UK mobile operator Three has made a series of well-received announcements this year, starting with a free upgrade from 3G to 4G for all existing 3G customers, including those on unlimited data plans. That upgrade was followed by the expansion of Three’s “Feel at Home” program, which lets customers use their domestic minutes, texts and … Read more

Implementation of Bluetooth technology to monitor traffic conditions has proven successful in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. For several years the municipality has used BlipTrack Bluetooth sensors across its road network to collect detailed traffic information based on the movement of drivers’ mobile devices. These sensors gather continuous data that reveal road density, traffic flow and … Read more

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Leonardo Patrizi) Recent Ofcom data shows that smartphones have overtaken laptops as the primary device for accessing the internet. According to the report, 33 percent of people now consider their smartphone the most important way to get online, while 30 percent choose a laptop first. Ofcom attributes much of this shift to the … Read more

Reports that Huawei has selected a supplier for large heat-dissipation sheets strongly suggest the first wave of 5G smartphones will be bulkier and consume significantly more power. Huawei aims to be among the first companies to release a 5G smartphone, with industry speculation placing the launch around June 2019. Sources indicate Huawei has chosen Taiwan-based … Read more

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Rawpixel) Canada’s telecommunications regulator has formally recognized broadband as a basic service and set minimum speed targets that are more ambitious than those in many other countries. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has declared that a baseline broadband offering should provide at least 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds, … Read more

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona remains one of the year’s most anticipated events, and this edition set new records: 108,000 attendees from 208 countries and around 3,000 exhibitors across the vast Fira Gran Via exhibition centre. The scale and diversity of the show made it a compelling showcase for the latest mobile and IoT … Read more

This week I spoke with Pavan Mathew, Global Head of Automotive Telematics at Telefónica, in an exclusive interview about a company report that argues the car industry must reinvent itself to take full advantage of the connected future. As our lives become increasingly digital, we expect everyday devices to be connected — not only to … Read more

NTT DoCoMo has announced a successful demonstration of 28 GHz wireless data transmission between a 5G base station and a mobile unit inside a car traveling at nearly 190 mph. This test marks a significant step toward enabling high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity at very high speeds. The trial was carried out on April 8 at the … Read more

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Piotr Adamowicz) The surge in smart devices largely drove wireless operators to rapidly deploy 4G LTE networks across many regions. Handling the explosive growth in data consumption has shaped mobile operators’ strategies for years: not only to supply bandwidth to data-hungry subscribers but also to protect profit margins expected by shareholders. Today, 5G … Read more

Many have declared SMS obsolete. Industry reports show over-the-top (OTT) messaging traffic growing rapidly—Informa predicted OTT volumes would be twice those of person-to-person (P2P) SMS by the end of 2013, and last year more than 19.1 billion OTT messages were sent. Those figures demonstrate a real impact on SMS traffic and operator revenue. However, the … Read more