Verizon Wireless announced Friday that it plans to acquire 122 advanced wireless services (AWS) spectrum licenses from SpectrumCo, a joint venture formed by Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks, for $3.6 billion. The spectrum covers 259 million POPs. Comcast owns 63.6% of SpectrumCo and will take home $2.3 billion from the spectrum sale, Time Warner owns 31.2% of the company and expects to receive about $1.1 billion, and Bright House Networks will make roughly $189 million on the deal. As part of th...

4G is a hot topic here on BGR and as such, we’ve likely become more numb than we should when it comes to advertised data speeds. We’re so used to seeing “theoretical limits” that are so far from reality we just chuckle and move along. The wireline broadband industry, however, is a different beast. According to a study recently conducted by the Federal Communications Commission, major broadband Internet service provides in the U.S. deliver data speeds that are generally between 80% and ...

Time Warner has been ordered by a U.S. District Court judge in Washington to identify hundreds of people accused of illegally downloading movies over its broadband network. The ISP had previously argued that identifying the accused parties would be “unfairly expensive and time-consuming,” and it asked that the judge reject the subpoenas for subscriber information. Of the three pending cases where subpoenas for subscriber data were issued, the judge agreed to quash one, as the plaintiff, Maverick E...

Following the crazy storm of tech news that rained down from Vegas yesterday, it’s hard to believe that today is actually the official start of the 2011 Consumer Electronics show. But today is the day, and things are set to pick up right where they left off last night. Verizon Wireless CEO Ivan Seidenberg has been called on to deliver the first big keynote today, and the focus will be LTE 4G. AT&T set the ber pretty high yesterday, but Big Red still has the jump with LTE already having been deployed...

Kind of… Cablevision and Time Warner are spending $10 million to provide WiFi service to over 30 parks in NYC as part of a deal to renew the cable companies’ cable TV franchises. Here is the catch though: internet use over Wi-Fi is free, but it’s limited to up to (3) 10 minute sessions a month, a total of 30 minutes of usage a person. If you want to get your SlingBox on after that, it’s going to cost $0.99/day to access the internet. Not an exorbitant amount of money, but definitely no...

Cable and satellite television operators may be in talks with entertainment companies to develop new TV packages that offer fewer channels at a lower cost to consumers. With the average television bill hovering around $80, and the economy struggling, many subscribers are dropping this non-essential service and turing to cheaper, online alternatives like Hulu and Netflix for their home entertainment. This trend has, seemingly, not gone unnoticed by those in the media business. Time Warner CEO, Glenn Britt, co...

Big news coming out of the NY/NJ/CT tri-state cable companies, and it’s downright exciting. Cablevision, Time Warner, and Comcast have all teamed up to announce a roaming agreement that will allow their subscribers to freely roam on any of the companies Wi-Fi networks. Think about that for a second… as long as you are a Cablevision, Time Warner, or Comcast customer, you can get free Wi-Fi access at practically limitless locations (thousands) all across the NY metro area from all three providers, ...

According to Taiwanese WiMAX CPE makers, Clearwire is slowing its purchases of WiMAX equipment as it begins to ramp up its wholesale business. This expansion is not unexpected as Clearwire first offered wholesaler services in Q3 2009 and indicated that is looking to grow its wholesale business and add additional wholesale customers in the intervening quarters. Currently, Clearwire offers wholesale 4G services to Comcast, Sprint and Time Warner Cable, all three of which are strategic investors in Clearwire. Ea...

Midway, maker of everyone’s favorite cute and cuddly franchise Mortal Kombat, has not had a smooth run of late. To recap Midway’s recent plight in one sentence: In December, Sumner Redstone sold his 87 percent stake in Midway for all of $100,000 and the company proceeded to file for bankruptcy in February. Yikes. The creator of a bazillion Mortal Kombat titles isn’t dead in the water just yet however, as several companies are reportedly preparing acquisition bids. One such company, according...

AT&T is taking cues from Time Warner Cable and Frontier Communications by implementing a tiered broadband service for customers in Reno, NV – whether they like it or not. Lucky them, eh? Broadband customers will be limited with certain caps depending on their tiered pricing plans and will be charged per gigabyte exceeding their plan. According to AT&T, this has been a long time coming and it has already begun ironing out details with the FCC. Per the filing:In particular, AT&T plans to initi...