Make no mistake, LTE is quite likely the buzzword at CTIA 2008. That being the case, Nokia Siemens Networks is making sure it's part of the in-crowd by introducing a "LTE solution for radio and core networks [that] will enable operators to deploy WCDMA / HSPA and LTE in all major frequency bands, including the 700MHz and 1.7 / 2.1GHz bands that are of particular importance in North America." Apparently the outfit is assuming that winners of the recent spectrum auction will be champing at the bit to deploy new networks / services, and while we can only hope it's correct, the equipment to make it happen is seemingly ready to roll.

[Via PhoneScoop]

The collection of AWS handsets just keeps getting bigger, as Cricket is announcing a pair of its own in the SCH-r430 MyShot and SCH-r210 Spex. As for the former, you can expect a flip phone design, 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, web browsing / messaging capabilities and oodles of mundaneness. As for the candybar-styled Spex, you'll find built-in Bluetooth, a 1.5-inch 128 x 128 resolution display, speakerphone support and little more. Granted, both phones are tri-band -- meaning that they'll play nice in PCS, Cellular and AWS markets -- and thankfully, you won't be asked to take out a second mortgage to call one your own. The duo is available now for $149.99 and $119.99, respectively.

[Via PhoneScoop]

As the usual jollifications at CTIA roll on, ZTE has announced a new duo of ho hum handsets for the US market. Hot on the heels of the C88 comes the affordable C78 candybar and C79 flip phone. As for the former, you can expect a VGA camera, MMS / internet browsing capabilities and built-in Bluetooth, while the latter packs a 1.3-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, a 2-inch display and a microSD expansion slot. Both units operate on the AWS frequency bands in addition to the PCS and Cellular bands, but unfortunately, mum's the word on carrier / pricing information.

At this point, we're simply running out of metaphors for the egregious ways in which Motorola is abusing the industrial design of the original RAZR. Yes, Moto, we get it, it was a game-changing phone -- in 2004. Heck, we'll even give it a free pass for 2005 and 2006. But a new one in 2008? Seriously? Sure enough, the new V3s variant rocks out with CDMA support on the 800, 1900, and 1700MHz bands, making this the first RAZR of any sort to support AWS. Cricket just launched its first AWS phone, so we wouldn't be surprised to see this one land over there, too. Oh wait, our bad, Motorola did change one thing about this phone: the "A" has been dropped from the name. The manual calls out the V3s as the "MOTORZR," possibly in preparation for a broad new marketing campaign that's virtually identical to the old, but with even fewer vowels. Your guess is as good as ours.

It doesn't look like much, but it's the innards of UTStarcom's unassuming CDM7126 flip that makes it a superstar. It turns out that this is the very first CDMA phone to launch in the US on AWS bandwidth, meaning that in addition to the typical 850 and 1900MHz support, this one adds in a little extra coverage punch via the new 1700MHz spectrum that T-Mobile is also sharing for its 3G services. We spied the CDM7126 at CES earlier this year -- hence the somewhat unusual picture -- and while we can't find it hiding out on carrier partner Cricket's website, residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma should be able to march into stores as soon as today to pick 'er up. Don't get too excited, though; other than the noteworthy use of AWS, the phone lacks EV-DO and an external display. Yikes!

[Via Phone Scoop]

It's no secret that Nokia's waiting in the wings with its low-end 3555 flip for T-Mobile, but here's the thing: as low-end as it may be, it's still 3G, which makes it a blockbuster by T-Mobile standards. The latest intelligence indicate that T-Mob's liking March 17 as the retail release date for the phone, featuring myFaves support, stereo Bluetooth, microSD slot, speakerphone, and a VGA cam -- not bad, considering the fact that it'll almost certainly be within a few bucks of free on contract. Perhaps the best part of this whole document, though, is the verbiage directed at sales staff imploring that the 3555 be sold "without any reference to UMTS," and if the customer specifically asks about the phone's 3G capabilities, there are a few canned responses (nothing we don't already know, really) designed to shut the customer up and get 'em out the door with a smile on their face and a 3555 in their pocket.

[Thanks, Mumbo]

It's awesome how Nokia's 3555 looks like a giant beatin' stick when it's unfurled, but rest assured, it's little more than a low-end 3G flip. We'd heard a while back that the phone would be finding its way to AT&T to slot in underneath the midrange 6555, and it turns out they're going to try to kill two birds with one clamshell by offering it on T-Mobile, too. Like we said, AT&T's 3555 is 3G ready, and happily, the FCC documentation for this version shows the presence of 1700MHz support implying that it'll rock out on T-Mobile's 3G network just the same -- what few slivers of it are up and running, anyhow. Then again, exactly what is it that we're going to be doing with 3G on that cute little display?

There isn't necessarily any single morsel of news here, but 3G Americas -- the group responsible for keeping GSM on the up and up this side of the pond -- just wants everyone to know that it likes AWS' chances for gaining ground in this part of the world for new HSPA (and eventually, LTE) deployments. Yanks may know AWS better as the weird flavor of bandwidth T-Mobile has gotten stuck with for deploying its desperately overdue 3G services; it utilizes spectrum in both the 1700 and 2100MHz spaces to push bits around, and while it hasn't yet been commercially deployed on a wide scale, the consortium points out that AWS spectrum auctions are in the pipe for Canada, Chile, and Mexico, among others. Naturally, that's very good news for anyone who finds themselves shopping for an AWS handset down the road, seeing how broader support across borders leads to broader manufacturer support -- a fact that 3G Americas is also quick to note. European and Asian buy-in is another matter altogether, but we'll take what we can get.

[Via Phone Scoop]

T-Mobile is apparently in a tizzy over the apparent slow pace which the government -- like law enforcement and homeland security -- is moving to free up the 1700 MHz spectrum that it spent heavily on in last year's AWS auction. After spending a cool $4.1 billion on 120 licenses for spectrum and earmarking another $2.1 billion for the UMTS / HSDPA upgrades, we get that they're peeved. Unfortunately for T-Mob, $1.1 billion of the AWS auction blood money will be used for the government's spectrum shift and they have up to six years to get it done -- though in T-Mobile defense, they've offered up $50 million to help speed up the process. It looks like it will be a tough slog for the last-place-in the-3g-race crew, here's hoping things work out soonish.

[Via PhoneScoop]

So we've been sitting on this whole E90 controversy for a few days here, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fact is, a part of us is hoping that we can will an HSDPA 850 / 1700 / 1900-sporting Nokia E90 into existence, but we shouldn't have to; the need for firms like Nokia and Sony Ericsson to wake up and spend the extra few bucks to shove global 3G radios into every last one of their phones is painfully obvious. Anyway, numerous readers have pointed out that the document in the E90's FCC filing referencing WCDMA on the 850, 1700, and 1900MHz bands is merely pointing out (for no good reason, may we add) the FCC's own radiation limits on those bands, and is probably not indicative of what bands are present within any particular device. We personally wouldn't think the FCC needs to be reminded of those limits in a test report, but perhaps we'll let the technicians be technicians here and we'll stick to our writin' gig. If y'all hear any good news about Nokia coming to its senses on this one, please be pals and pass on the good news -- but in the meantime, we'll go back to our 3G bellyaching.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

As expected, T-Mobile has provided full disclosure today on exactly what it plans to do with all that juicy spectrum picked up in this summer's FCC auctions. Having been left out of the 3G race put on by its fellow national carriers, it comes as no surprise that T-Mobile has officially committed to rolling out UMTS / HSDPA on the 1700 and 2100MHz bands at a cost of some $2.1 billion. Unfortunately, the specrum is a few megahertz off from the UMTS 2100 used elsewhere, meaning existing 3G handsets designed to operate in Europe will be relegated to doing their 2.5G thing when roaming stateside; that being said, beggars can't be choosers, and we're sure T-Mobile is ecstatic to simply have somewhere to drop some next-gen data. Perhaps understanding that the wireless customer base at large can be both fickle and impatient, the nation's fourth-largest carrier is wasting no time getting its 3G equipment set up -- the rollout begins, like, now (they claim half of NYC's hardware is already in place) and will continue through the next several years, with compatible handsets and peripherals hitting retail sometime in mid 2007. Seeing how we're writing this very article from a 3G connection ourselves, all we can say is that it can't come a moment too soon.

[Thanks, Hrag S.]

We're sure that you've been following the FCC's blow-by-blow coverage of the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum auction as closely as you would the "So You Think You Can Dance" competition, but just in case you've been busy for the last 161 rounds of bidding, we're here to let you know that the results are in and the winners have been crowned (assuming that they cough up the millions or billions of dollars they've pledged, that is). This wireless horse race has remained mostly unchanged for the last few dozen rounds -- after the DirecTV-Echostar consortium known as Wireless DBS dropped out of the running, even we mostly lost interest -- with T-Mobile finally emerging as the seemingly largest beneficiary. For a cool $4.1 billion (yes, that's billion with a "b"), the Mob picked up 120 licenses covering most of the US, a move that was essential for the company to kick-start its rather slow entrance into the 3G data game. Other big winners included Spectrum Co. and AWS Wireless, who picked up 137 and 154 licenses, respectively, along with Verizon (13 blocks covering most of the Eastern US) and MetroPCS, which snatched up 8 licenses in key areas such as Texas and Detroit. Overall, 104 bidders made it through the entire auction to pick up a grand total of 1,087 licenses, with the biggest winner of all being the good ole US government: the total amount of loot that was bid reached a staggering $13.7 billion, which is basically found money considering that everyone was simply battling over the right to use invisible radio spectrum. If you're at all interested in a more specific run-down of who got what and for how much, hit the Read link to check out the auction home page, where the FCC has thoughtfully posted about a million pages of charts, tables, and graphs laying it all out in excruciatingly boring detail.

[Via MocoNews]

When the FCC graciously pushed back the AWS auction date from June 29 to August 9 of this year -- putting us a month further from universal free wireless broadband, as far as we're concerned -- we knew there was trouble brewing in paradise. The agency's official line was that bidders needed more time to get ready for the bank-busting auction (expected to raise somewhere between $8 and $15 billion), but a handful of smaller potential bidders were threatening a lawsuit to get the rules changed, claiming that the auction was stacked against them. Apparently, the spat stems from a rule limiting auction discounts -- actually designed to help small bidders -- to companies that have buddied up with larger bidders, a rule that makes sense to us. A request to stay the auction eventually found itself before a US Court of Appeals, which ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that damage was being done to their chances in the auction by letting it proceed, and furthermore, "The public interest also militates strongly in favor of letting the auction proceed without altering the rules of the game at this late date." We couldn't agree more, let's get this show on the road -- we have some pay-per-use WiFi accounts to cancel.

If you were planning to invite the guys over for everybody's favorite "spectrum auction night," you might want to rethink those plans. Turns out the FCC is delaying the advanced wireless services (AWS) auction from June 29 to August 9. They're excusing it by saying that applicants need more time to prepare for the sale, but there's another problem rearing its head that the FCC might be buying time to deal with: Three small companies are threatening to sue the FCC over the recently revised designated entity rules, which were ironically changed to help out small companies in competing against the big carriers for wireless spectrum. Those very major carriers are fine with the new designated entity rules, which make it harder for large carriers to use small organisations to nab spectrum for them, and want to go ahead with the auction as soon as possible. We're not quite sure what to make of this, but it looks like there might be quite the legal battle, which just means more months between us and that golden dream of free national wireless broadband.

[Via Phone Scoop, thanks Marty]