UK’s first 4G network goes live October 30 courtesy of EE, other carriers to wait until 2013

UK network EE will launch its 4G LTE network on October 30, while other carriers wait patiently for the 2013 spectrum auction.

The UK is poised to join the USA and many other countries around the world in offering 4G LTE high speed data to its citizens. This week has seen some important developments, not only because its first 4G LTE network has been given a launch date, but also due to the long-awaited 4G spectrum auction being brought forward to January 2013.

It’s EE, the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile, that has the honor of being the first to switch on a 4G signal. After months of legal wrangling, the network has confirmed it’ll provide a 4G connection in 10 cities from October 30.

CEO Olaf Swantee said in a statement that he was “delighted” to announce the launch of both EE as a brand — a network of EE stores will be opening around the country, through which EE’s 4G LTE phones will be sold — and “the UK’s first super fast mobile 4G and fibre broadband service.”

Initially expected to launch only in London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol, delays have clearly allowed EE to boost its coverage, as 10 cities will now see the benefit of 4G from day one. A press event will be held soon, where those 10 cities and the final six expected to join them by the end of the year, will be revealed.

Early adopters of EE’s 4G service will need a compatible phone, a selection of which can be purchased through the company. The choice may be slim, but it’s eclectic, with the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, the HTC One XL and the Huawei P1 LTE all available now. The Galaxy Note 2 will also be joining them from October 15, and the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 Windows Phone 8 devices will be added later in the year. Eligible Orange and T-Mobile subscribers will be offered the chance to upgrade too.

Tariff prices haven’t been announced yet, and will probably be discussed at the aforementioned press event, but it’s speculated that monthly costs will increase by around £10.

Spectrum auction brought forward

To enable it to be first out the gate with 4G, EE has refarmed its plentiful reserves of 1800MHz spectrum for 4G use. Its competitors, who don’t have anywhere near enough 1800MHz spectrum to compete, are understandably upset with both EE and the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, who approved the deal back in March.

Since then it has been one long round of complaints and threats from rivals, along with hastily formed partnerships — Vodafone and O2 have joined forces to jointly maintain its nationwide network infrastructure, for example — culminating this week in a meeting between them, Ofcom, EE and the UK government to sort it all out.

Competing firms Vodafone, O2 and Three have been considering legal action against EE, a move that would have delayed both EE’s 4G network launch, and Ofcom’s spectrum auction, which is essential to getting everyone else up and running for 4G.

The meeting not only saw the end of the legal threat, but also the date of the spectrum auction being brought forward to January 2013, which minimizes the period of exclusivity EE has over 4G in the UK. Everybody’s happy, then.

At the auction, all UK networks have the chance to bid on a slice of the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum, which is currently being cleared in preparation for use with 4G. Once the auction concludes, it’s estimated that it will take five or six months to get everything ready.

These positive developments mean Vodafone, O2 and Three will join the 4G party six months earlier than previously thought, with a limited launch being touted for summer 2013. Until then, EE gets to enjoy its moment in the sun as the UK’s only purveyor of high speed 4G data.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

What the T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger means for you

T-Mobile and MetroPCS are merging to expand spectrum holdings and network coverage. What do current (and future!) customers get out of it?

T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom has announced that it’s struck a deal to merge with regional pre-paid mobile operator MetroPCS. For MetroPCS, the merger represents a tremendous growth opportunity: instead of being a regional operator limited to a few markets, its customers will get nationwide service. For T-Mobile, the merger significantly deepens the company’s spectrum holdings in key cities and regions, enabling it to make a serious play as a value-conscious LTE operator. And for Deutsche Telekom, the merger finally represents a way to one day get out of the business of being a U.S. mobile operator, following its failed effort to sell T-Mobile to AT&T last year.

But what does the merger mean for consumers and customers of both T-Mobile and MetroPCS? Can customers expect better service and wider LTE coverage? Or, like so many mergers, will the new company just be bigger and more expensive?

The merger’s basic idea

The T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger is designed to give number-four T-Mobile more scale and deeper spectrum holdings in several major metropolitan areas, meaning it will more wiggle room to offer 4G LTE services and compete aggressively against the likes of Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon. The combined company will still be the number-four U.S. mobile carrier (behind number three Sprint), but will bump up to about 42 million subscribers. Although MetroPCS uses CDMA phone technology and T-Mobile is based on GSM, MetroPCS is already in the process of phasing out CDMA, and its spectrum holdings are broadly complementary: both companies live and breathe in the 1,700 MHz and 1,900 MHz spectrum bands.

The combined company will do business under the T-Mobile name, although MetroPCS and T-Mobile will continue to operate as distinct customer units. Contract-based mobile service (along with services for businesses) will be under the T-Mobile name, and pre-paid and no-contract service will be available under both T-Mobile and MetroPCS brands.

The pre-paid market — or, as Deutsche Telekom likes to refer to it, “value-focused” market — is one area where the combined company gets interesting. MetroPCS is exclusively a no-contract and pre-paid provider — also one of T-Mobile’s strong points. According to T-Mobile, the two companies will have about 14.6 million no-contract subscribers (9.3 million from MetroPCS), putting it nearly neck-and-neck with Sprint’s no-contract operation, which currently has about 15.4 million customers. The combined T-Mobile/MetroPCS no-contract business looks poised to earn more money than Sprint’s: in the second quarter of 2012, Sprint pulled in $1.2 billion from no-contract subscribers, where the combined T-Mobile/MetroPCS pulled in $1.6 billion. Basically, the combined T-Mobile and MetroPCS will likely become the biggest no-contract mobile operator after AT&T and Verizon — we only say “likely” because those companies don’t break out revenue from their prepaid/no-contract businesses.

The terms of the merger are unusual: technically, MetroPCS is acquiring T-Mobile in a reverse acquisition. MetroPCS will declare a 2-for-1 reverse stock split, pay $1.5 billion to its existing shareholders (a bit over $4 per share), and then buy all of T-Mobile’s capital stock by giving Deutsche Telekom 74 percent of MetroPCS. In the end, Deutsche Telekom winds up the majority owner of MetroPCS, and the new company will have nearly $25 billion in revenue and about $2.1 billion in free cash flow for the year. T-Mobile’s current CEO, John Legere, will be the CEO of the new company; MetroPCS CFO J. Braxton Carter will be the new company’s CFO. MetroPCS’s CEO, Roger Linquist, will apparently retire — he is 74 years old. Regulators have to approve the deal, and that will take a while: the companies expect the deal to be formally closed by June 2013. The new company will operate out of T-Mobile’s Bellevue, Washington HQ, but will maintain a “significant presence” in the Dallas area.

One of the consequences of the reverse merger is that the new T-Mobile will be a public company: before, it was a private company owned by Deutsche Telekom. Although Deutsche Telekom has agreed to provide a $5.5 billion commitment to support some existing MetroPCS transactions, write down the value of some of its investment in T-mobile, and offer the new company a $500 million unsecured credit facility, setting up T-Mobile as a public company gives Deutsche Telekom something it’s always wanted: a way out of the slow-growing U.S. mobile market. That’s why it tried to sell T-Mobile lock, stock, and barrel to AT&T in one giant transaction. Taking T-Mobile public doesn’t give Deutsche Telekom a swift and sudden exit from the American market, but it does put the company in a position to sell off its shares of the new company in the future.

If you’re a T-Mobile customer…

In the short term, the merger probably won’t affect T-Mobile customers: the company is continuing its $4 billion built-out of LTE services using AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum on its network. However, looking ahead, the merger means T-Mobile’s LTE offerings should be much stronger in the areas where MetroPCS currently offers service. Assuming all of MetroPCS’s AWS spectrum gets converted over to LTE — which should happen over time — T-Mobile will have an average of 50 MHz of LTE bandwidth in major areas like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, and Las Vegas — and 60 MHz in MetroPCS’s hometown of Dallas — and that includes a full 2×20 MHz in many areas, meaning T-Mobile’s LTE network should be able to keep up with competitors in terms of raw bandwidth. T-Mobile’s current GSM and HSPA+ handsets will continue working, too.

Going forward, T-Mobile’s move toward LTE also means T-Mobile customers can expect to have a greater selection of handsets. Instead of having to rely on phone makers to create special devices for T-Mobile’s own flavor of HSPA+ connectivity, T-Mobile should be able to offer customers mainstream LTE handsets. T-Mobile is hoping that, one day soon, that will include the iPhone, but the company will also be happy to offer customers the latest LTE devices running Android and Windows Phone, as well as accept iPhone migrants from other carriers.

MetroPCS has also been noted for its highly automated self-service capabilities, making it easier for customers to add minutes, pay bills, switch plans, and get a new phone without incurring a ton of customer support costs. On an investor call today about the merger, T-Mobile executives said they expect to be able to leverage that to improve its customer service levels — which would be welcome. T-Mobile’s customer service used to be lauded; recently J.D. Power and Associates has been rating it lowest in customer service among all carriers.

If you’re a MetroPCS customer…

If you’re a MetroPCS customer (and familiar with wireless technology), this merger is putting four letters in your mind: CDMA. MetroPCS’s voice network runs on CDMA, which is incompatible with T-Mobile’s GSM network. How can these incompatible technologies work together?

Short answer: they won’t. MetroPCS customers will be stuck on MetroPCS coverage and limitations until they migrate to new, future, handsets that will incorporate service for both networks. We also learned on the call today (and this long document) that the combined company anticipates keeping some of MetroPCS’s existing CDMA service operating through the first half of 2015, so customers have almost three years to transition to a new handset. MetroPCS’s all-contract business has an exceptionally high handset turnover: each year, between 60 and 65 percent of MetroPCS’s customers get new handsets, so transitioning away from CDMA in a span of nearly three years isn’t expected to be a major problem for most MetroPCS customers.

And MetroPCS customers should get some significant benefits from the deal once they transition, including substantially expanded mobile coverage, without being forced into roaming deals (including international roaming options). That expanded coverage area also makes it more likely MetroPCS customers can keep their service if they move to a more rural area. Although MetroPCS has already been rolling out LTE service, with T-Mobile it will have access to a much broader LTE network (once it’s built out), along with a wider choice of handsets — perhaps one day including the iPhone.

MetroPCS customers also get some stability: MetroPCS is the fifth largest mobile operator in the U.S., but it was still a regional provider going it along with limited growth opportunities. The combined company is larger, more stable, and backed by the considerable financial resources of Deutsche Telekom — which is still an investment-grade stock.

When life hands you lemons…

T-Mobile merging with MetroPCS is the latest move in the company’s gotta-stay-alive strategy in the wake of AT&T’s failed takeover attempt. When the AT&T merger failed, T-Mobile was left with comparatively few options, and none of them were great. The company has settled on a “challenger” strategy that isn’t aiming to unseat AT&T or Verizon, but instead to offer a fourth stable, national competitor in the U.S. market.

Since it became single again, T-Mobile has made four major moves to position itself as a viable alternative to AT&T and Verizon:

• It picked up AWS spectrum holdings (as well as a roaming deal) from AT&T as part of its break-up fee when acquisition fell through
• It announced a $4 billion upgrade plan to offer LTE services on its AWS network — that involves upgrading 37,000 sites over three years
• It picked up still more AWS spectrum from Verizon as a condition of Verizon’s deal with cable operators
• It sold rights on 7,200 towers to Crown Castle for $2.4 billion in cash to fuel its LTE transition

For T-Mobile, merging with MetroPCS is about making the best play it can to build competitive 4G LTE services. The company has no spectrum holdings in the attractive 700 MHz bands recently vacated by broadcast television: those bands are particularly appealing for LTE and mobile services because they’re good at penetrating structures. With the MetroPCS merger, T-Mobile is still left out of 700 MHz LTE service, but it will be able to significantly increase the density of LTE services it can offer in higher-frequency AWS bands: they don’t penetrate buildings as well, but T-Mobile is hoping to make up some of the difference by widening the amount of spectrum it uses in many metropolitan areas, as well as by being particular about how it upgrades its towers — it’s been hoping to improve in-building coverage by about 20 percent just through its network modernization, which includes new antennas with integrated radios.

Those efforts probably won’t be enough to compete head to head with the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, but T-Mobile and MetroPCS are a good fit in another way: no-contract customers. The U.S. mobile market is mostly saturated. Very few new mobile customers are being created: some estimates have the U.S. mobile market growing by about 3 to 5 percent a year through 2017. However, tough economic times and the high cost of smartphone voice and data plans means the no-contract and pre-paid segment of the U.S. mobile phone market could grow by 9 to 10 percent in that same period. The combined T-Mobile and MetroPCS should be a major player in that faster-growing market segment — particularly if the combined company can keep to its strategy of unlimited mobile data plans.

The next move is probably Sprint

What will be the next move in the mobile industry? Look to number-three Sprint. MetroPCS’s deal with Deutsche Telekom to merge with T-Mobile was actually MetroPCS’s second choice: earlier this year, MetroPCS nearly closed a deal to be acquired by Sprint. That deal was rejected by Sprint’s board, and MetroPCS had to go looking elsewhere for a buyer.

Sprint has indicated it intends to be a leader in consolidation in the mobile industry — and its most likely targets are LEAP Wireless or working out a deal with Dish Network. Dish, in particular, might be tempting: the satellite TV operator holds a number of licenses in the 2000 to 2200 MHz band that it intended to use to build out its own satellite-assisted LTE network. However, the FCC is on the verge of action that could make some of Dish’s licenses relatively useless to Dish…but useful as an add-on to Sprint’s built-out of LTE service in the 1900 MHz range. Sprint is already building out its LTE service, where Dish hasn’t really started.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Sony announces new lifestyle cameras: Action Cam and NEX-5R

From extreme sports photographers to casual users, Sony unveils a new line of camera to suit every spectrum of lifestyle.

Sony took the wraps off two imaging devices for very different shooters: ones made for the BMX or snowboard daredevils, and the other for their parents. The company officially launched its Action Cam camcorders for extreme sports fans into point-of-view videos and the NEX-5R, a Compact System Camera that captures fast action but a bit more sedately for those on the sidelines.

Action Cams: HD-AS10 and HDR-AS15

The Action Cams are direct competition for Go Pro camcorders used to memorialize flying leaps, turns, and inevitable crashes. They can be attached to bike handlebars, snowboards, helmets, or anywhere the clamps fit. We didn’t get ride any ramps with the Action Cams but we did hold them — they are unbelievably small (3.2 x 1.9 x 1) and weigh little more than piece of candy (90 grams, 3.2 ounces).

The camcorders are made to be worn and Sony has a number of options depending on your needs. Each also ship with a case that’s waterproof down to 197 feet. How many extreme sports shooters will actually reach those depths? We can’t fathom — but they can attempt to push the limits if they so desire.

Due in September, the HD-AS10 ($199) and HDR-AS15 ($269) Action Cams are very similar. The key difference is the more expensive edition has Wi-Fi so, for example, you can control the camcorder with your smartphone while you concentrate flying off of a mountain.  Both models have 16MP CMOS sensors, Carl Zeiss optics, built-in image stabilization, and use the MPEG4 codec, enabling it to capture full HD video (1080/30p). The demo videos we saw showed a very cool, high-quality 4x slow motion effect (120 fps in 720p). Other slo-mo settings are also available.

Sony NEX-5R

It seems like it was just a short time ago we reported the introduction of the Sony NEX-5N mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. The old model will now be replaced by the 16MP NEX-5R, slated for an October release. Although it looks similar to the older camera, the 5R has some pretty radical enhancements, including a new hybrid auto-focusing system that uses phase detect and contrast phase AF for faster and more accurate focusing.

Sony claims you can capture a moving subject at 10 fps and all the frames will be in focus, but we’ll be the judge of that when we get our hands on a production unit. From our experience, previous models could take 10 fps but focus would lock on the first frame, leaving the rest of the shot blurry. Supposedly this is not the case with the 5R, making a mirrorless camera perform like a classic high-end DSLR. If it works as advertised, it will be a real breakthrough.

The NEX-5R has built-in Wi-Fi so you can send images taken by the camera to your smartphone using a new app. These photos can then be formatted to send as SMS. As part of the hardware announcements, Sony stated it would create a new series of photo-centric apps consumers could download from the Sony PlayMemories Online service (also slated for October). There’s a long list of apps that can enhance your shots, control cameras (initially the 5N/AS15), and help with quick photo uploads to Facebook.

One of the complaints about Sony NEX cameras is the touchscreen menu system. We’ve never had a real problem with it, but it can be confusing to some. To combat the issue, the NEX-5R has a new control dial and function button to adjust the camera much like you would find on a DSLR. The camera also boasts a top ISO of 25,600, and can capture AVCHD Progressive videos (1080/60p). With a 18-55mm kit lens, the NEX-5R will set you back $750. Body-only will run for $650.

With the Photokina trade show just around the corner, get ready for more announcements from the majors. We’ve been sworn to secrecy or we’ll lose our first born, but take our word for it: some cool stuff is definitely on the way.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com