Heavy data users cause AT&T network clogged up

40 percent of AT&T’s data traffic came from just 3 percent of its smartphone customers; those with an iPhone!
“We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage, so they don’t crowd out the customers on those same cell sites,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive of AT&T’s mobile business. Analysts speculated that AT&T could be talking about a tiered pricing structure rather than the current ‘all-you-can-eat’ deals. O2 UK is also facing the similar problem.
source: GSMA MBB

LG looks to smartphones for number two spot

South Korean handset vendor LG aims to sell 140 million mobile phones globally this year, up 20 percent from 2009, in a move designed to help it achieve its goal of becoming the industry’s second-largest player by 2012. As reported yesterday, half of all its new smartphones launched this year will run Google’s Android platform.

Qualcomm reveals Snapdragon roadmap

Qualcomm is set to beef up its top-of-the-range Snapdragon processor to run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz by year-end.

Ericsson and NSN win major TeliaSonera LTE deals

TeliaSonera – the world’s first commercial LTE operator – has awarded major network expansion deals to Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), an important win for both vendors after recent losses to China’s Huawei. Both Nordic vendors will supply radio access network (base station) kit for LTE buildout in Sweden and Norway, whilst Ericsson has won a sole supplier core network deal in both countries. The contracts cover network rollout this year and next, and will see TeliaSonera expand its existing limited rollout of LTE in the central city areas of Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway (launched last month) to 25 of Sweden’s “largest municipalities and recreation areas” and Norway’s “four largest municipalities.” TeliaSonera previously said the capital expenditure for its national rollouts will amount to SEK500 million (US$71 million).

Clearwire launches WiMAX in Europe

US WiMAX service provider Clearwire has launched a commercial network in Malaga, Spain, its first venture outside of its home market. The service – dubbed ‘Instanet’ – covers an area of nearly 600,000 people and is targeting consumers and enterprises with claimed average download speeds of 3-6 Mb/s with bursts over 10 Mb/s. Pricing starts at EUR29.90 a month. Clearwire’s data services are going up against the mobile broadband offerings of the country’s HSPA operators, with Clearwire promising speeds “several times faster than 3G.” The company is also expected to launch another 3.5GHz WiMAX network in the Spanish city of Seville soon.

Verizon hints at usage-based LTE pricing

Verizon Wireless is set to return to some form of usage-based pricing for its new LTE network when it rolls out later this year. In an interview with the Washington Post at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch said the operator was looking to move away from the current flat rate ‘all you can eat’ data plans and instead begin charging users on the bandwidth they consume. “The problem we have today with flat-based usage is that you are trying to encourage customers to be efficient in use and applications but you are getting some people who are bandwidth hogs using gigabytes a month and they are paying something like megabytes a month,” Lynch said.