Sprint, SBC in Wi-Fi roaming pact
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Customers of Sprint Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. will be able to use both companies&#39; wireless Internet connections with less hassle under a reciprocal deal announced Friday.
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Starbucks has upgraded its Wi-Fi offering from a tall to a venti, switching partners from T-Mobile USA to AT&amp;T in a deal that will mean free coffee-shop wireless for millions of U.S. broadband subscribers.The chain&#39;s network of hotspots, the best-known in the U.S., covers more than 7,000 company-owned stores. Users of AT&amp;T Broadband and U-verse DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) services will get free access to the networks, and the carrier will soon extend benefits to AT&amp;T Wireless customers as well, according to a news release. AT&amp;T business customers with remote-access subscriptions will be able to buy unlimited, flat-rate access at any Starbucks location.AT&amp;T had 14.2 million lines of DSL in service at the end of last year. Its wireless arm has about 70 million subscribers. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany&#39;s Deutsche Telekom, said it had 28.7 million subscribers at year&#39;s end.Although 3G (third-generation) cellular networks are nearing typical wired broadband speeds, Wi-Fi hotspots in key locations such as airports, hotels and cafes remain an attractive option for people who need high-speed connectivity on the road. T-Mobile has provided the Starbucks networks as part of its national hotspot service for several years, with a variety of paid plans including US$6 for one hour, $9.99 for a day and $29.99 per month with an annual agreement. Prices under AT&amp;T will be slightly lower, including $3.99 for two hours and $19.99 per month.But the deal also opens up a whole new customer base for the hotspots: Starbucks customers with an active Starbucks stored-value card will get two hours of free access per day. All that&#39;s needed to keep a card active is to have money stored on it and to buy something with it at least once a month, said Starbucks spokeswoman Bridget Baker. Starbucks employees will also get free access.AT&amp;T will take over the networks market by market, starting in the next few months and finishing by the end of the year, the companies said. Under a roaming agreement to be implemented by March 31, T-Mobile subscribers will also be able to use the AT&amp;T Starbucks networks, Baker said.The deal significantly expands AT&amp;T&#39;s network of hotspots, giving it 17,000 U.S. sites (about 70,000 worldwide) and adding a popular Web-surfing location to its lineup, which today includes McDonald&#39;s restaurants, Barnes &amp; Noble bookstores and some hotels and airports. It builds on an existing relationship in which AT&amp;T has provided back-end networks for Starbucks stores for more than 10 years, Baker said. The carrier will provide Starbucks an enterprise-class network with increased bandwidth and redundancy, according to the release.The prospect of high-speed access at Starbucks should help AT&amp;T attract new DSL customers and hold onto existing ones, telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan wrote in a commentary on the deal.&quot;The customer wins because they get to take advantage of money saving bundles, and AT&amp;T win&#39;s because it keeps customers happy which means hanging on to the customer in an increasingly competitive marketplace, and Starbucks win&#39;s because it expands their digital entertainment platform and gives customers more reasons to spend time in the stores,&quot; Kagan wrote.
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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel's ambitious Xohm WiMax vision will be based on a radical change in the way users pay for the service compared with cellular plans. Users will sign up for wireless broadband for a day, a month, or a year without a contract tied to a specific device. Payment could be made via a credit card wirelessly. The pricing approach, described in broad strokes by Sprint chief technology officer Barry West Wednesday at WiMax World in Chicago, will be designed on the principle of "affordable" broadband and "around the needs of the individual," he said in an interview. That approach breaks down the concept now seen with cellular plans, in which users typically buy a two-year contract in part to subsidize the cost of a single mobile device that a user is locked into using. A Sprint spokesman explained that the proposed pricing will rely on subscriptions, but not contracts in the sense associated with typical cellular contracts. And the longer the subscription a customer buys, the cheaper the service will be, he said. West said Sprint will announce pricing early next year, but also said it will probably be based on tiers of service. The cost of devices, such as laptop cards able to transmit mobile WiMax, will approximate the cost of a 3G broadband laptop card today, he said. In response to a question from an audience member, West also said that Xohm will not be backed by what the industry calls service-level agreements, a kind of guarantee that a minimum bandwidth will be provided or the customer receives a refund. "We will give you a good experience, but not SLAs," West said. Several Sprint executives have described Xohm WiMax speeds that are expected to be 2Mbps to 4Mbps, although the technology is capable of 10Mbps. At a demonstration onboard a moving tour boat on the Chicago River Tuesday night using Motorola gear, mobile WiMax shared across 12 laptops and cell phones was clocked at 2.5Mbps downward. West noted that the demonstration was across only one channel, and that Sprint will be able to offer many channels to handle users at a single antenna site, offering plenty of bandwidth for many users. West, who calls himself a technology "pragmatist," said he does not envision any hidden technology bugaboos in the nationwide rollout of Xohm planned for next year. In the next three years, he has predicted 50 million devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, will be WiMax-certified. Getting the certification process for interoperability in order will be difficult, but he said that even if there are 100,000 different devices, it is conceivable all of them could be served from only 10 different chip sets. "That's not unmanageable," he said. By contrast, West said Xohm's biggest challenge will be servicing the needs of 210 million Internet users in the United States alone, and meeting their demands for access, applications, and services. In his keynote, West said some critics have already begun to question whether West's predictions for Xohm's growth are too ambitious. He said commercial rollouts are still on schedule for the second quarter of 2008, and work has begun on 10,000 base stations nationally, with 20,000 WiMax antennas. The initial rollout in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington in December is "pretty much on target," he added. As for competition, West said he doesn't see Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
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OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- Sprint (NYSE: FON - message board) and SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC - message board) today announced a reciprocal Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) Internet service roaming agreement that
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Customers of Sprint Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. will be able to use both companies' wireless Internet connections with less hassle under a reciprocal deal announced Friday.
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Telstra has launched Wi-fi roaming with five international wireless broadband operators giving Telstra customers travelling abroad access to WiFi hotspots in the UK (BT Group), USA (T-Mobile USA), Japan (NTT DoCoMo), Singapore (StarHub) and Malaysia (Maxis
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A group of major wireless operators, device and infrastructure vendors Tuesday released a proposed specification that the group claims will enable devices to seamlessly transition between cellular and wireless data networks.
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Lucent, Motorola and Nortel won about $3 billion in contracts to help Sprint upgrade its wireless network to handle high-speed Internet traffic over mobile phones and computers.
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In keeping with the company&#39;s bundling strategy, SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC) on Monday said it will drop the price of its FreedomLink Wi-Fi service to $1.
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By Associated Press  Two months ago, Fred Poteet walked into a Sprint store to resolve some technical problems with his cellphone service. When he walked out, he had a new wireless contract -- with Cox Communications, his cable TV operator.
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With just a few months to go before the launch of its next-generation wireless network, Sprint Nextel Corp. has a distinctly modest lineup of compatible devices.
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Sprint Corp. (FON.N) said on  Friday it made a deal that will let it nearly double the number of places it offers short-range wireless Internet connections.
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U.S. telecom carriers Sprint (NYSE: FON) and SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC) have announced a reciprocal deal, under which their customers will be able to use both companies' wireless Internet connections more easily.
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WASHINGTON - Nextel Communications Inc. and Sprint Corp. reached a tentative agreement to merge, a deal that would create the nationâs third-largest cellular company.
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SBC Communications Inc. (SBC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it would offer access to its network of 3,900 public Wi-Fi Internet access points to its high-speed Internet subscribers for $1.
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Wi-Fi hotspot owners BT Openzone, Singapore&#39;s StarHub, Malaysia&#39;s maxis, Japan&#39;s NTT Com, T-Mobile, Australia&#39;s Telstra and Telecom Italia have entered into a broad roaming agreement to allow each company&#39;s customers to access the others&#39; networks.
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Ushering in New York City's fourth-generation high-speed wireless internet, Sprint Nextel taps Samsung to provide WiMax infrastructure for the city. The same duo will create infrastructure and equipment for similar networks in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Boston.