CTIA

It looks like the kill switch debates will be back in business again. FCC chair Tom Wheeler has come out once again to call on the wireless industry to arms against smartphone theft. And his favorite solution, which is a point of contention for many players in the smartphone industry, is the kill switch. And again, Wheeler urges carriers to make that feature "opt out" instead of the current "opt in", meaning it should be turned on by default in all cases instead of the optional status quo.

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Two LA TV stations will simultaneously share a single channel for broadcasts, as a pilot program to demonstrate not only that the technology works with no downside for viewers, but that it can be a valuable source of cash too. The scheme will see KLCS "hosting" KJLA's content on its channel, the CTIA said today, with a mixture of SD and HD shows, and both primary and multicast broadcasting. That will free up KJLA's own spectrum holding, so the idea goes, which could be sold off to cellular carriers to boost mobile broadband service.

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A confederation of mobile communications and technology companies has put together a website called Know My App. The site helps users figure out which mobile apps are responsible for eating up the lion's share of monthly megabytes on their data plans. The site was published by CTIA – The Wireless Association this week.

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The five largest USA-based carriers have come to an agreement through the CTIA (The Wireless Association) with the FCC over their policy for unlocking phones in North America. Barring those devices the institutions have reason to believe were stolen or otherwise fraudulently acquired, it would appear that the carrier unlock sequence has been made as free and open as it's ever been. A new set of rules have been set forth and will be adopted by the five larges mobile data carriers in the USA inside the next 12 months.

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This week at CTIA 2013, Verizon announced a partnership with Latino-centric mobile carrier brand Viva Movil - and they did it with the company's top shareholder Jennifer Lopez. Speaking about how the Latino population is up at 50 million strong - and growing - Verizon's own chief operating officer Marni Walden made it clear: this company wants to expand through an exclusive partnership with Viva Movil.

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This morning it's been suggested to SlashGear by a trusted source (the anonymous kind) that the HTC One will be appearing at the Verizon press event taking place at 11AM PST in Las Vegas today during CTIA. This event has been teased as one with a "Special Announcement", which could mean anything, but given the atmosphere and the suggestion, we have no reason to doubt that the HTC One will be part of the show.

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Today Kyocera revealed two new smartphones will be coming to the US market soon, and just like their recent devices will be able to handle the elements quite well. With a successor to the original Hydro these new phones do a few things that Kyocera does best. That's be budget friendly and waterproof at the same time. Read on for details on both of these new phones.

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When you hear the name Coolpad it might not ring a bell but the company has big plans for their phones in the US, and are here in Las Vegas for CTIA showing off their latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean smartphones. The popular Chinese manufacturer wants to deliver quality 4G LTE smartphones for those on a budget, and in a way have stolen the show here at Pepcom. We got a look at their new Quattro II 4G, as well as the impressive 8920 that recently launched in China.

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Last week the folks from HP announced their latest Android tablet, one of the first devices to be powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 4 quad-core, and today we were able to get our hands all over it. It's the new HP Slatebook x2 Transformer-like tablet running on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and coming to market in August. Below you'll see plenty of hands-on pictures, and even a comparison to the Nexus 10.

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The FCC has announced that ahead of yesterday's deadline, carriers have instituted an alert system that will give subscribers a heads up when they're nearing what will be a large bill. This follows many stories about unsuspecting consumers who have gone about their daily mobile usage, only to be faced with a massive bill at the end of the month for exceeding their limits.

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Today Verizon has sent out a "save the date" announcement for this year's Spring CTIA event in Las Vegas, Nevada. This announcement aligns quite well with the releases of both the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4, especially given the slightly-later reveals of high-end devices through Verizon over the past year. As the Samsung GALAXY S 4 has been confirmed for Verizon but not dated or priced while the HTC One has been both confirmed and denied, we'll be placing our cash on the former.

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If this year's Mobile World Congress taught us one thing, it's that no matter how interesting and innovative the gadget makers and software developers of our global community are, it's the top brands that end up making or breaking the show. Make or break the show for the press, that is. Case in point: our several articles written from our chat with Google's Mathias Duarte - they ended up easily becoming some of the most popular posts we had this week, and Google didn't reveal any new products at the convention. In fact, they didn't have a stand - the chat we had wasn't even on the map. And yet, there it is - Google stole the show anyway.

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