UPDATED 11:24 EST / MARCH 16 2011

AT&T’s Pricy 4G Project Kicks off in Las Vegas

It seems like the whole of the human race will have to get used to daily updates and upgrades within the mobile community. Today, fixed telephony and broadband titan AT&T unveiled a groundbreaking blueprint of the $19 billion wireless enhancement project for 2011, and Las Vegas will have the first taste. AT&T will be expanding the backhaul to the Sin City and will facilitate 4G speeds, boost mobile broadband capability, improve hundreds of cell sites within the area.

Tammi Terrell, Vice President and General Manager for AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets in Las Vegas provided details on the Las Vegas commencement and other 2011 plans, saying, “We’re investing in our Las Vegas network to help AT&T customers take advantage of the numerous capabilities of their wireless devices. This year, we’re committed to providing best-in-class wireless voice service to our customers, and we’re backing that up with the right investments.”

While AT&T’s 2010 performance claims to be fairly good, it is not enough to pull them up ahead of the competition. Their market share of 31% fell second to Verizon’s 33%, following a series of futile attempts to impress U.S. consumers.  AT&T’s failure to keep exclusivity of the iPhone appears to be the bad omen of it all. What hurts more is that iPhone sales at Verizon broke records soon after.

But, AT&T will not be the giant it is today if they would just easily bow down to these challenges. They hit the road to Android in latter part of 2010 and continue to carry the OS until present. AT&T, together with Google, is now abandoning the old telephone system shifting to more inclusive VoIP services. Less than twenty four hours ago, AT&T offered a month of free iPad wireless service to US customers.

As the rivalry heats up, mobile companies are at a bit of a stand off. Yesterday, Verizon reached a milestone by releasing its first 4G smartphone, the HTC ThunderBolt. Verizon has been in good shape since the start of the year with several successful partnerships to develop various facets of the business. These include the revamp of V Cast for Android, agreement signed with Lextech Labs to bring forth a mobile video surveillance solution, acquisition of Terremark to strengthen cloud strategy and VMware vCloud adoption for first level implementation within the cloud industry.

Other players also made their presence felt. A rumor of possible merger between Sprint and T-Mobile has been subject of many discussions, with latter losing ground in the US as well.  Although updates have been extremely rampant nowadays, especially for the mobile industry, this flaming contest will have one sure winner–the consumers.


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