4G device

mag 14

Apple drops iPad ’4G’ marketing — but not everywhere

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The new iPad ditched its claims to be a 4G device in some countries this weekend, after Apple capitulated to pressure over the way it was being marketed outside North America.

Reports first flooded in from Australia, where Apple’s been fighting a court case over its 4G claims, pointing out that the “iPad 4G” has been dubbed “iPad WiFi & Cellular”.

The same change has happened in some other countries, including New Zealand — but not everywhere, even when the device is not compatible with local networks.

In Sweden, France and Germany, for example, nothing has changed: the iPad is still labelled “WiFi + 4G”, and information that LTE is only supported by AT&T, Verizon, Bell, Rogers and Telus is relegated to a mere footnote. Meanwhile in the U.K., where the company is banned from using ’4G’ in its marketing because there is no 4G networking at all, the Apple website’s tech specs page still lists 4G capability — but with the same caveat brought up the page into the spec.

It paints a confusing picture, despite the fact that the reality is simple: outside North America, the new iPad’s higher speed connections won’t work.

The confusion is partly because different countries have had different issues with Apple’s marketing. Some have no 4G networks at all — and therefore have concerns that consumers are potentially being misled into buying a product for which there is not appropriate support. Others pointed out that the iPad’s higher speed frequencies — it operates at 700Mhz and 2100Mhz — are incompatible with their local 4G spectrum.

Why not simply change it full stop in the same way? Unless the changes are just being rolled out slowly, the company appears to have chosen a patchwork approach for reasons that are unclear. What’s happened where you live?

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Tagged with: 4G device • 4G networking • 4g-networks • apple • australia • europe • france • germany • international • internatoinal • ipad • new zealand • Swede • sweden • uk

mar 22

U.S. Cellular takes LTE live with Galaxy Tab 10.1

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The country’s fifth LTE network just went live. On Thursday, U.S. Cellular began selling its first 4G device, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, across its regional coverage area, though LTE speeds will be limited initially to smaller markets in Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin (you can find detailed coverage maps here). The carrier plans to expand 4G coverage to nine more states in the second half of the year to cover just over half of its operating territory — though it will be a while before it appears in U.S. Cellular’s flagship city Chicago.

U.S. Cellular is offering two monthly data plans and they’re both on the expensive side: $15 for 200 MB and $55 for 5 GB without contracts. The overage charges are a even more steep: 25 cents per MB. That works out to $250 per gigabyte, while most major operators are charging only $10 per gigabyte. U.S. Cellular is also imposing a $200 overage cap, preventing customers from racking up too many extra data charges.

Pricing on the tablet itself varies depending on where you are. U.S. Cellular is selling the Tab 10.1 for $100 cheaper in markets where it will has LTE today or will have LTE by the end of the year. So if you live in Greenville, N.C., or Lawson, Okla., you can buy the device for $499, but if you’re in Chicago or any other market not scheduled for 4G in 2012, it costs $599. Samsung is offering a $100 rebate on both devices, but since U.S. Cellular isn’t doing contracts, there is no further subsidy.

U.S. Cellular said the $100 discount in 4G markets is a limited time promotion. It’s trying to promote its new LTE service, but U.S. Cellular may also have an larger strategic motive. It’s a lot cheaper to deliver data over LTE than over its CDMA 3G networks, but it’s charging the same rates for both plans, so the more customers using the tablet on 4G the better.

As for speeds, don’t expect the breathtaking bandwidth we have witnessed over Verizon Wireless and AT&Ts’ new networks. U.S. Cellular only has half the 4G spectrum of its bigger counterparts, so it’s marketing average speeds of 3-6 Mbps. If Verizon and AT&T’s networks are any indication though, customers will often experience much faster connectivity than what U.S. Cellular is advertising. Verizon markets its LTE network as averaging 5-12 Mbps, but in dense markets like New York City, 4G customers have clocked connections well over 60 Mbps.

U.S. Cellular’s first smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S Aviator, is scheduled to go on sale in April, and a U.S. Cellular spokesman confirmed the launch is on track. Though the carrier hasn’t specified the exact cities and towns, in the latter half of the year it’s expanding into markets in Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. If you’re in U.S. Cellular’s coverage area and want to know if your town is on the LTE list, you can try a simple trick: Enter your zip code into the Tab 10.1 purchase page. If the tablet comes up with a $499 price, you’re area is scheduled for LTE. If it’s $599 you’re out of luck – at least this year.

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Tagged with: 3G networks • 4g • 4G device • coverage • lte • rural markets • Uncategorized

mar 13

1 in 3 smartphones sold in Q4 had 4G connectivity

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Aided by the launch of the iPhone 4S, the number of U.S. smartphones embedded with mobile broadband connectivity jumped in 2011, increasing from 6 percent at the end of 2010 to 35 percent in the last quarter, according to new data from the NPD Group. Smartphone penetration reached 44 percent in the U.S. last year, NPD found, meaning smartphones are becoming not only more popular but also a lot faster.

NPD uses the U.S. operators’ definition of 4G, which means LTE, WiMAX and, in the case of both T-Mobile and AT&T, includes any device capable of connecting to HSPA+ networks at peak rates of 14.4 Mbps (many of T-Mobile’s devices can far exceed those theoretical speeds, though AT&T’s cannot). That means NPD is classifying the iPhone 4S as a 4G device, even though Apple is not. The launch of the iPhone 4S over AT&T’s network in the fall thus precipitated a huge surge in 4G activations, which will only continue as the 4S sales ramp up and future iterations of the iPhone include HSPA+ and LTE.

“HSPA+, which has combined high throughput with practical power efficiency, has been a compelling evolutionary 4G upgrade option for carriers upgrading GSM networks,” said Ross Rubin, the executive director of Connected Intelligence for the NPD Group, in a statement. “With all major U.S. carriers committing to LTE as their 4G future, it is clearly the cellular network technology that will determine the baseline for the next generation of advanced smartphones.”

Given those definitions it should be no surprise that the balance of 4G smartphones is skewed toward AT&T and T-Mobile. According to NPD, 22 percent of all smartphone sales in the fourth quarter were for HSPA+ devices, led by the iPhone 4S. Sprint was the sole provider in the WiMAX category, which accounted for 6 percent of sales and was dominated by the HTC Evo 4G. LTE device sales rose from zero in 2010 to 7 percent last quarter, the results of a Verizon Wireless’ big 4G push in 2011. The leading LTE device was the HTC Thunderbolt, NPD said.

NPD also noted that some consumers are starting to cut through the 4G marketing clutter to form their own opinions on what constitutes 4G. In its surveys NPD found that 26 percent of consumers who bought LTE phones were specifically seeking a 4G device. But most consumers didn’t care one way or another. Only 9 percent of overall smartphone buyers registered 4G as a purchase consideration.

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Tagged with: 4G device • CNN • Ross Rubin • smartphone penetration

mar 08

Apple enters the 4G age; will carriers return the favor?

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Apple finally gave the wireless industry the 4G device it’s so long been craving. Even more importantly, LTE connectivity in the new iPad virtually assures similar treatment in the next iPhone. Apple has stepped up. Now it’s the operators’ turn to reciprocate by lowering mobile data prices.

On Monday, I wrote that if Apple failed to include LTE in its devices, it would have essentially impeded the mobile broadband revolution, letting business considerations override progress and the interests of its customers. 4G isn’t just a boon to the industry because it supports faster data. LTE also is a much more efficient mobile broadband technology, allowing carriers to build higher capacity networks for less investment and run them at lower operating costs. Translation: LTE is a much cheaper way for operators to ship you bytes.

By moving its mobile portfolio to LTE, Apple will precipitate an enormous migration of traffic from operators’ 3G EV-DO and HSPA networks to their LTE networks, which are much better equipped to handle the load, especially as they add capacity to those networks in coming years. That will not only save carriers a lot of operations cash; it will also let them avoid spending millions more on adding capacity and spectrum to those old 3G networks — money much better spent on their LTE rollouts.

Apple may not exactly be visionary when it comes to embracing new radio technologies, but it’s latching onto LTE when it really matters here in the U.S. And make no mistake, it had to make some sacrifices to do so. LTE still issues a powerful suck on device batteries. Apple had to account for that in the latest iPad design, though it seems to have largely overcome the problem. SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller reported the new tablet will run for 10 hours on HSPA+, but LTE would only cut that performance by an hour. The iPad also has to deal with LTE’s flaws as a brand-new networking technology. Verizon’s LTE network has gone down at least five times in the last year. Apple went ahead with LTE, warts and all, knowing full well that new 3G-only iPads and iPhones would have sold just as well.

Operators need to return the favor by dropping prices. It won’t happen immediately — it will take some time before Verizon Wireless(s vz, s vod) and AT&T can move the majority of their data traffic over to the LTE, even with new 4G iOS devices. In fact, the pricing plans that both carriers announced for the new iPad are exactly the same as those of its 3G predecessors. But eventually operators need to start cutting prices to reflect the new efficiencies built into 4G devices and networks.

I’m not naive enough to think carriers are suddenly going to slash data plan rates tomorrow out of any sense of duty. But they may be forced to. By the time the new iPhone launches, there will be five live LTE networks in the U.S. and another two on the way. At some point, competition is going to take over. With more spectral efficiency and network capacity to play with, one of them will start offering buckets of cheap data, triggering a price war. We’re already seeing the minutest evidence that operators are treating LTE capacity as more of a commodity than HSPA or 3G. Under AT&T’s new throttling policies for grandfathered “unlimited” subscribers, the ceilings are set at 3 GB for HSPA, but 5 GB for LTE.

Unlimited plans won’t suddenly make a comeback. But the price per gigabyte will come down incrementally. If it doesn’t, operators will have a different problem. Apple kicked off the mobile-data revolution when it launched the first 3G iPhone in 2008, and since then average data consumption has skyrocketed. There’s an underlying expectation that data rates will fall as usage ramps up. If that’s not the case, then Apple will take its revolution elsewhere. In some ways it already has, as evidenced by the vast majority of iPad customers that use their tablets solely over Wi-Fi.

Featured image courtesy of Flickr user Aidan Jones.

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