AT&T Gets GM

AT&T Monday said it will provide LTE wireless services to most General Motors automobiles starting in 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.

A multi-year agreement between AT&T and GM subsidiary OnStar calls for vehicles to continue getting OnStar’s safety and security services while adding information and entertainment services for backseat drivers, AT&T said.

Millions of vehicles will be affected, as AT&T rolls out LTE to reach 300 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2014.

The AT&T-GM announcement is part of an explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet, many of them wirelessly, in what some have termed the “Internet of Things.”

“The is a big announcement for connected devices,” Glenn Lurie, president of emerging enterprises and partnerships at AT&T, said in an interview at Mobile World Congress here.

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GreenPeace Still After Apple

A Greenpeace study has revealed that Indian outsourcing firm Wipro made the biggest strides to becoming a greener company this year, while Apple continued to lag behind.

Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics” is a 16 company ranking that sets out to discover what leading electronics firms are doing to reduce their impacts on the environment.

This year’s study found that Indian firm Wipro, which has a consumer electronics division, was making important progress toward becoming greener.

“There is not a single reason why companies like HP, Nokia and Apple can’t do what Wipro is doing,” Greenpeace’s IT analyst Casey Harrell said.

Wipro was ranked number one in Greenpeace’s survey because of its efforts to increase its use of renewable energy, bring energy efficient products to market, nail down an effective product take back strategy and advocate for better governmental energy standards.

Harrell said that advocacy is an important step companies should take to becoming more environmentally aware. However, he believes that many companies are not doing enough to get the government involved in green initiatives.

“These companies invest a lot of money in advocacy, just not for energy,” continued Harrell.

“They invest in advocacy for things like IP reform and tax reform, just not for energy policy reform.”

Greenpeace’s study criticized Apple for its lack of advocacy efforts. The environmental agency gave the Iphone maker a ranking of zero when it came to environmental protection advocacy.

Apple has previously been slammed by Greenpeace for its decision to use glued-in batteries in its latest Macbook devices.

While many US companies rated poorly on environmental advocacy, Harrell still held out hope that some firms will try to do more going forward. As an example for his optimism, Greenpeace’s IT analyst said that in 2010 HP came out against the controversial California Proposition 23.

Another key area that Greenpeace thinks electronic firms need to improve upon is the lack of proper warranties on devices. Harrell said that companies can make the most energy efficient products in the world but if consumers have to buy a new product each year it won’t matter.

“It is a huge problem,” said Harrell.

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Is Google Going Wireless?

They already sells phones and tablets, provides a wealth of online services and has been laying high-speed fiber to people’s homes. Now Google is apparently  weighing the possibility of a wireless network service as well.

Google has been in talks with satellite TV provider Dish Network over a possible partnership to build out a wireless service that would rival those from carriers such as AT&T and Sprint, the Wall Street Journal reported late last week.

The talks are at an early stage and could amount to nothing, and Google is just one of many companies Dish is talking to, according to the Journal, which cited anonymous sources. But it raises the prospect that Google might expand its business in a new direction.

Dish has been buying spectrum that could support a wireless service, although it still needs regulatory approval to set one up. In an interview with the Journal Thursday, CEO Charlie Ergen said the partners Dish is talking to include companies that don’t currently have a wireless business.

Google declined to comment on the report, the newspaper said.

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at@t Wants More

AT&T plans to buy NextWave Wireless, a holder of spectrum that could be used for mobile data services, for about $600 million.

NextWave owns licenses for spectrum in both the WCS (Wireless Communications Services) and the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) band. AT&T said in a press release it plans to use that spectrum to feed “skyrocketing” demand for mobile data, but it will have to wait for an ongoing Federal Communications Commission review before it can take advantage of the WCS band.

The FCC auctioned WCS spectrum in 1997, but it has not been used for mobile data because of rules designed to prevent interference with satellite users in adjacent bands, AT&T said. In June, AT&T and satellite radio company Sirius XM filed a proposal to the FCC for using WCS while protecting the nearby satellite users, but the agency is still reviewing that plan. If it is approved, AT&T hopes to start using the WCS band in about three years.

The NextWave deal is only the latest in a series of moves by big mobile operators to secure more spectrum. AT&T characterized its proposed merger with T-Mobile USA last year, which was opposed by the FCC and other regulators, as first and foremost a deal to acquire spectrum. Verizon Wireless announced a deal earlier this year, which is still under FCC review, to acquire unused wireless licenses from major U.S. cable operators.

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T-Mobile To Make More Cuts

T-Mobile USA will eliminate an additional 900 jobs in a restructuring, on top of a 1,900-job reduction at its call centers that was announced in March, the carrier confirmed on Wednesday.

T-Mobile, now with about 36,000 employees, has faced more than two years of subscriber losses. Last year, the wireless carrier lost out on a $39 billion deal to be taken over by AT&T — federal regulators rejected the deal.

In its first quarter results announced May 9, T-Mobile said it lost 510,000 contract customers. It now serves 33.4 million customers.

Not having the iPhone 4S to sell, compared to the other three major U.S. carriers, also hurt T-Mobile and lead to more contract deactivations, the company said in its first-quarter results.

A T-Mobile spokeswoman said in an email that the elimination of 900 jobs was the result of a “restructuring of key functions and departments across the company, including the elimination of some positions and outsourcing of others.”

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iPhone Adds To Sprint’s Losses

Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected.

Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected.

Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 37 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Its profit margin based on operating earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) fell to 9.5 percent from 16 percent a year earlier but beat expectations for 8.6 percent, according to eight analyst estimates Reuters compiled.

“It’s still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations,” said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint’s targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.

The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.

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The FCC Gives AT&T The OK

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s US$1.9 billion buying of spectrum from Qualcomm on Thursday, allowing the carrier to salvage one ambitious deal to acquire more spectrum, after squashing its planned merger with T-Mobile USA.

AT&T announced its plan to buy the Qualcomm spectrum last December, a few months before it revealed the much larger proposal to merge with T-Mobile for $39 billion. It said both were motivated by the need for more radio spectrum to increase the coverage and capacity of its LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network. AT&T withdrew the T-Mobile plan on Monday after the FCC, the Department of Justice and others said it was not in the public interest.

With the Qualcomm purchase, AT&T will get 6MHz of spectrum across the country in the coveted 700MHz band, as well as another 6MHz of spectrum in five major metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the FCC’s order released Thursday. Those five markets represent about 70 million potential subscribers. The carrier has said it plans to use it as a supplemental downlink for its LTE network, allowing for faster and more consistent mobile data service.

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at&t Vows To Continue Quest

AT&T Inc plans to forge ahead with its deal to acquire Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless unit despite regulatory opposition, and it has the financial resources to close the acquisition quickly, a top executive said on Wednesday.

“We continue to move forward with our efforts to complete the T-Mobile transaction…and we will continue to pursue the sale,” AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said at the UBS media conference in New York.

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at&t Partners With China Telecom

AT&T Inc and China Telecom have agreed to broaden the range of their partnership in China and the United States and will look into supporting each other in other regions.

AT&T said the agreement would expand its services for business customers in China and that the companies would consider jointly developing services, including video conferencing and managed hosting.

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Hackers Attempt To Access AT&T Mobile

AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier, said it is investigating an “organized and systemic attempt” to access mobile customers’ information but that it did not believe any accounts were breached.

The company, which had 100 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter, said it is advising less than 1 percent of its wireless customers that there was an attempt to obtain information about their accounts.

It said that the parties involved appeared to have used “auto script” technology to see if AT&T telephone numbers were linked to online AT&T accounts.

Spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T’s “investigation is ongoing to determine the source or intent of the attempt to gather this information.”

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