Category: AT&T

With the LG G5 officially announced today at MWC 2016, the question many have asked is if the phone will come to the US.  The answer is a resounding yes.  Both AT&T and Verizon have announced that they will be carrying the new LG device later this Spring when it hits US shores.   Both companies will be carrying the device itself along with the modules that are available for it as well.  For their part, AT&T has already put up a pre-release page for the G5 on their site which promises more information is coming soon.

In an offer that is very similar to that of T-Mobile a few weeks ago, AT&T is now offering a buy one – get a 2nd for free on the Samsung Galaxy S6.  The promotion is going on now through the end of March and when you sign up for service with the carrier or upgrade your device, you can take advantage of the offer.  The Galaxy S6 on offer is a 32GB model so for most people this will be plenty of storage and the 2nd one you get will be the same model.  It’s a pretty good deal if you are on AT&T and looking to upgrade your device and that of a family member.

After months of delays, AT&T has finally approved and with the help of Google is rolling out the Android Marshmallow update to Nexus 6 devices locked to the carrier.  In a support post, AT&T stated that the Marshmallow 6.0.1 update MMB29K is rolling out to a small group of devices but will be ramping up to 100% over the course of the next week.  The news is most certainly welcome to those Nexus 6 owners tied to the carrier as they are seemingly the last group with these devices to get the update.

The good news in all of this is that AT&T has opted to go to the December 2015 build of Marshmallow and not just to the original 6.0 release.  That means AT&T Nexus 6 owners will be more current on their security patches and other improvements that came in 6.0.1.  You can read about the improvements in the .1 release here as well as my review of Android Marshmallow

If you are a HTC One A9 owner on AT&T, it is a good day for you.  HTC’s Mo Versi announced on Twitter last night that the December Android Marshmallow update is now starting to roll out to your device.

Happy Tuesday! AT&T HTC One (A9) Owners – The latest security updates including improvements to the camera will be OTA’d out by tonight.

— Mo Versi (@moversi) December 8, 2015

When they released the One A9, HTC committed to having updates out for the device 15 days after they were released from Google.  So far, they are sticking to their promise but what makes this interesting is that AT&T is involved.  The commitment from HTC was that the updates would be released for unlocked devices, not those tied to carriers.  With AT&T getting the update out just days after it was released from Google, it would seem that the carrier is working hard to get device updates out quicker, something they have sorely lacked in the past.

The mobile international barriers continue to fall as AT&T announces a free talk, text and data plan for their customers traveling to Mexico. Starting tomorrow, November 13th, AT&T customers on Mobile Share Value plans will be able to add free-of-charge the ability to talk, text and 1GB of data to their phones for calls within and from Mexico to the United States.  It is the latest in the battle between the national carriers to include these basic services for customers traveling to Mexico and Canada as the North America continent becomes increasingly a “roam-free” zone.

In my day-to-day job, I look at disruptions in markets.  I have been in the unified communications business for 20 years and I am constantly on the look out for who is making waves in my industry both from my direct competitors and those that I like to call “edge of the empire”;  those on the fringe – the ones you don’t see coming out of left field until it is difficult to react to them. While some would look at endless research, spreadsheets and presentations as being boring, I love it.  It is a never ending challenge.

In the mobile carrier space, there once was a company that was out in left field.  T-Mobile had a marginal network, limited coverage and less-than-stellar customer service.  Other carriers didn’t take them too seriously.  Today however that has changed and the plans and actions of T-Mobile are causing disruptions for the other major carriers here in the United States.  They have taken the rule book and for the most part have tossed it aside, forcing their competitors to make changes that they may not otherwise would have made on their on initiative.

Ultimately, we as consumers, win.

Let me be clear that I am not writing this as a T-Mobile customer.  I’ve had a mobile account with AT&T in all of their various iterations since 1997. Yes, that’s a long time and in all of that time with the exception of my time living in Europe, I’ve never had another carrier (I even kept my AT&T account when I was there so I could easily get back going once I returned to the US). Rather, I’m writing this as someone who spends their career looking at disruptions and on that account, T-Mobile is inching closer to causing a tsunami.