Satellite TV provider Dish Network has offerred to acquire No. 3 U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel for $25.5 billion, bettering Softbank’s earlier bid of $20.1 billion for 70 percent stake of the company. Dish’s acquisition deal, a combination of cash and stock, represents a 13 percent premium over Softbank’s offer, taking the company’s stock up by as much as 17.8 percent.
The folks at RootMetrics conductive extensive tests on LTE performance across major U.S. carriers, and came out with results that put AT&T at the top spot for pure speeds, while Verizon came out victorious when it came to LTE coverage.
RootMetrics tested the top 77 US markets in the second half of 2012, collecting more than 725,000 data samples to compile its results, comparing the major carriers across a variety of parameters.
The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing Softbank’s $20.1 billion takeover of Sprint for national security and policing concerns and has asked the FCC to hold off on any decision until the review is complete. Though this sounds scary and dire, Sprint and Softbank had expected this review to occur. It’s standard procedure with foreign investments of this type and scale
If your iPhone is carrier locked—and your carrier won’t unlock it for you—and you want to legally unlock it, time’s running out. Starting Saturday in the U.S. unlocking your cellphone will be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and a no-no. At least if you do it yourself. As you’d expect, this will be challenged in court over whether DMCA applied like this is really following the intent of the law.
Consumer Reports released the results of its annual U.S. carrier customer satisfaction survey, ranking the four major networks based on their voice and data services, and customer support. The survey of 63,253 subscribers put AT&T at the bottom (again) and Verizon at the top (again), but there is a bright spot for AT&T it’s 4G network is the best of them all.
