photo credit: AT&T’s LG Thrive Pre-Paid Droid

AT&T is the last of the cell phone service providers to offer a Droid Smartphone in their pre-paid lineup. Beginning April 17th, AT&T is offering the LG Thrive for $180. The Thrive is a mid-range Droid, running on the Android OS 2.2 (Froyo). It only has a 3.2 megapixel camera and 160 MB of memory, although it can be expanded to 32 GB with a MicroSD card. The customers will have to pay pretty dearly for using this phone however. Customers can choose the “Smartphone 10 cents per minute” plan or “Smartphone $2 USD per day for unlimited talk and text” plan. Their choices for data plans range from $5 for 10 MB to $25 for 500 MB. There is no contract, which is probably a good thing since customers may dump AT&T once they find out how poor the service coverage areas are.

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photo credit: Cell Tower Fits in Your Hand

Mobile data usage grows almost exponentially. With more and more Smartphone usage, Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile technology in general, how to handle growing mobile data usage is the focus of wireless companies. Wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity. As their research and development costs grow, so do our cell phones bills. Costly cell phone towers being built at alarming numbers not only push our wireless bills up, but are unsightly as well. A tiny little device the size of a Rubik’s cube is being developed by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) that may be the answer to both cost and more cell phone towers.

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photo credit: Verizon to Pay $93.5 M

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay $93.5 Million to the US government. According to an article written by Brad Reed, ITWorldCanada, the original complaint was filed against Verizon in 2007. MCI (starting in 1999) began overcharging the government by “submitting invoices for payment to the United States for certain surcharges … that it is prohibited from charging the United States under Federal Acquisition Regulations … and the FTS 2001 contract.” Since Verizon and MCI merged in 2006, the courts found Verizon liable for MCI’s actions.

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photo credit: Cell Phone Bill

Have you been shocked by your cell phone bill lately? One in five people got an unexpectedly high bill in the past year, according to Consumer Report’s just released cell phone survey. Were you texting more than your plan allowed? If you recently upgraded to a Smartphone, you may have gone over your data usage allowance. How can you avoid cell phone bill shock? Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: 4 G in Seattle

Last month Verizon announced its plan to offer 4 G wireless service to Seattle by the end of the year. 4 G is a new-technology market already offered in Seattle by Sprint and T-Mobile, so naturally Verizon wants to join in the race. AT&T Mobility, having exclusive rights to the iPhone at this time (which is NOT 4 G), hasn’t announced plans to join the 4 G race in 2011. If they do join in the fray, can we assume then that AT&T will be pushing for 4 G iPhone? Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Bad Apple

24 of the world’s largest cell phone companies have joined forces to fight Apple’s domination of cell phone applications. The consortium is made up of big names like Sprint, Vodafone and China Mobile. The Wholesale Applications Community announced its intentions last week in Barcelona, Spain, at the Mobile World Congress. Read the rest of this entry »