Tag Archives | Verizon

Telephone, Internet Outage in Silicon Valley

Wire services are reporting that a massive telephone and Internet outage is affecting Northern California, including portions of Silcon Valley. Telephone and Internet is out for Verizon customers in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, NBC News reports. This does appear to be a case of deliberate vandalism: as many as five AT&T fiber-optic cables have been severed, and a Sprint cable was severed hours later.

The incident occurred around 1:30 am PT (4:30am ET) this morning. Verizon is sending technicians to the scene to assist AT&T in repairing the damage, although at this time it is not known how long the repairs will take. In the meantime, AT&T has begun to take steps in order to reroute traffic.

ZDNet were affected by the outage, with slow page loading times and time outs. 911 and other emergency services in the region have also reported some connectivity issues.

Who’s the vandal? AT&T is currently involved in tense negotations with the CWA over contracts for landline workers. The CWA has issued a statement, denying that its members have any involvement, and condemned “vandalism.” More on this as we get it…

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5Words for February 18th, 2009

5words

Late today–I’ve been airborne:

Facebook reverts to old terms.

Intel and Nvidia’s legal tussle.

Folks are dropping cable, apparently.

Tumblr shuts down unkind blogs.

Verizon preps for 4G wireless.

Mozilla: iPhone jailbreaking is OK

Microsoft kills subscription software offering

Text in school, get arrested.

Time to stop using CAPTCHA?

Western Digital’s remotely-accessible drive.

April 5th arrival for Nintendo DSi.

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Verizon Wireless Looks to Launch LTE This Year

verizonmainlogoVerizon Wireless will likely lead the charge towards LTE, with the company already testing the technology in the Minneapolis, Columbus, Ohio and Northern New Jersey. This would put it roughly a year ahead of its closest competitor — AT&T — which anticipates launching LTE service in 2011.

Trials will expand throughout the country later this year, and if all goes well, nationwide rollout would begin in 2010 in about 25 to 30 markets. The completion of the rollout is expected in 2015, according to chief technology officer Dick Lynch.

LTE promises super-fast speeds of up to 60MBps, although Verizon cautions that was in field trials and not in real life situations. The technology uses the 700MHz spectrum acquired in an FCC auction last year.

This is the same spectrum being used by analog television signals, so obviously a pushback in the transition to digital is obviously affecting Verizon’s plans (now you see why they were against it!).

If you want to take a look at Lynch’s PowerPoint presentation at 3GSM, Verizon has posted it online.

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AT&T Eyes Verizon Wireless Assets

On one hand, AT&T is fighting paying its employees more. On the other, its hoping to snag up assets that Verizon Wireless must divest as part of its merger agreement with Alltel Wireless.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is likely to be able to snag a majority of those assets as it appears to be the bidder in the strongest position. A cable provider is also apparently in the running, although the paper does not specify which one.

Among these assets are 2.1 million subscribers including spectrum and infrastructure to support those customers across 22 states. Transferring those customers to AT&T would likely push the carrier above 80 million once this quarter’s subscriber additions are figured in.

Interest groups are none to happy about it, arguing that it essentially is transferring customers from one mega-carrier to another. Public Knowledge has argued that the Obama Administration should pressure Verizon to sell these assets to smaller carriers.

No sale would be final upon winning of the bids–the DOJ would still have to sign off on the sales.

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Verizon Makes Data Plans Mandatory on Smartphones

If you’ve been getting around paying higher cell phone rates for your smartphone by either skimping on the data plan or forgoing it altogether, that’s about to change if you’re a Verizon Wireless customer. Beginning later this month, all new smartphones sold will require a data plan of at least $29.99, if not more.

Verizon will do away with the 10MB data plan, as well as the pay as you go plans on new phones sold after November 14. Part of this makes sense: for pay as you go, data was charged at 1.5 cents per KB, which would come to about $15 per MB of data. The 10MB plan cost users $24.99 monthly, but overage charges would be about $5 per MB after that.

The $29.99 monthly plan would get folks unlimited data. Most people would be able to use this package for their phones, and it is the same price AT&T customers currently pay for data for their iPhone 3G’s. But it looks like the company will be taking this one step further next year, with “Mobile Web 2.0” phones also requiring the new data plans.

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Apple Easily Surpasses 10 Million iPhone Goal

When Apple first made its lofty projections to sell 10 million iPhones during 2008, some thought the company’s projections were overly optimistic. That may not be the case anymore if research by Apple enthusiast site Mac Observer is to be believed.

The data compiled by the site’s “Apple Finance Board” have taken a look at the IMEI numbers of shipped iPhone 3Gs as a way to estimate the total number of iPhone 3Gs shipped and compiled them into a spreadsheet. IMEI’s are issued in an specific order and can be used to figure out how many phones have been produced.

As to how this works, I’ll let the report’s author explain it.

One 6 digit number, known as the TAC, or Type Allocation Code, signifies a particular build or set of iPhones being manufactured. The second 6 digit number is unique to each individual iPhone produced in that particular series—so that 1 million iPhones can be registered to a specific TAC.

Using this data, the Mac Observer team estimates that Apple may have sold as many as 9.2 million iPhone 3Gs: a staggering statistic. Even allowing for 1.5 million iPhone 3G’s to still sit unsold, some 7.6 million units would already be in consumer’s hands. This would mean Apple would have sold 10 million phones already when adding in first-generation iPhone sales.

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