broadband

Back in February, wireless upstart FreedomPop made some bold promises about free mobile broadband service. Now it appears the company is getting ready to make good on at least one of them.

As reported this morning by Apple news site TUAW, FreedomPop is now taking pre-orders for the Freedom Sleeve, a $99 iPhone 4/4S case that provides "free" 4G wireless service -- among other benefits.

Exciting stuff, right? Before you pull out your credit card, check the fine print. For starters, FreedomPop's WiMax-powered 4G broadband isn't available everywhere -- like here in metro Detroit, where … Read more

While Sprint and T-Mobile are struggling to launch their 4G LTE networks, Verizon apparently has enough LTE to power your devices at home.

Starting Thursday, Verizon's HomeFusion Broadband service will bring LTE-powered Internet access nationwide. The service, which originally launched in March in six markets, feeds Internet to connected devices in the domicile, ranging from computers to gaming consoles.

Verizon's HomeFusion LTE will zip into homes through professionally-installed antennae receivers affixed on the outside of the house (this will cost you $199.99), then transmit signal to a Wi-Fi router inside the house. Using Wi-Fi, customers can connect … Read more

Hedge fund manager Philip Falcone is expected to eventually step aside as the public face of LightSquared in an effort to keep the foundering wireless broadband effort from defaulting on debt, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The move is expected to prompt the company's lenders to approve a debt extension that would keep the company from having to file for bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter told the Journal. The holders of LightSquared's $1.6 billion in debt have given Falcone until 10 a.m. Monday to strike a deal for restructuring Harbinger's 96 percent equity … Read more

Mobile devices are bringing more Americans online, but one in five adults is still not on the Internet, according to a Pew Internet survey published today.

The study, based on more than 2,000 phone calls in English and Spanish, shows that certain segments of the U.S. population are not inclined to go online. The top reasons given were lack of interest, no computer, expense, or the difficulty of getting online.

"Senior citizens, those who prefer to take our interviews in Spanish rather than English, adults with less than a high school education, and those living in households … Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- After five years of enduring Internet access that provided dial-up speeds for uploading and rarely exceeded 1Mbps down, I now cruise along in my home office on the edge of a wilderness area at 7.5Mbps for downloads. My uploads are 30 times faster at 1.5Mbps.

The path to my recent broadband liberation began on a day last fall when that slow satellite connection went dark for an entire day. A malfunction with the satellite literally caused it to shut down and turn away from the Earth. In the process of reporting the story for CNET, I came across a tangentially related tidbit about the launch of a new satellite, called ViaSat-1, which would soon be in orbit and providing new speed and capacity for my satellite Internet provider (WildBlue, which is a subsidiary of ViaSat).

I shared the good news with my family, but didn't plan to hold my breath for the upgrade to trickle down anytime soon through the layers of middlemen and resellers standing between that beautiful new bird in orbit and my Wi-Fi router. If you've read the rest of this week-long series or live in the sticks yourself, you know how new and exciting infrastructure can remain out of grasp, even when it's physically so close to home.… Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- Since I first moved to this mountain valley in 2007, there's been a veritable explosion of telecommunications technology here. Back then, there was no DSL, no fixed wireless access points, and, most notably, no cell phone service in the area.

Penasco is situated along a route called the "High Road to Taos" -- more than 60 miles of scenic, high-altitude back roads that connect Taos and Santa Fe. Despite the higher elevation, there were few spots along the entire route where you could place a call before 2009.

That's when, after a decade of trying, the people of Picuris Pueblo managed to partner with Commnet Wireless, a cellular wholesale provider, to install cell infrastructure on an existing TV translator tower -- no small task for one of the smallest Indian reservations in the region, and one with few resources. Drive away from Penasco in any direction, and you'll find yourself traveling over one of four mountain passes to the next major town, so as you can imagine, even basic cell service here was a small revolution.

But it still hasn't helped me to realize my dream of true broadband Internet access at my home. … Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- So far in this five-part series on my five-year attempt to bring decent broadband to my remote mountain home, I've struck out with cable and DSL and struggled with overpriced, under-performing satellite access.

Technology has, of course, advanced in the last half-decade, including here in the tiny Penasco valley, but it seems to keep passing me by. In the last installment, I explained how the DSL access available at my house isn't worth much, thanks to a lack of investment by our regional telecom. About the same time it was making its "upgrades," another broadband technology was making its debut here.

Fixed wireless service went up on Picuris Peak and another nearby rise in the valley, promising to bring speeds "at least five times faster than dial-up." That doesn't exactly qualify as an offer you can't refuse, but the top-tier package does amount to a baby step upward from the brutal satellite Internet setup I described in part 1 of this series.

Currently, the rural co-op offering the service provides speeds up to 3Mbps, but it will cost you $95 a month. That still looks pretty attractive when you're living with a 1.5Mbps connection with a harsh data cap for about the same price.

So I scheduled a site survey. In fact, I scheduled two after the first one didn't go too well without the senior installer on hand. The second one didn't go well either. The line of sight to both nearby fixed wireless towers -- the service requires an unobstructed path between an antenna installed on the roof and a tower as much as 15 miles away -- is blocked from my property.… Read more

PENASCO, N.M -- In the first installment of this series on my attempt to get decent broadband to my very rural location, I mentioned that I live on the edge of a wilderness area in the mountains of northern New Mexico. If I can get affordable and fast access to the Internet, it should be possible almost anywhere. But as I'll explain today, crossing the Digital Divide isn't always such an easy task when you're off the beaten path.

When I lived in major cities like Denver and San Francisco, cable Internet always seemed like the obvious choice -- it was often the fattest fiber optic pipe around and provided cheap, fast, and reliable access. But in rural areas, satellite television services have become so cheap and ubiquitous that there's little incentive for cable companies to invest large sums building out their infrastructure to far-flung places where most potential customers are already locked in to satellite contracts.

So cable's not an option out here. While satellite TV is cheap and plentiful, satellite Internet is a very different animal, and as I explain in part 1 of this series, it's neither fast, friendly, nor frugal.… Read more

Facing greater expenses, the wireless industry is trying to drum up profits by relying more on such services as prepaid and mobile broadband, says a report out today from PwC.

Surveying wireless carriers in the U.S. and Canada last year, PwC found a variety of challenges to their profitability.

Rising smartphone subsidies have forced providers to pay more up front for the privilege of carrying certain smartphones. Though obviously popular, the iPhone requires carriers to pay a huge subsidy, crimping per user profit.

And though providers have been pushing smartphones to their customers, the resulting rise in data usage … Read more