Edward Baig

Over the last few years, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have leveraged artificial intelligence, computer vision and advances in voice recognition to deliver tools to assist blind individuals and people who are deaf, have motor impairments or other disabilities.

The CEO of a small wireless carrier that offers consumers an alternative to the major cell phone companies says AT&T refused to run its ads on AT&T's DirecTV service as a way to suppress competition with the telecom giant's own wireless service. AT&T, which is fighting an anti-trust suit brought by the Department of Justice that aims to halt its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, now says it's changed the policy that kept Mint Mobile's ads off its pay TV service.

The founder and former CEO of Boost Mobile USA says the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger should not happen.

Google is ending a practice in which certain Android cellphone location information was captured, following an online investigation that raised questions about how the information might impact your privacy.  The report states that software on Android phones gathers location data and sends it back to Google, even if you’ve actively turned off location settings on your phone, haven’t used any apps, or even if you haven’t inserted a SIM card from your carrier.

Speculation that T-Mobile and Sprint might pair up is mounting thanks to comments from both wireless carriers' executives, raising questions about what such a merger might mean for consumers who have largely benefited from the fierce competition that has come to define the business. Apparently, the nation’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers—and/or parent companies Deutsch Telekom and SoftBank— are already engaged in such informal discussions. Mobile users have been the beneficiaries of price wars surrounding "unlimited" data plans, among other goodies competition has thrust their way. Prices for various plans could rise, or at least not fall as much, if a deal goes through. But getting bigger is attractive for these companies and their parents because of the scale and potential synergies that they bring.

T-Mobile announced its intentions to build the nation’s first mobile “5G” wireless network, and is planning to use its recent haul in the Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction to pull it off. “We’re going to run at it and run at it hard,” said T-Mobile chief technology officer Neville Ray, who expects the company’s 5G rollout to begin in 2019, with a target of 2020 for full nationwide coverage. Rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T also have designs on building out the next generation of wireless. “But we’re saying that you’re going to see it at T-Mobile first,” Ray claims.

AT&T raised a few eyebrows fall 2016 when it announced experimental technology to deliver speedy “multi-gigabit” wireless Internet over existing power lines. Now that potential solution, called Project AirGig, appears much closer to becoming reality, and has moved well beyond the experimental stage.

AT&T says it is having “advanced discussions” with power companies to begin field trials of Project AirGig in at least two locations by the fall, and if all goes well commercial deployment could occur within 9 to 12 months. One of the trials will be in the US; a second, quite possibly, outside the country. Project AirGig technology involves placing small low-cost plastic antennas developed by AT&T Labs on top of existing power lines. These devices create a multi-gigabit signal that travels along or near the wire--but not actually through it. Using so-called mmWave surface wave launchers and inductive power devices, the signal can be moved from one pole to the next, and powered without a direct electrical connection. AT&T says it has secured more than 200 patents and patent applications. It also just reached an agreement to acquire a San Francisco company, FiberTower Corp, which holds mmWave spectrum rights. The AirGig technology can be deployed anywhere there are power poles, AT&T says: urban environments, rural areas, overseas.

Sprint has been aggressively trying to alter wide-held perceptions that its network lags other carriers—it has built an advertising campaign around the fact that its network reliability is within 1% of Verizon’s. On Dec 12, Sprint unveiled new technology that promises to take the nation’s fourth largest carrier well on the way towards superior next generation “5G” network coverage.

The tech is called High Performance User Equipment, HPUE for short, a geeky moniker that the company claims will bolster its high band 2.5 GHz spectrum coverage by up to 30%, including indoors where the company says most wireless traffic is generated. “The knock on high-band spectrum has been propagation and reach,” says John Saw, Sprint’s chief technology officer. “But at the same time we also know that high band spectrum is the future for the industry (and 5G.)” Saw says the limiting link for strong coverage is typically the uplink, that is the connection from your handset back up to the base station. “If we can improve that link it means that you can stretch coverage out even further,” he says. That’s the promise behind HPUE.

Candidate Donald Trump had publicly blasted AT&T’s proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, saying the blockbuster merger concentrated too much power in the hands of too few. The question now is will President Trump stick to that belief?

Time Warner stock was down 1.32% in early afternoon trading. AT&T shares on the other hand were up 0.74%. AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said Nov 9 that AT&T was “optimistic” that regulators would approve the deal. “From a company perspective, we really look forward to working with President-Elect Trump and his transition team. His policies, his discussions about infrastructure investment, economic development, and American innovation all fit right in with AT&Ts goals.”

The race to deliver the highest possible broadband speeds is on, with companies like Alphabet (Google Fiber), AT&T (GigaPower) and Comcast (Gigabit Internet) vying to deliver lightning fast Internet. But while most everyone agrees that the zippiest network speeds coupled with low latencies will ultimately provide a boon to consumers, it is not necessarily obvious how that future might play out, much less how soon we could get there?

To help every day folks imagine what’s possible, CableLabs, a non-profit innovation and R&D lab founded by leading companies in the cable industry, has released a short promotional film called “The Near Future,” to outline its vision through family vignettes. CEO Phil McKinney maintains it is about showing “what we believe the home of the future will look like that will require high-speed networks.” McKinney is talking network speeds of 1-gigabit-per-second, 3Gbps, and ultimately 10Gbps. CableLabs has been pushing a telecommunication standard called DOCSIS, shorthand for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. It's an approach for delivering fiber-like speeds over existing cable lines.