MuniWireless

AT&T has finally admitted to iPhone users that it has serious problems in New York City and San Francisco (oh, the pain of dropped calls), and released an iPhone app called Mark the Spot. The application lets users tell AT&T where and when they encountered network problems. See the screenshots below. AT&T also says that 3 percent of smartphone users are generating 40 percent of the data traffic. I wonder if AT&T will start metering use.

But Andy Abramson takes the…

The Economist has a fascinating article about Xavier Niel, founder of Iliad, a French telecom operator that is about to do for the French cellular market what it did for the broadband market. Iliad has announced its intention to bid for the fourth 3G license in France and to instigate a price war with the big 3 operators: France Telecom, SFR and Bouygues.

In the past few years, French consumers have seen the price of broadband service drop dramatically, thanks to…

There’s some creative license being taken by AT&T in its announcement of upgrades to its 3G cellular network today. While the lead paragraph in the company’s announcement claims its implementation of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology “will provide a considerable speed boost” to its existing network, buried down farther in the release is the sobering fact that current 3G customers (except for those who bought an iPhone 3GS) will have to “upgrade” their own devices to enjoy the new…

This week, Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC signed a deal with China Mobile to supply TD-SCDMA handsets for the leading Chinese carrier, according to FT.com. More precisely, HTC will supply one TD-SCDMA device this year and five next year. Both companies also agreed to collaborate together on future deployments (e.g. TD-LTE handsets, market research). Of note, China Mobile plans to roll out 100 new 3G devices by the end of 2009.

Bottom line: This is a pretty big win for HTC on its…