Top U.S. carriers plot faster gadgets, services

Reuters reports that the next generation of high-speed internet services, tablets, smartphones, and other mobile gadgets could arrive faster than you would expect. The two biggest U.S. phone companies, AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, are stepping up plans to speed up their networks and deliver advanced devices to consumers as early as this holiday season with partners such as Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics. AT&T said it is planning to triple speeds for home internet services, and double speeds on its wireless network, while Verizon Wireless said it will be ready with a slew of high-speed phones earlier than it had previously suggested. “We still have a tremendous amount of opportunity in wireless,” John Stankey, AT&T’s operations chief said, dismissing suggestions from some telecoms analysts that the industry’s exponential growth days were over. “We’re at the front of that 10-year (growth) cycle in the mobile space today,” he said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York on May 14. While wireless carriers have to depend on data services for growth, because most people already have cellphones, Stankey sees opportunities in business applications. As industries add wireless connections to their equipment, such as medical devices and security systems, each business vertical could eventually generate a $1 billion a year in revenue, he said…

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Technology coalition seeks stronger privacy laws

A broad coalition of technology companies, including AT&T, Google, and Microsoft, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum said March 30 that it would push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws to protect private digital information from government access, reports the New York Times. The group, calling itself the Digital Due Process coalition, said it wanted to ensure that as millions of people moved private documents from their filing cabinets and personal computers to the web, those documents remain protected from easy access by law enforcement and other government authorities. The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, wants law-enforcement agencies to use a search warrant approved by a judge or a magistrate, rather than rely on a simple subpoena from a prosecutor to obtain a citizen’s online data. The group also said it wants to safeguard location-based information collected by cell-phone companies and applications providers. Members of the group said they would lobby Congress for an update to the current law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was written in 1986—nearly a decade before internet use became mainstream. They acknowledged that some proposals were likely to face resistance from law-enforcement agencies and the Obama administration. This year, Justice Department lawyers argued in court that cell-phone users had given up the expectation of privacy about their location by voluntarily giving that information to carriers…

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iPhone users can now make internet-based calls

Users of Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone now might be able to save money by making internet-based phone calls over AT&T Inc.’s cellular network, reports the Los Angeles Times. Apple this week allowed new versions of several voice-over-IP services to begin working on the iPhone. Previously, iPhone users needed a wireless internet connection to make such calls, but the change will allow calls from anywhere that receives a strong enough 3G cellular signal. By using VoIP applications to sidestep the phone’s normal calling software, iPhone owners could avoid using up their monthly allocation of minutes from AT&T, potentially allowing them to choose cheaper plans. AT&T said in October that it had taken steps to allow iPhone users to make VoIP calls over the network, but Apple did not appear to approve those apps until this week. Riding the popularity of services such as Skype, internet telephony has become a fast-growing way for users to make low-cost domestic and international calls. Skype, which says it often has as many as 20 million users online at once, recently signaled its intention to submit its own 3G VoIP application to the iPhone…

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