AT&T still under fire despite loosened FaceTime restrictions

Free Press is leading yet another charge against AT&T, claiming the carrier has still not gone far enough to allow all of its iOS customers to use FaceTime over cellular if they choose.

AT&T recently opened things up for those that were not on a shared data plan but on individual tiered data plans to use the feature.  However, it appears that customers on the legacy “unlimited” data plans are not allowed to take advantage of the feature and Free Press is on its virtual soapbox to get the word out.

Launching a new on-line sounding board of sorts, Free Press has a new initiative titled, AT&T: Your World. Blocked. It allows AT&T customers to share their thoughts on the issue and in a short period of time, nearly 13,000 customers have already chimed in, some with quick one-liners, others with a bit of thought put into their comments and others that compare their data to onions on a hamburger.

Free Press asserts that AT&T’s actions to restrict the FaceTime feature to specific pools of customers is in violation with the principles of net neutrality. Moreover, the advocacy group contends that this is only the beginning and that AT&T intends to exert efforts to remove all local and national regulations that require it to maintain an open network – accusations rooted in AT&T’s stated desire to abandon traditional telephony and operate a fully unregulated IP-telco. 

Free Press is inviting any and all AT&T customers to share their thoughts on the new initiative.

sources: Free Press via The Verge

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Despite record number of smartphone activations, Verizon loses $1.93 billion in Q4

Despite adding 2.1 million post-paid subscribers in the fourth quarter, as previously announced, and activating a record number of smartphones, Verizon Communications reported a $1.93 billion loss for the period. That works out to a loss of $1.48 for the quarter vs. a loss of 71 cents a share in the year ago period. But most of that red ink was spilled as a result of one-time charges such as pension costs and money spent to keep cell towers running in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Removing the one time charges results in a profit of 45 cents a share for Verizon, but that figure still failed to meet Wall Street expectations of 52 cents a share. Revenue rose 4.5% to $30 billion, topping forecasts of $29.8 billion.

Other figures cited by Verizon for the quarter include low retail post-paid churn of .95%. Verizon now has 92.5 million post-paid accounts and a total of 98.2 million retail customers. The carrier's LTE signal blankets 273 million people in 476 markets. That places Verizon on top of the charts as the largest U.S. carrier and the carrier covering the most markets with LTE.

It should be noted that the earnings numbers are for the entire company which includes Verizon's non-wireless operations such as cable television
source: Verizon via BGR

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AT&T still under fire despite loosened FaceTime restrictions

Free Press is leading yet another charge against AT&T, claiming the carrier has still not gone far enough to allow all of its iOS customers to use FaceTime over cellular if they choose.

AT&T recently opened things up for those that were not on a shared data plan but on individual tiered data plans to use the feature.  However, it appears that customers on the legacy “unlimited” data plans are not allowed to take advantage of the feature and Free Press is on its virtual soapbox to get the word out.

Launching a new on-line sounding board of sorts, Free Press has a new initiative titled, AT&T: Your World. Blocked. It allows AT&T customers to share their thoughts on the issue and in a short period of time, nearly 13,000 customers have already chimed in, some with quick one-liners, others with a bit of thought put into their comments and others that compare their data to onions on a hamburger.

Free Press asserts that AT&T’s actions to restrict the FaceTime feature to specific pools of customers is in violation with the principles of net neutrality. Moreover, the advocacy group contends that this is only the beginning and that AT&T intends to exert efforts to remove all local and national regulations that require it to maintain an open network – accusations rooted in AT&T’s stated desire to abandon traditional telephony and operate a fully unregulated IP-telco. 

Free Press is inviting any and all AT&T customers to share their thoughts on the new initiative.

sources: Free Press via The Verge

View the original article here