speeding

AT&T is apparently making good on its promise to cut back on speeds for heavy data users.

Posted by tech enthusiast site CultofMac, a text message sent by AT&T to such a user says that "Your data usage is among the top 5 percent of users. Data speeds for the rest of your current bill cycle may be reduced."

The data restriction policy comes as no surprise. AT&T had announced back in July that it would throttle speeds for heavy data users starting on October 1. The policy affects only subscribers who … Read more

The pay-TV war between Cablevision and Verizon Communications just got a little uglier.

Cablevision came out swinging, filing a lawsuit yesterday in a New York court, alleging that Verizon was using old Federal Communications Commission data to bash its Internet service in its Fios commercials. The two have been tussling fiercely ever since Verizon introduced Fios to the New York area, in a direct assault on Cablevision's market. Despite the newer service, Cablevision has been able to hold its own against the new entrant.

The competition has been brutal. In television, radio, mail, and online spots, Verizon claims that … Read more

Sprint Nextel may want to have another look at how Apple's iPhone operates on its network.

Enthusiast site AppleInsider conducted a test of how well the iPhone performed on the three main U.S. carrier networks. For AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the results weren't surprising: if you want speed, go with AT&T; for reliability, choose Verizon. That largely backs up their respective claims for the iPhone.

But AppleInsider found connection and speed issues with the Sprint iPhone, echoing some of the complaints from its customers. In particular, the speed of the network has been … Read more

There's more than one way to speed up a slow PC. For instance, you can upgrade your hardware by adding more RAM or a faster hard disk. You can remove a lot of your programs or reinstall Windows entirely. Or you can try a program like SpeedItup Free, a free tool for tweaking, cleaning, and boosting PCs, especially older and slower units. It works automatically in the background to recover memory resources, clean system caches, and erase browsing traces. Its Super Defrag tool is supposed to optimize hard disks, improving performance by up to 150 percent, according to its … Read more

A new study comparing the 3 U.S. iPhone carriers shows that AT&T is tops for data and browsing, more than doubling the download speeds offered by Verizon and Sprint.

While the data speed news does not come as too much of a shock for many who follow the mobile phone industry, it is interesting to note that the iPhone also reported better-than-expected call quality and reliability on AT&T's network. The study, performed by wireless communications analysts Metrico, shows that AT&T's call failure rate sits at 2.8 percent, slightly higher than … Read more

The physics surprise that rattled scientists in September--neutrinos seemingly traveling faster than the speed of light--has withstood one attempt by researchers to poke a hole in their own findings.

Earlier this year, the researchers clocked the subatomic particles traveling through the Earth from the CERN particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, to Italy's INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory 730 kilometers away. The result, if it holds up under scrutiny, challenges a core physics belief established by Albert Einstein that nothing can travel faster than light.

The new experiment used shorter bursts of neutrinos for more precise measurements, and it … Read more

Sugestron Speed Dial is a free Firefox add-on that lets users quickly return to any of their eight most frequently used Web sites. That's nothing new, you say, but Speed Dial also examines browser tabs and other non-Web locations, and it works automatically by analyzing your browsing habits. You can open pages with keystrokes, pin pages into position, and remove them quickly from the Speed Dial browser tab.

Speed Dial downloads, installs, and configures like any Firefox add-on. We opened the add-ons manager and clicked Speed Dial's More link, which took us to its program page. The page … Read more

The iPhone 4S on Verizon offered a good balance between call quality and data speeds during travels in California.

Question: Which is more important, call quality or data speeds? Let me state my bias up front: The Web running on 3G is really important to me. On any device. Whether it's a MacBook connected to a MiFi hot spot, a 3G iPad 2, or an iPhone. That said, is it important enough to justify sacrificing voice call quality?

This week I spent a lot of my time obsessing about the Web performance of my new Verizon iPhone 4S during … Read more

Opera Mini 6.5 brings this version of the alternative browser to iOS devices (version 6.5 has been available for Android for three weeks at the time of this review). We have had a chance to put the slimmed-down browser through its paces and it offers several features we think users will like. With the right tweaks, it may even become the favorite over Apple's Safari--if people are willing to give it a try.

The clean, elegant interface hides multiple useful features, with only five buttons to choose from, along with the address bar and search box. The … Read more