Verizon's 4G Service Back Up, but Users Still Miffed

A technical issue disrupted 4G LTE network service from Verizon Wireless for some customers between late Tuesday and late Wednesday, but the issue is now resolved.

That's according to the company, which issued only a terse comment on Thursday morning.

"Verizon Wireless 4GLTE service returned to normal Wednesday evening after the company's network operations team resolved a technical issue," reads the statement, provided by company spokesperson Tom Pica to TechNewsWorld. "Some 4G customers had reported intermittent or unavailable 4G service, or devices operating on 3G, for periods of time starting late Tuesday."

While the problem was being worked on, customers were still able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages, according to the company, and 3G data devices operated normally.

The term "outage" is "not entirely accurate" as a description of what occurred, Pica told TechNewsWorld, but he declined to provide further detail.

'Started Last Friday'

Following a flurry of reports on the Verizon community blog reporting problems on Wednesday, many confirmed on Thursday morning that their service had been restored.

That wasn't true for everyone, however, and some said their troubles had lasted more than one day.

"Provo, UT no 4G, no 1xRTT, but have EVDO this morning," wrote one customer , for example. "Intermittent problems started two days ago here."

Another customer reported that the problem "started last Friday between 230am-330am PST I've been with out data service since."

'Still No 4G'

Many seemed most disgruntled about the lack of a detailed explanation from Verizon Wireless as to what went wrong.

"I hope Verizon doesn't do any customer satisfaction surveys anytime soon," wrote one.

Similarly, "in Virginia Beach, still no 4G and only occasional 3G for a few seconds," wrote another on Thursday afternoon. "You would think 'The Most Reliable Network' would want to do better than leave all their customers completely in the dark. Maybe they should change their theme to, 'When It Sometimes Works It is Good.'"

Verizon Wireless launched its 4G LTE network last December in 38 major metropolitan areas, covering 110 million people; it plans to expand that network to cover its entire 3G footprint by the end of 2013.

The company experienced a similar problem with its 4G LTE network in April.

'Incredible Demand'

"It is interesting the way Verizon is being stressed by the same smartphone explosion that we have seen taxing AT&T's (NYSE: T) network over the last several years," wireless and telecom analyst Jeff Kagan told TechNewsWorld.

"The problem wasn't strictly AT&T," he added -- "it was the incredible demand and switching to a new technology and finding the gaps.

"The easiest way to find the gaps, and the hardest way for the customers, is letting the customers trigger an outage," Kagan explained. "Then the company has to scramble to figure out what caused it."

'It's Very Complex'

As for why Verizon Wireless hasn't provided a more detailed explanation, "either they don't want to say, or they don't know," Kagan said.

Whichever the case may be, "these are the kinds of issues that Verizon is going to have to deal with, just the same as AT&T has," he pointed out. "It's not just spectrum -- it's all the new technologies."

The wireless industry "seems very simple to the user, but it's very complex," Kagan noted.

'An Explosion of Wireless Data'

"It used to be that we used these wireless phones for phone calls; now we're using them for wireless data," he added.

In the next two or three years, in fact, only 2 or 3 percent of wireless phone use is going to be for voice, Kagan predicted, with the rest focusing on data.

"It's going to be an explosion of wireless data," he concluded.

Text Messaging Still Dominates Mobile Phone Useage In The United States

comScore’s latest quarterly mobile lens report was recently published. The report showed that texting is still the dominant content usage across all phones (both smart and feature phones) in the U.S. at 71.8%. In fact texting actually increased from July 2011 to October 2011 by 1.8%.

Web browsing was up 2.9% while downloading mobile apps saw the biggest increase (3.2%) to 43.8% in the most recent quarter.

No factors in this part of the survey showed a decrease. According to comScore 234 million Americans over the age of 13 use a mobile phone of some sort. 90 million of those mobile phone users, use smart phones which was up 10% from the previous quarter.

As that number continues to increase we will see things like downloading apps, listening to music and browsing the web, increase as well.

20 Percent of Android-Based Apps Grant a Third-party Application Access to Private or Sensitive Information

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time since its inception, Android based smartphones outsold iPhones in the first part of 2010. Consumers who purchase these smartphones are downloading millions of Android-based applications, and, according to a new SMobile Systems analysis of the Android market, putting their personal and professional data at risk.

SMobile System's Global Threat Center (http://threatcenter.smobilesystems.com/) has performed an in-depth analysis of over 48,000 applications currently available on the Android market and discovered the following threats:

• 20 percent of applications in the Android market grant a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes, such as Identity Theft, mobile banking fraud and corporate espionage; 5 percent of applications have the ability to place a call to any number, without requiring user intervention;
• Dozens of applications have the identical type of access to sensitive information as known spyware
• 2 percent of market submissions can allow an application to send unknown premium SMS messages without user intervention.

"The Android operating system and the Android Market are quickly becoming the most widely used mobile platform and app store in the world. There are individuals and organizations out there right now, developing malicious code designed to capture your most personal information and use it to their advantage," said Neil Book, Chief Executive Officer of SMobile Systems.

To help protect Android and other smartphones, SMobile has incorporated a new patent-pending spyware detection technology into its Security Shield solution. This revolutionary capability analyzes an entire device in seconds and immediately identifies and mitigates known and unknown spyware threats, all with virtually no impact to the user experience or device performance. Built from SMobile's extensive history of protecting BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices and originally released for Android at the launch of the first Android-phone, Security Shield was the first commercially available mobile security solution specifically developed to protect devices utilizing the Google Android operating system. To view the complete SMobile Android Market whitepaper, please visit http://threatcenter.smobilesystems.com/.

"The open-source architecture that drives Android phones and the abundance of application stores available for all smartphone devices have allowed developers to quickly create and post thousands upon thousands of new applications. As a result, applications are currently available that have the potential to cause serious harm to devices, customers and to the broader cellular network," said Daniel V. Hoffman, Chief Technology Officer for SMobile Systems. "SMobile's eight year history of providing industry-leading mobile device security and management solutions, coupled with the robust features included with SMobile Security Shield provide the highest level of security in the market to Android and other smartphone devices, protecting against Malware threats, Identity Theft, and lost and stolen devices.

SMobile's Security Shield for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian provides complete mobile device protection for consumers and enables Enterprise and SMB customers to manage, protect, audit and report on their entire heterogeneous mobile device population via the SMobile Management Console.

About SMobile

SMobile, Inc. has created the first and only complete line of products and services that securely protect mobile phones and the global wireless infrastructure from hackers, viruses, data compromise, unauthorized data theft and the effects of lost or stolen devices. The company's security applications include virus and malware detection, text message and data filtering, prevention of unwanted messages from interrupting the user, spam blocking, enterprise management, protection for mobile professionals from harmful data on open networks and data security and password-protection for content and files. SMobile is headquartered in Columbus, OH with facilities in Fort Lee, N.J., Dortmund, Germany, and Pune, India. The company is privately held.