Monthly Archives: October 2016

T-Mobile

T-Mobile Slow Speeds for “Unlimited” Customers Will Cost $48M to the Carrier

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The FCC has made it clear that T-Mobile slow speeds for “unlimited” customers lacked transparency and will cost the carrier around $48 million or more.

T-Mobile

“The nation’s third-largest mobile network operator will pay a fine and provide benefits to consumers totaling $48 million as a part of a settlement regarding its policies that slowed data speeds for both T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers who exceeded their monthly data allotments” sources confirmed.

“The FCC’s investigation found that the company policy allows it to slow down data speeds when T-Mobile or MetroPCS customers on so-called ‘unlimited’ plans exceed a monthly data threshold,” the Commission said in a press release. “Company advertisements and other disclosures may have led unlimited data plan customers to expect that they were buying better and faster service than what they received.”

The FCC has confirmed it received complaints from the carrier’s customers regarding its unlimited data plan which gave false information to the users. The data plans that had been marketed as unlimited included “de-prioritized” speeds once monthly data allotments were reached. The commission further added “T-Mobile slows data speeds for its heaviest users who’ve consumed their monthly data quotas when network traffic is particularly heavy.

“According to consumers, this policy rendered data services ‘unusable’ for many hours each day and substantially limited their access to data,” the FCC said. “The bureau believes that the company failed to adequately inform its ‘unlimited’ data plan customers that their data would be slowed at times if they used more than 17 GB in a given month.”

The deal requires T-Mobile to pay a $7.5 million fine to the U.S. Treasury as well as funding “a $35.5 million consumer benefit program” for customers affected by its “unlimited” policies.

The carrier also agreed to spend at least $5 million to provide free devices to students in low-income school districts and free mobile broadband services to those devices at a reduced cost to the schools. The program will be launched in October 2017 and enroll 5,000 students per quarter over four years.

Home Phone

Verizon Wireless Evolves Its Offers for Customers in Hurricane Matthew Impacted Areas

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verizone home phone service

The recovery process has started on the east coast after hurricane Matthew devastated the area.  The catastrophe has spurred Verizon Wireless to take a unique initiative of its own. The company has evolved its offer in order to help its valuable local phone service customers recover from devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew.

Verizon Wireless Says:

Wireless communication is an indispensable facility that helps customers stay in touch with their loved ones at such a critical time and make contact with emergency resources. Furthermore, it also helps people lend a helping hand with effective recovery efforts needed to help people recover from the impact of catastrophes such as hurricane Matthew.

“The hard work of recovery after this massive storm has begun up and down the east coast and we will be there for our communities to help with the process,” says Mr. Roger Tang, the president of South East Market, Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Arrives With Help:

People on the east coast have started returning to their homes for initiating the recovery process after the havoc played by hurricane Matthew. Verizon Wireless has come forward to help its valuable local phone service customers stay in touch with their family and friends. The company has identified the areas with the greatest impact from hurricane Mathew.

Taking the devastation caused by hurricane Matthew into consideration, the company has expanded its offers for all of its customers hailing from the qualified areas in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Moreover, Verizon Wireless has expanded the counties. The company has also expanded the number of days such that the company will take care of charges related to the text, data and calling plans for local residential phone service users.

That’s Not All!

The company has also announced the beginning of texting medium. Using this texting medium, those who aspire to help in terms of hurricane relief will be able to lend a helping hand financially. For this purpose, they will just need to type the word “Matthew” in their message box and send it to 81000. After this, the customer will receive a text message requesting them to confirm their $10 donation. The company has also advised customers to text their billing Zip Code in this regard. Remember, you are agreeing to the terms and conditions by texting your billing Zip Code.

Verizon Wireless’s Purpose of Collecting Donation:

The company is collecting all of these donations in order to benefit the Global Giving Hurricane Matthew Relief Fund.

 At last:

It is a very good initiative taken by the company in order to help its local residential phone service users get connected with their loved ones and increase the speed of the recovery process. This will help the company get in the good graces of their customers. Moreover, this initiative will also send a message to the users that the company is always committed to helping its customers under all sorts of circumstances. Most importantly, this may help the company increase its customer base in the time to come.

AT&T

AT&T Plans to Bring Faster Internet Services in Georgia for Businesses

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AT&T Internet Services

AT&T plans to introduce faster gigabit internet services. This is certainly a great news for businesses using the company’s local phone services in Georgia and particularly in Newnan.  This will be a great medium for businesses to upload and download at speeds almost up to one Gbps. This is almost 20 times faster than any cable based internet connection. All of the locations signaled ready for such fast internet services have been declared AT&T fiber ready designations.

With Internet Speed Increased up to One Gbps, Businesses Using AT&T Telephone Service Will Be Able to:

  • Download almost up to 8000 word processing documents in about one second.
  • Download an HD video of two hours in about 36 seconds.
  • Fully backup/restore a one terabyte hard drive within the time frame of 2.5 hours.

As for new service and designation given to locations, they will serve as an effective medium for business or property owners to determine whether or not their property/location is equipped for installing AT&T’s services.

A Move to Stay Alive in the Modern Competitive Market:

For a number of years, the company has focused on providing gigabit connections to business customers. But through AT&T business fiber, the company is speeding up the deployment process of these high-speed internet connections to its business customers.  The company is offering such fast and reliable connectivity solutions as an essential strategic move to stay competitive in the marketplace, says Mr. Bill Leahy, the president at AT&T Georgia.

The Viewpoint of Critics about Faster Internet Services:

The viewpoint of critics is very crucial in this regard. The availability of super-fast internet service is already limited to certain areas in each market. These places are perfectly connected with fiber-optic transmission cable. Critics view it as new upscale developments that are not broadly spread across cities or rural areas in Georgia.

These Are Positive Technological Advancements:

This technological advancement is a good thing. Such investments in the field of information technology are critical to the health of Georgia’s economy.   As for a reason, all sorts of small and large scale companies are heavily dependent on successful transfer and utilization of information technology. Most importantly, AT&T’s investment in Georgia and its businesses using local phone services in Georgia will undoubtedly be benefitted by it.

As a Result of It: 

The cable companies have decided to make investments required for upgrading their equipment needed in order to maximize their internet speed. Moreover, a number of businesses are planning to switch to a new service provider for seeking faster internet services to better satisfy their customers. This is where AT&T can think about providing its faster internet services to all of the business using its local phone services in Georgia for staying viable among the competition in the marketplace. Apart from this, AT&T business fiber is available at select locations in Douglasville, Columbus, LaGrange and many more cities in Georgia.

Now only time will tell about the success of this technological advancement in the market from AT&T.

AT&T

AT&T Likely to Introduce AirGig in 2017 for Superfast Internet Speed Using Power Lines

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AT&T AirGig

Slow-as-snail internet connection at your home could now be the thing of past. AT&T is all set to provide electric fast internet speed to all its home phone service subscribers. AT&T, the Dallas based telecommunications giant, is planning to deliver super fast internet services through its latest project.

AirGig, AT&T’s Latest Project

On Tuesday, the company revealed its new project called AirGig. The company is focusing on delivering multi-gigabyte wireless internet speed at an affordable price. The company is planning to do so using power lines. As for launching its initial field trial, AT&T labs is expecting it will happen sometime in the year 2017.

This Will Set New Standards in Terms of High Speed Internet Connections:

The company is expecting AirGig to redefine industry standards in terms of high speed internet. This is likely to be totally different and innovative. AT&T is dedicating AirGig to delivering extremely quick internet services to all its home phone service users using a new technology that transmits signals over power lines. However, the signal will not go through the conductive power lines. Therefore, this is surely expected to be different from the efforts of Google and IBM for broadband through power lines in use for over ten years.

What Makes AirGig So Special?

A lot of things make AT&T’s AirGig project so special. Some of them are listed below. Let’s take a look:

  • This AT&T project, named AirGig, will use inexpensive plastic antennas for delivering data signals. These antennas will be stuck on already existing power lines, which will play a crucial role in the process of creating an electromagnetic field for the purpose of guiding the signals across the wires.
  • AirGig makes the best use of the prevalence of power lines in the United States. This may include over 200,000 miles of very high-voltage lines and local distribution lines of almost 5.5 million.
  • According to Mr. John Donovan, the chief strategy officer at AT&T, it can be deployed very easily as compared to the fiber. And it can deliver electric fast wireless internet connection to all of the home phone service subscribers of AT&T. Easy to afford plastic antennas make AirGig inexpensive to execute. However, he did not say anything about the exact amount of money to be charged to the users.
  • Fiber optic cable and cellphone towers are costly to install. This is why AirGig definitely has a distinct advantage over both of them.

 

Beneficiaries:

Without a doubt, AirGig will surely benefit local phone service subscribers of AT&T. AT&T itself will also be benefitted with this. As for reasons, take a look at them below:

  • This technology has everything necessary to widen the reach of AT&T. The company will be in a solid position to deliver service in rural areas that falls outside the geographic territories of its own. The same will stand effective for the overseas areas where AT&T provides local phone service.
  • This technology will help more internet users enjoy internet connectivity at superfast speed needed for streaming 4k videos on Netflix or chatting using technologies like Facetime.
  • People residing in the remote rural and global areas and regions that are cut-off from access to internet will also be the mainstream beneficiary of AT&T’s AirGig project.

At last, internet service in the past was as slow as snail. Much of the credit should be given to data delivery methods (Through Wires) and other technical snags interfering with emergency radios. All this collectively limited internet speed significantly.

However, the company is now aiming for a minimum LTE speed. This will ensure an amazingly fast internet connection for local phone service customers wanting to enjoy high bandwidth applications like virtual reality.

Summary:

AT&T is expecting to introduce AirGig technology in select cities of the United States by sometime in the year 2017. Potential customers have no choice but to wait for its lab tests to be successful. Moreover, the AT&T researchers are leaving no stone unturned to overcome some challenges relevant to such approaches carried out in the past. Following are the two challenges:

  • Achieving Gigabit-per-second speeds
  • Keeping deployment costs low

AT&T’s AirGig project is still undergoing tests in the experimental stages. Let’s hope they are successful.