AT&T buys T-Mobile USA for آ£24bn
AT&T has purchased T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a deal which establishes the network as the single biggest carrier in the United States.The $39bn (آ£24m) agreement, which is still to be approved by regulators, would see AT&T overhaul Verizon Wireless as the most dominant network stateside with a 43 per cent share of the market.
AT&T will retire the T-Mobile name in the USA, when the takeover is completed in 2012, and take full advantage of the T-Mobile network infrastructure to improve its own over-burdened network.
The deal is the second T-Mobile sell-off German giant Deutsche Telekom has made in the last couple of years, with T-Mobile UK merging with Orange to form the Everything Everywhere network.
Less choice?
T-Mobile USA had offered customers cheaper contracts and better contract-less, pre-pay options than the big two and it's now expected that AT&T will eventually raise those rates in line with its own fees.
Analysts stateside also believe that the deal could push the lower placed Sprint network "into the arms" of Verizon Wireless, lessening the options for the consumer even more.
AT&T had gained an advantage during the latter part of the last decade thanks largely to an exclusive deal with Apple to sell the iPhone.
But the carrier has struggled to keep pace with Verizon's inventory of top Android handsets and better 3G coverage, while it took a further hit when Verizon also gained the rights to sell the iPhone last month.
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Firefox 4 arrives ahead of official release
The full version of Mozilla's Firefox 4 browser has slipped-out a day before it is officially released.The new and improved web browser will arrive on the Mozilla website tomorrow (Tuesday) but it can now be downloaded in full from the Mozilla Releases ftp server for Windows, Mac and Linux.
This last weekend saw some unexpected developments with an unanounced release candidate arriving on Friday followed by the final release build soon after on Saturday.
The full edition arrives on the scene after a whopping 12 beta versions, which saw the official outing continually pushed back from the planned November 2010 launch.
IE9-beater
Firefox 4 promises a new, streamlined design with tabs on top of the URL bar, support for new web standards HTML5 and CSS3 and automatic syncing across your machines.
There's also a new JavaScript engine, improved hardware acceleration, restart-less add-ons and a new tab management system called Panorama, which allows users to organise their tabs into logical groups.
Last week we reported that the launch of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 logged 2.3m downloads in the first 24 hours.
We expect Firefox 4 to smash that figure and possibly eclipse the 8-million day-one downloads achieved by Firefox 3.
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Google fined by France over Street View data
Google has been fined a whopping €100,000 (آ£87,000) in France for gathering personal data from open Wi-Fi networks, while taking pictures for Street View.The penalty, handed out by French privacy watchdog CNIL, comes after Google admitted that it had scoped the information by accident while filming with its controversial Street View cameras.
Google has apologised for the mistake and says that it will delete the personal data in question.
Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said: "As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks."
More fines?
The fine represents the first penalty imposed on Google following a series of similar offenses around the world, including the UK, and could lead to more action being taken.
The online search giant claims that an engineering error led to data like passwords, log-in names and email messages being collected in 30 different countries during the Street View set-up operation.
It has since stopped collecting data from open Wi-Fi networks.
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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and Arc hit Vodafone pre-order
Vodafone has opened pre-orders on both the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc today. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will be available for free on a آ£35 per month 24-month contract, just as we suspected.
The network will throw in 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 750MB of data each month, and the first 1,000 people to pre-order will get a free Sony Ericsson dock too.
On to the Arc
Meanwhile, the Arc comes in a little cheaper; free on a آ£30 per month 24-month deal, which gets you 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data a month.
Anyone who pre-orders either handset in March will also enjoy free Vodafone-to-Vodafone calls for the life of the contract.
Both Android Gingerbread-running handsets are set for launch very soon – the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play UK release date is 31 March, while Vodafone says the Arc will hit on 1 April.
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