geekosystem

As of yesterday, it is now illegal to unlock a carrier-subsidized phone for use on another network. Doing so before your contract expires now puts you in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The move is meant to protect carriers from losing the money they spend to subsidize phones before they have a chance to earn it back through their service plans. There's already a We The People petition to reverse the decision, but is it worth trying to overturn this law?

Google Fiber -- Google's incredible Internet service -- is set to make some pretty impressive waves in Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS when it finally rolls out. We know this, Google knows this, the citizens of Kansas City know this, and now it's apparent that Time Warner and AT&T know this too. See, Google got a series of sweet deals out of Kansas City to build up the infrastructure required to host gigabit Internet connections and the other carriers in the area want a slice of that pie, because of course they do.

Mobile phone carriers have long flirted with unlimited data plans -- offering them and then not -- in order to trick convince customers to come to their side of the fence. This is nothing new, as both AT&T and Verizon have played this game before, but what is honestly the tiniest bit shocking is how these companies seem to think that unlimited plans aren't the future of their industry. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference yesterday, Fran Shammo, Verizon's CFO, said "that whole unlimited thing," in his opinion, "is going by the wayside."

You probably tend to think of computer animation as a relatively recent phenomenon, but it's actually a lot older than you're likely to give it credit for. While computer generated movies didn't start taking off until the '90s, computers were being used to generate animations as early as the 1960s. A video recently released from the AT&T archives shows off one of these early specimens, an animation from 1963, which very well may be the first computer animation ever; it's hard to really know. Nonetheless, it's an important piece of history.

Because we can't help incite enough wireless network flame wars, we're going to start the morning with what we'll call an "update" to the usual comparison between wireless network speeds in the United States. PC World performed a little test between major carriers, and the results are actually a little more surprising than what you might've guessed.

In a surprise move, AT&T has announced that they will begin unlocking certain qualifying iPhones starting this Sunday. Once unlocked, owners will be able to take their phones to whatever carrier they wish, even ones that don't officially offer the iPhone. Looking at you, T-Mobile.

Despite recent evidence that throttling doesn't seem to improve network performance, companies are still tightening their grip on your bandwidth. However, a recent court case could make data providers a little nervous. California judge Judge Russell Nadel has ruled in favor of Matt Spaccarelli over AT&T regarding Spaccarelli's claims that AT&T was throttling his iPhone's data connection. He walked away with a cool $850, which might only be just the beginning.

AT&T has caught a lot of flak recently for throttling unlimited data plans down to practically unusable speeds. AT&T stopped offering unlimited data plans a while ago, the only remaining users with unlimited plans being those who were fortunate enough to be grandfathered in. AT&T asserted that the throttling is to keep their network from being overtaxed, but many users feel more like AT&T is just trying to shove them over to a tiered plan. A new study by Validas, a wireless bill analysis firm, sides with the users showing that data usage on unlimited plans is comparable -- almost identical -- to usage on unlimited plans.

A recently leaked memo indicates that Verizon really wants its customers to use autopay or electronic checks. So much so that it's going to start charging a $2 convenience fee to all customers who utilize the pay by phone or online payment option. The big idea, from Verizon's perspective, is to push their customers into modes of payments where Verizon won't have to foot a credit card fee. Of course, with a $2 fee rolling out, it might actually turn consistent, forgetful fee-payers into a better cash cow, but either way, the fee will make the situation a win-win for Verizon. That is, if they don't mind getting their customers a little bit angry.

AT&T has spent months trying to convince the U.S. government to allow their $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile to go ahead. Along the way, the Telecom giants have argued the necessity of the merger, saying that the demands put upon the companies exceed the available wireless bandwidth allotted to them. However, the merger had several critics who said that merging the two companies would stifle competition. Today, AT&T announced that it was ceasing its bid for T-Mobile.

AT&T notified customers that it detected a hacking attempt that aimed at obtaining customer online account information. If you're an AT&T customer, you need not fret, as AT&T claims they don't believe any information was compromised in the attempt. Though AT&T service in the northeastern U.S. experienced a wireless outage earlier today for around three hours, AT&T claims this was unrelated to the hacking attempt.

It's a frequently quoted truism that despite a huge market for consumer electronics and an insatiable appetite for the Internet, the U.S. has lagged behind other countries in adopting super-fast data connections. However, a recent blogpost from Pyramid Research suggests that could be changing. According to their study, by the end of 2011 the bulk of  worldwide LTE connections will be handled by U.S. companies accounting for 47% of worldwide LTE traffic. Additionally, 71% of LTE handset sales will be in the U.S.. Most of these LTE connections will be handled by MetroPCS, AT&T, and Verizon. The last of these is particularly significant, since Verizon launched its LTE network in late 2010 and now provides the most coverage across the country with the standard -- some 60% of the nation. Verizon expects to have 185 million LTE users by year's end. AT&T, though only recently entering the LTE fray, expects to add 70 million users of their own users to the standard by the end of 2011.

AT&T CFO John Stephens announced that the company will launch LTE data service in five major cities this Sunday, September 18. The company aims to have 70 million people covered by the data standard by the end of the year.According to a report from Fierce Wireless, AT&T had previously identified the cities as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Though this will be the first rollout of LTE for the company, AT&T has already been selling phones and other devices that can take advantage of the network. The wireless standard, which is incompatible with 2G and 3G phones because it operates on a separate section of the wireless spectrum, is known for its high upload and download speeds; ability to handle many users; and is designed to deal with devices moving quickly from one section of the network to another. LTE has also been closely associated with other wireless companies in the U.S., namely Verizon which launched LTE service last year. It's worth noting that while AT&T's year-end goals for coverage are certainly worthy, it lags behinds Verizon's projected of 185 million users by the end of the same time. Clearly, they have some catching up to do. (via Fierce Wireless)

As you may know, AT&T has had its sights set on T-Mobile for a while now, and the two had agreed that AT&T would be allowed to gobble up T-Mobile for a scant $39 billion. If you had your money on the merger getting blocked for antitrust violations, you were right. Today, the U.S. Government sued to block the merger on grounds that it would "substantially lessen competition," at which point AT&T's stock took a 5% hit. If the merger should happen to go through after all, we will see the birth of the largest mobile service provider in the United States.

Due to cancelation language written into the merger agreement, AT&T has some significant incentives to fight these antitrust allegations. If the deal fails to go through, AT&T owes T-Mobile a check for $3 billion and reduced charges for dialing into AT&Ts network as part of a package that's worth somewhere around $7 billion.

Starting August 21, AT&T will be slimming down and removing its limited text messaging package -- ten bucks for one thousand texts -- leaving the twenty dollar Messaging Unlimited plan as the sole survivor. AT&T users will have no other choice regarding text messages when the change takes hold, other than a pay-per-text and pay-per-picture-or-video plan, which will cost twenty and thirty cents per messages, respectively. The Family Unlimited Messaging plan remains unscathed. An AT&T representative confirmed to Engadget that current AT&T customers can keep their texting plans, even if they switch phones. Though the removal of the limited texting plan may seem inconsequential at first, there are likely to be a large amount of annoyed customers, since all AT&T is really doing is forcing customers to pay ten more dollars for text messages than said customers may have wanted. (via Engadget)