Equipment

Best Buy Provides a Low Price of $150 for Sprint 4G HTC EVO Shift

Ahuva Zucker on December 28, 2010 | 16 comments

The first 4G smart phone at an affordable price is going to hit stores next month. Or, more correctly, the incredible pricing will hit a single store. Best Buy will provide the HTC EVO Shift next month for the unbelievably low price of $150 with a two year contract. The phone operates on Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network like its predecessors the original HTC EVO and the Samsung Epic.

The company was hardly bashful earlier this month when information about pricing was leaked online. Almost immediately after being confronted with the leak, Best Buy admitted that the pricing information was accurate. Both Best Buy and Sprint are likely to be benefitting from this release; it has been a while since the last Sprint 4G phone was released. Additionally, the lower price may bring a new kind of consumer into the 4G playground that is less technologically savvy and less likely to spend money on a “fancy” phone. The price will appeal to many consumers just interested in a nice, affordable phone.

Details about the phones’ appearances and capabilities are heavily discussed in various forums online. The biggest aesthetic difference between the original HTC EVO and the updated Shift is the smaller size and slide out QWERTY keyboard. This upgrade has been very much desired; consumers themselves echoed critics’ disapproval of the EVO’s size.

Rumors floating around online say that the HTC EVO Shift will have a 3.7” touch screen with a screen resolution of about 800×400. They also claim that there will be support for a microSD card and b/g/n WiFi bands. It is also said that the device will be running on the Android 2.2 Froyo system.

Whatever the case, the updated phone is in high demand and with the pricing that Best Buy will be offering, it is sure to be a bestseller. But, the most exciting part is the precedent that the HTC EVO Shift will make with this pricing. Manufacturers will be unable to jack up prices just because the phone is “4G.” Wireless 4G is available to the masses at last.… Read the rest

How to Select the Best 4G Gift Items

Kristina Tsamis on December 21, 2010 | 1 comment

Last night on Fox Business, Quantum Networks CEO Ari Zoldan broke down the hottest gift items in the tech space. Need help choosing the right gift for the techie in your life? Watch the video above for information on 3G vs. 4G equipment, the iPhone vs. Android, how to create your own wireless ecosystem and much more.

Ari’s final picks for 4G Gift Items:

1. The Unlocked MiFi

Put your phone’s SIM card into the MiFi and instantly create your own wireless hotspot that can support up to five users. With the unlocked MiFi there are no additional fees or contracts to worry about.

2. The Cradlepoint 3G/4G Mobile Broadband N Router

This 3G/4G router allows you to blanket your entire home or office with wireless internet like you’ve never experienced it before.

3. The CLEAR Spot

Experience 4G internet in all CLEAR cities, plus 3G internet on-the-go everywhere else.

4. The Samsung Epic 4G from Sprint

Powered by Android and featuring a touch screen, full slide-out keyboard and the ability to create a 3G/4G network for up to five Wi-Fi devices, the Samsung Epic is a true mobile powerhouse. Operating with the Sprint 4G network, users can watch videos, play games and download applications at lighting-fast speeds.… Read the rest

Sprint to Get New ‘HTC Knight’ in Shining 4G WiMax Armor

Evan Kessler on November 23, 2010 | 40 comments

Until now, customers of Sprint’s 4G WiMax network have had precious few devices with which to valiantly navigate the speedy mobile broadband terrain offered them. The HTC Evo 4G and Samsung Epic 4G have performed admirably in the kingdom of next-generation wireless, so you’d think consumers would be content wielding their net surfing phones in the most perilous situations where a blazing fast connection is all that stands between them and certain doom–or in this case the important text message they need to respond to. Sure those devices do the trick just fine, but in this era where having just two options is akin to insanity, Sprint customers may soon get a third– their very own “Knight” in shining armor.

The FCC has just approved HTC’s latest 4G WiMax-enabled handset with an impressive set of specs for Sprint to tack onto a growing roster of 4G-ready hotspots, modems, laptops and phones The smartphone, presently dubbed the “HTC Knight,” is equipped with Froyo, an 8-megapixel camera, 1GHz processor, 3.7 inch display and a most appealing sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Several blogs are predicting the latest member of the Sprint 4G WiMax phone family will get to stores in time for the holiday rush. We’re not so optimistic as that day as fast approaching, but it could make for a nice present for those last-minute shoppers. If it does hit the stores in the next few days, keep your eyes peeled for a few different monikers, as the ” HTC Knight” name is not set in stone strong enough to keep Excalibur. The alternate names are thought to include the “Sprint HTC Desire Z,” “HTC Speedy,” and the “HTC Evo Shift 4G.” We prefer the “Knight” if only because it brings a certain amount of valor to the act of using our cell phone for something as common as downloading a ringtone. … Read the rest

Global WiMAX Device Developer Greenpacket Committed to Supporting Southeast Asia’s WiMAX Deployments

Greenpacket on November 23, 2010 | 1 comment

23 Nov – Kuala Lumpur, Greenpacket, a leading developer of next generation mobile broadband and networking solutions, fully supports WiMAX Forum’s call for Southeast Asia to adopt WiMAX to raise the region’s low broadband penetration levels at the WiMAX Forum Southeast Asia Regional Focus conference, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This inaugural conference themed, “4G WiMAX in Emerging Markets – Innovation and Evolution in Delivering Broadband for All” addresses the viability of deploying successful WiMAX networks in emerging and developing markets through the region’s success showcases from the regulators, operators, and investment community perspectives.

Greenpacket, which supply WiMAX devices to 50% of the active commercial deployments in the Southeast Asia region, with the third largest WiMAX devices market share worldwide; affirms its commitment to advance WiMAX worldwide by continuing to expand its portfolio of high performance products and solutions to meet the needs of WiMAX operators globally.

According to Kelvin Lee, Senior General Manager of Green Packet Berhad, with a robust and flourishing ecosystem in place, the WiMAX technology can offer global economies of scale lowering cost for operators and end-users compared to other wireless technologies. He said that the cost of WiMAX devices has come down by 30% over the past two years.

Lee said, “There is tremendous potential for WiMAX growth in Southeast Asia because the technology presents compelling propositions for operators to meet this region’s high speed broadband needs and at the same time, cater to the varied market segments with fixed to nomadic and quad play offerings including mobile wireless VoIP.

As a leading vendor in the WiMAX ecosystem, we understand the connection needs and operation management for different market segments. We also understand operators’ needs at different levels in their WiMAX deployment cycle.”

Lauding the launch of SIRIM QAS International WiMAX Forum Designated Certification Lab at the conference, Lee commented that Greenpacket was thrilled to see WiMAX Forum working with SIRIM for the first WiMAX certification lab here in South Asia and the seventh in the world.

“We believe that this development greatly underlines increased demand for WiMAX and the technology’s healthy device ecosystem. We hope to see a further boost to the number of WiMAX products coming out in the market in the near future. We are also proud to have a certification lab here where Greenpacket is headquartered, marking the recognition of Malaysia as the region’s 4G WiMAX … Read the rest

Sprint, Clearwire Duke It Out Over WiMax Phone Funds

Evan Kessler on November 11, 2010 | 2 comments

Things are getting a little testy between WiMax business partners Clearwire and Sprint as of late. With the recent 3rd quarter assessment that Clearwire is not monetarily equipped for the long-haul, the former best friends of WiMax technology in the U.S. are in a bit of a spat over the money Sprint pays Clearwire to have their WiMax-equipped smartphones operating on the latter’s network.

The ability to charge their chief stakeholder for each 4G handset means big business for Clearwire, with 3 million HTC Evo 4Gs and Samsung Epic 4Gs expected to ship by the end of 2010. Sprint is supposed to pay $4.46 to Clearwire per 4G user, but complications arise when the amount of customers living in places where access to WiMax 4G has yet to be activated is taken to account. 810,000 Sprint phone users of 4G phones are without a technology to take advantage of, and Sprint is withholding funds accordingly.

In order to resolve this situation, Sprint and Clearwire have entered arbitration, but things stand to get uglier for Clearwire if things don’t go their way. A company spokesman admitted that the loss of these per handset payouts in areas still unequipped with WiMax could result in an inability to fulfill their previously drawn up plans for further WiMax rollout across lacking U.S. markets. While from a customer’s perspective Sprint’s reluctance to payout the $4.46 makes sense, you have to wonder whether Sprint is interested in seeing the WiMax network completed so that they might continue to compete with other upcoming 4G offerings from Verizon, AT&T and MetroPCS; or whether they’re just slowly backing away from the whole scene and hoping some big company with a lot of money buys them off and makes the WiMax experiment all just go away. … Read the rest

Huawei Provides Solution for WiMax-to-LTE Migration

Evan Kessler on November 5, 2010 | 7 comments

There’s been plenty of debate over the merits of competing “4G” standards. In the U.S., Sprint and Clearwire have spared no expense building up and rolling out their high-speed WiMax network. Verizon and AT&T aren’t too far behind with their official launches of LTE networks on the horizon in 2011. Though those companies have committed to their wireless technologies for the time being, there are plenty of other providers on the global front that are not quite sold on which is right for them and their customers. With deployment such an expensive undertaking, the prospect of ending up with the less cost-effective or less-capable technology has given way to quite a quandary. WiMax or LTE?

Huawei has made this quandary a little less daunting with the launch of their new solution that allows operators an effortless and uninterrupted migration between WiMax and LTE-TDD standards. The SingleRAN solution is made up of a dual mode base band unit (BBU) that works in concert with a WiMAX and LTE TDD dual mode remote radio unit (RRU) and is capable of operating on on 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz mainstream Time-Division Duplexing (TDD) frequency bands.

The network solution doesn’t limit mobile broadband connections to those operating on WiMax and LTE. It’s also accessible by those using devices enabled for GPRS and UMTS, thanks to Huawei’s SingleEPC packet core network solution. Its flexibility is an undeniable strength, possessing the ability to be configured as WiMAX module, a LTE-TDD module, or a WiMAX and LTE-TDD dual mode module with the simple flick of a software upgrade.

Huawei knows a thing or two about deployment of its WiMax solutions, having won 79-plus commercial WiMAX network contracts across the globe. Their LTE-TDD capabilities also displayed admirable performance when spotlighted by China Mobile at the 2010 Shangai World Expo. The combination of such well-performing solutions is a boon to an industry currently trying to provide the fastest connections possible, but still largely experimenting and trying to improve on two less-than-perfect technologies.

… Read the rest

Sprint Expected to Ship Almost Three Million 4G Phones in 2010

ABI Research on November 3, 2010 | 1 comment

NEW YORK – November 03, 2010 -

Smartphones’ ever-growing capabilities increase the pressure to offer 4G performance. When 3G was introduced there was no need for great haste in deploying compatible handsets, but mobile’s new more ambitious range of functions is driving demand to roll out 4G (and 4G smartphones) more quickly.

According to ABI Research director Philip Solis, “Sprint’s 4G smartphone sales have been partially responsible for its recent subscriber growth. ABI Research forecasts that the carrier will ship almost three million 4G handsets for its WiMAX network by the end of 2010. That number is greater than many observers expected.”

Sprint has rolled out WiMAX in about 62 US cities to date. The latest, and one of the most significant: New York, which lit up on November 1.

In other 4G developments:

· KDDI in Japan is in the process of building an LTE network and is also part-owner of UQ Communications, a leading WiMAX provider. They are selling EVDO/WiMAX modems.

· India is still undecided on its 4G migration. “There were widespread expectations that India’s operators would opt en masse for TD-LTE, widely considered a ‘WiMAX-killer,’ says Solis, “but many of them have not yet made up their minds, while others hope to deploy WiMAX first, then switch to LTE: a shift that may prove more difficult and expensive than they expect.”

· Yota, which has accumulated 600,000 WiMAX subscribers in Russia, announced its intention to focus new rollouts on LTE and to deploy LTE alongside its existing WiMAX networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But it has problems with Russia’s telecoms regulator concerning allocated spectrum. Investigations will delay the carrier’s LTE plans for at least two years. Yota is also continuing its WiMAX deployments in Nicaragua and Peru.

· However there is no doubt about LTE’s long-term potential: it will certainly define the market even in the short-term, as corroborated by many operators’ ambitious LTE plans, including those of Verizon Wireless and NTT DoCoMo.

ABI Research’s “4G Subscriber, Device and Networks Market Data” contains regional, as well as selected country-level segmentation for the 4G market, including mobile WiMAX (802.16e and 802.16m) and LTE (LTE and LTE-Advanced).

It is part of the firm’s 4G Research Service.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide … Read the rest

Northern Iraq Enters WiMax Age

Evan Kessler on October 22, 2010 | 3 comments

People don’t tend to think of Iraq as a place with a heaping helping of innovation. The events of the past seven years or so often bring to mind explosions, unrest, and other war-like circumstances that we imagine has left them in a state more reminiscent of the stone age than the modern one. Slowly but surely our perceptions of the fertile crescent nation have emerged from the gutter to see a place where civilization is no myth and progress is a reality, and not just on a socio-political level. Technologically, Iraq is doing their part to keep pace with other emerging nations and at the forefront of that effort is Fanoos Telecom.

The Kurdistan-based carrier boasting “Iraq’s most reliable wireless broadband service” and 250,000 subscribers is going 4G, or more accurately, they’re setting up a WiMax network to bring their customers what the International Telecommunications Union now considers not-quite-4G. Utilizing Tellabs® SmartCore™ 9160 platform as its chief tool of deployment, the service will offer high performance and interoperability with multiple radio access network vendors. CEO Hiwa Rauf believes this specific equipment set has the ability to help his company “develop a complete network and avoid single vendor lock-in…” The aim is to “create an interoperable wireless broadband system that’s ready for future expansion,” but for now they’re concentrating their efforts on focal points in the North, distributing the new network to the cities of Sulaimaniyah, Mosul and Kirkuk. Fanoos hopes to complete their WiMax rollout to those key cities by the end of this year.… Read the rest

Motorola and Nokia: Suiting Up for WiMAX 4G

Tiferet Weiss on October 18, 2010 | 2 comments

As service providers like Sprint Nextel, Verizon, and AT&T battle for the rights to WiMAX and LTE networks for their mobile data plans, the tailors that outfit compatible equipment – specifically, Motorola and Nokia – remodel their respective gadgetry and tech wardrobes to suit the burgeoning market.

Joining Samsung (which already demoed its own WiMAX 2 Mobile Broadband earlier this month) come Motorola and Nokia, who have each announced extensions of already-procured licensing agreements to cover the greatly celebrated, next-gen 4G-mania that’s seizing the nation – cellular technologies LTE, WiMAX, and LTE-Advanced were officially included in the companies’ prevalent intellectual property contracts, the terms of which remain undisclosed.

While the companies remain silent about the unnamed stipulations, their spokespeople remain enthusiastic about the promise of a 4G-enriched future."This agreement also shows that the industry is making fast progress in resolving LTE licensing issues between the major patent holders," said Finnish Nokia Vice President Paul Melin of the transaction, which took place this past Friday. Kirk Dailey, corporate VP of Motorola’s Intellectual Property department, announced that his company was “pleased to extend our existing IP licensing agreement with Nokia to include 4G technologies and are confident this agreement will help foster continued innovation and technological advancement for the telecommunications industry. Motorola is committed to leveraging the strength of its industry-leading intellectual property portfolio for the benefit of its customers, partners, shareholders and licensees.”

Motorola and Nokia face tremendous competition in bedding WiMAX – Samsung plans to have its own equipment out by the end of 2011 (much to the chagrin of rivals Apple and Google Android) suitable for WiMAX 2, encased in backwards-compatible technology that should fit even the currently growing WiMAX network. While Motorola already has a phone upgradeable to WiMAX in the works, Nokia has yet to dish on any up-and-coming devices – and, with both groups already infamous for their previously released Android tech and Asian-fave Nokia 6500 Slide, we eagerly await more information about any new models to be released by these freshly re-contracted companies. … Read the rest

Proxim Introduces Ultra High-Capacity Licensed Wireless Backhaul to Reduce the Cost of Migration to IP and 4G

Robb Henshaw on October 18, 2010

New Licensed Solution Delivers 622 Mbps Aggregate Capacity, Frequency Agility from 6-38 GHz and Compact Form Factor for Ease of Deployment

Silicon Valley, CA, October 18, 2010 – Proxim Wireless Corporation (OTCQX: PRXM), a leading provider of complete indoor and outdoor wireless broadband systems, today re-entered the licensed wireless backhaul market with the introduction of its Tsunami® GX800 licensed point-to-point microwave backhaul products. With the addition of the GX800 products, Proxim – a pioneer of the point-to-point microwave market – expands its extensive product line to include licensed wireless backhaul capable of delivering ultra-high capacity of 622 Mbps aggregate capacity, frequency agility for deployment in more regions with support of 6-38 GHz, and the ease-of-deployment and cost savings of a compact form-factor wireless backhaul solution.

What Analysts and Customers are Saying
“With the ever-increasing need for greater capacity in today’s mobile and wireless networks, high-performance and cost-effective wireless backhaul is an essential requirement for carriers – and in many other applications as well,” said Craig Mathias, a Principal with the mobile and wireless advisory firm Farpoint Group. “Backhaul can be the weak link in 4G network rollouts without the right products in place. But as we can see in Proxim’s new GX800, fixed broadband wireless has the flexibility and cost-effectiveness required to really make these carrier networks fly. And many more applications, including HD-quality streaming video surveillance deployments, campus interconnectivity, transportation, and numerous others will benefit from the outstanding performance and value Proxim is bringing to a market they know well.”

“The video surveillance industry has seen a dramatic increase in demand for capacity over the past several years, and with the migration to IP video and streaming HD surveillance, that demand will only continue to increase,” said Jordan Heilweil, CEO of Total Recall, a leading provider of integrated security & surveillance solutions. “We are excited about Proxim’s Tsunami GX800 product as it will provide not only enough backhaul capacity to meet the needs of our bandwidth-intensive deployments today, but will also allow us to scale those deployments in the future.”

“We have been providing wireless broadband solutions to the African and South African market for over ten years, and in that time we have seen a consistent growth in the demand for greater, more cost-effective wireless backhaul solutions,” said Darren Morgan, Sales Manager at Comsol Wireless Solutions. “Proxim has been a great partner in providing unlicensed wireless backhaul … Read the rest

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