WebProNews

Tag: Cellular

  • Dish Network Moves Ahead With 5G, Signing Seven New Tower Deals

    Dish Network Moves Ahead With 5G, Signing Seven New Tower Deals

    Dish Network has signed seven new wireless tower deals, as it moves ahead to become the fourth largest carrier in the US.

    Dish Network has primarily been known for satellite TV service. Under current leadership, however, the company has been working to become a wireless carrier. When T-Mobile bought out Sprint, one of the government’s conditions of the merger was selling off some of their prepaid assets, which Dish bought as well as licensing spectrum to the company. Regulators were worried about the implications of the market going to three carriers, and wanted Dish to become a viable fourth option.

    Dish has been been moving full-steam-ahead as it works to build a wireless network from scratch. In its latest efforts, it has signed tower deals with Harmoni Towers, Mobilitie, Parallel Infrastructure, Phoenix Tower International (PTI), Tillman Infrastructure, Tower Ventures and Vogue Towers. This will provide Dish with access to over 4,000 towers and wireless sites, coast-to-coast, in addition to its spectrum agreements with T-Mobile.

    “Securing strong tower partners is a key component of any network expansion, and is tremendously important for DISH’s rapid roll-out of a new, nationwide 5G network,” said Dave Mayo, DISH Executive Vice President of Network Development. “Each of these new tower partners will play an important role in bringing our network to life, connecting next-generation wireless service to American consumers and enterprises.”

    “We are excited to partner with DISH and look forward to being a part of their nationwide 5G network deployment,” stated Lawrence Gleason, President, Harmoni Towers. “We believe our growing portfolio of newly constructed towers provides a unique opportunity to quickly and efficiently deliver the wireless infrastructure solutions DISH requires.”

  • iOS 9’s Cool New Feature Could Be a Data Suck

    I’ll tell you up front, the point of this is going to boil down to if you have a lot of data to spare, it’s great and if you don’t, well, it might not be. But we’ll go through it anyway.

    Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 9, has a cool new feature. It’s called Wi-FI Assist, and it’s enabled by default.

    When Wi-Fi Assist is enabled, it automatically switches over to cellular data when Wi-Fi connectivity is weak. Apple products never want to let go of Wi-Fi. The signal might be terrible, but iOS will cling to any available Wi-Fi – even if it’s so slow as to render your phone a brick – so this is a welcome feature.

    Unless you’re watching your data consumption.

    The feature, which by design forces your phone to use more cellular data than it probably would normally, is opt-out on iOS 9 – so some people could be blowing through data and not even know it right now.

    If this is you, and you want to turn it off, it’s easy. Just head to Settings > Cellular and scroll all the way to the bottom. There you’ll find the Wi-Fi Assist option.

    But if you have enough data to spare, Wi-Fi Assist is a pretty cool feature and you should probably keep it enabled.

  • South Korea Changing Cellular Service Policies

    South Korea plans to further implement a new blacklisting policy regarding mobile device distribution on May 1st, in an effort to breakup telecom monopolies in that country. The new deal would make mobile devices more readily available for sale, allowing consumers to pick up phones in malls, supermarkets, gas stations, device manufacturer factory stores, etc.

    SK Telecom and KT are presently the largest service providers in South Korea, and presently sell the vast majority of phones that work on their network. The new ‘blacklist,’ fostered by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) was launched last June, and also seeks to better stabilize cell phone price points, which have been historically established by the aforementioned telecoms – who have practiced a ‘white list policy,’ forcing users to buy their products. Soon, if a device is compatible with a network in the region, it can be used regardless of where it was purchased. The new competition the program will facilitiate is hoped to drive down prices.

    Some critics of the policy state that the big telecoms will withhold deals from blacklist clients, and favor white list customers, which would drive up service prices. Either way, carriers, device manufacturers and retailers are all aligning under a computerized management database for the May 1st deadline.