AM ET | Comments (14)
Unplugged But Not Unwired
It's getting harder than ever to disconnect yourself from the Internet. Case in point: When my wife and I drove out to West Virginia's Canaan Valley for a couple of days of skiing this weekend. We fully expected to be cut off from our usual means of communication. (Given the...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 5, 2007; 11:01 AM ET | Comments (15)
Satellite Radio Gets the Urge to Merge
The news of satellite-radio competitors XM and Sirius proposing to merge is all over the papers today; the parties involved all say that this combination can only be good news for consumers. I'm a little skeptical about that. History has taught that anytime two large corporations assure everybody that they...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 20, 2007; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (27)
