Sprint Nextel has taken its unlimited voice and data plans outside of the Bay Area and into Minnesota and Pennsylvania. The CDMA carrier's "unlimited" plans include unlimited voice, text and data use for $120 per month and all that plus unlimited PC data card use for $150. Based on these plans, we think these are really money savers for Sprint customers who use the maximum out of all the services Sprint Nextel offers. We don't want to imagine how many batteries these kinds of customers keep on hand, but we're sure those thumbs and vocal cords get a strenuous monthly workout, no? In addition to the St. Paul-Minneapolis and Philadelphia markets, Sprint Nextel's unlimited offering is also available in Sacramento, Stockton, Redding and Modesto, California and Reno, Nevada, according to the carrier.

After some recent testing, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is on the verge making Virtual Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) the transmission protocol for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks. Translation: the wireless networking company is going to be squeezing more data bits into existing allocated spectrum -- which is sure to please heavy-use data customers (and moreso to carriers). The NSN team used SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access) techniques to link two separate mobile devices with a base station simultaneously -- and on the same radio channel. Technically, that is quite a feat since radio communication becomes directional and quite efficient, unlike traditional cellular networks. Using current GSM or CDMA systems, wireless customers and towers broadcast in a 360-degree pattern -- but not so with SDMA technology. NSN's results included data uplinking at 108 megabits per second. That is a data rate we can get excited about -- and so should carriers needing to use existing spectrum more efficiently. Seeing as NSN just opened its doors a month ago, this is quite an impressive announcement, no?