Michelle Maisto

T-Mobile’s third major announcement, as part of a trio of “Un-carrier moves,” is that it’s abolishing overage fees. T-Mobile years ago moved away from charging customers for using more data than their service plan allowed, relying instead on “throttling,” the practice of transitioning users to a slower network. Now it says all customers, even those […]

BlackBerry spent much of 2012 and 2013 trying to shake off the image that it was locked in a “death spiral.” It was so succinct a descriptor of the company, in the weeks leading up to the delayed launch of the BlackBerry 10 platform, that after Canadian radio host Matt Galloway used it during an […]

AT&T hopes to expand its fiber broadband network business, called U-verse with GigaPower, beyond Austin and Dallas, Texas, and into bustling areas of North Carolina, it announced April 10. This expansion—which would have AT&T following Google into yet another region to lay fiber—is exactly the type of new growth that Comcast and Time Warner Cable […]

ISF Says Prepare Now for Security Threats Coming in 2016 by Michelle Maisto The Threat Horizon, 2014-2016 Over the next two years, the ISF expects businesses to move from a time of growing cyber criminality (2014) to crime as a service (CaaS) upgrading to version 2.0 (2015) and eventually encryption measures failing (2016). While in […]

Samsung, the company that topples all rivals when it comes to selling smartphones, has officially released its newest flagship device, the Galaxy S5 smartphone, along with three wearables, the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit. As of April 11, the devices were headed for 125 countries and became available from all major U.S. […]

NEW YORK—BlackBerry has replaced its annual BlackBerry World conference with half-day BlackBerry Experience events in cities around the world. It opened its BlackBerry Experience here April 10 with a keynote from John Sims, its new president of Global Enterprise Services. In addition to sharing the company’s “vision,” Sims had a clear message for the customers […]

T-Mobile, on its second of three days of major announcements, continued on its mission to make tablets more convenient and affordable with the introduction of “Operation Tablet Freedom.” As of April 12, T-Mobile customers can add a tablet to a postpaid voice plan for no additional cost. Further, T-Mobile is offering tablet users 1 GB […]

NEW YORK—BlackBerry has no intention of exiting the handset business. Getting that message out loud and clear was a primary order of business April 10, as the company’s BlackBerry Experience: New York event got under way. “First of all—love the handset business,” CEO John Chen told a group of reporters, grinning at his bit of […]

T-Mobile kicked off the first of three days of “un-carrier announcements” April 9, with the introduction of a new Simple Starter plan. Priced at $40 a month, with the promise of no overage fees ever, it’s designed for “value-conscious Americans” who want “predictability and affordability.” The plan will be available April 12 and includes unlimited […]

Comcast and Time Warner Cable (TWC) are taking the necessary steps toward joining forces, an intention they announced Feb. 13, as part of a $45.2 billion deal in which Comcast would acquire 100 percent of TWC’s equity and its roughly 11 million customers. The cable giants filed a 181-page application and public interest statement with […]

Samsung has filed a patent for a device it’s calling the Gear Solo, a smartwatch that, as the name suggests, can operate without the companionship of a smartphone, Patently Apple reported April 7. The Korea Herald reported the same day that it has also learned of the Gear Solo from a source and confirmed that […]

Smartphone maker HTC continues to coax the public to listen to its peers. “We can’t make this stuff up,” HTC said in a marketing email that went out April 7, showing mobile search results for “HTC One” packed with glowing reviews. The message is the same in a new HTC television ad starring actor Gary […]