Verizon Bringing Service to 36 NYC subway Stations

It doesn't matter that Verizon has the best 4G network when you are in the subway and have no service. Verizon is joining rival cell carriers AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile by inking a deal with Transit Wireless to bring 3G and LTE voice and data to 36 subway stations later in the year. These stations already have wireless service, it's just a matter of Verizon adding its own hardware. The network will begin to rollout service in the next few weeks in Chelsea and midtown in Manhattan.

Big Red is also participating in phase two of Transit's coverage project. This phase brings coverage to 40 new stations, including Grand Central, Herald Square, and Bryant Park, in early 2014.

HTC One Mini coming to AT&T for $100 with contract

The 4.3 inch HTC One Mini is finally becoming available to AT&T customers. The phone will be available next week, for $100 on a contract. The device has a 720p display, 4MP UltraPixel camera, runs on Android 4.2, 1,800mAh battery and 1.4GHz dual-core Snapdragon 400 SoC with a gigabyte RAM.

10 More Cities Are Lit Up With AT&T 4G LTE

It appears that AT&T is trying to live up to it's name via its commercials as "America's Fastest 4G LTE Network" by adding ten more cities to its line up today. I still think that Verizon ranks above all. Lucky cities are listed below.

• Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts


• Durant, Oklahoma


• Enid, Oklahoma


• Ardmore, Oklahoma


• Arkadelphia, Arkansas


• Russellville, Arkansas


• Ponca City, Oklahoma


• Charleston, West Virginia


• Cedartown, Georgia


• Rome, Georgia

Zact: The Reinvented Wireless Carrier

Imagine a wireless carrier that allowed you to build your own plan. Zact, an upstart service provider created by Andreessen Horowitz-backed ItsOn that uses Sprint’s network, has an amazing breakthrough on wireless.

Zact has all no contract plans, so there is no commitment. Just a simple plan, 500 minutes, 1,000 texts, and 1 GB of data will cost just short of $40. At the end of the month, Zact's billing style is much different than that of traditional cell providers. Regular carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, will charge you for what you paid for, and will send you no notification that you should downgrade or upgrade your plan. Zact automatically goes and looks back at your usage for the past month. It will only charge you for the nearest plan that fits your usage; no extra charges for data/texts/call minutes you didn't use. This is a different business model for cell carriers, actually try and charge the customer as little as possible.

There is only one catch though: Zact only has two Android smartphones (three if you count a color change), and then only one with LTE. None of them are very pretty though. Ting is a slightly more attractive Sprint MVNO, but only because it offers more devices. I am definitely going to be keeping my eye on Zact, they are really onto something.

MTA Hackathon Photos

Congrats again to the winners of the MTA and AT&T Hackathon this weekend. Check down below for photos from the event.

 

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MTA App Quest Hackathon Recap

Wow, what an amazing hackathon! There were great apps built this weekend; I am very impressed with what was built. These developers only had 24 hours to build their apps and have something ready to show off. Congratulations to the first, second, and third place prize winners; SubCulture.Fm, MTA Sheriff, and ACCESSWAY. These apps will truly impact the New York City's mass transit in a bright way. Check out below for a quick summary of what's cooking in the app division of NYC public transit.

SubCulture.Fm is an iOS app that allows you to interact with subway musicians. The app mostly works through QR codes. Each artist would have a QR code that the user would scan. This would give the user information about the artist; such as social media, albums and songs, etc. You can share information about the musician using Facebook or Twitter. The app also allows you to track nearby musicians, and even where your favorite musician will be playing. SubCulture.Fm won first place at the hackathon.

MTA Sheriff is a quick and easy gamified way to report issues within the MTA's system. As you report more issues, your character upgrades until you become the "MTA Sheriff".

ACCESSWAY is an iOS way-finding app to help visually-impaired or wheelchair-assisted New Yorkers find their way in the NYC Subway. It allows you to track elevator and exit status. The app currently looks pretty good, but should try and implement real time status updates.

Good Night Nerd Heads to New York

Hello, Big Apple! GNN is heading out to NYC this weekend to cover the MTA and AT&T's App Quest Hackathon. This is a hackathon devoted to creating new and creative apps for public transit in New York City. I will be covering the demos/presentations and awards on Sunday starting at 4 pm EDT, so be sure to stay tuned for my liveblog. The liveblog will be here: jmtek.info/24. I can't wait!

Facebook Home is Now International

Facebook Home is now available for download in Canada and the United Kingdom in Google Play. Facebook does however still keep the number of phones even eligible to use the Home service very limited. The HTC First is still an AT&T special, and  other carriers across the pond in the UK and in Canada carry the four other phones that Facebook Home can be installed on. The Home phones are: the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II.

AT&T: I know, I'll copy Google Fiber!

As you may have heard, Google Fiber now has a competitor; AT&T. And not only does fiber now have competition; Google and AT&T are both going to be breaking ground in the same city, Austin Texas. This is sure to create company tension. Currently, Google offers a free plan, but I have no news as far as plan prices go from AT&T. But, I do know that AT&T is going to need to have attractive prices to try and break consumers away from a Google net of services. Google Fiber project manager, Kevin Lo, says that the prices in Austin may not be the same as the ones in Kansas City. However, I think that Google would not change the prices very much. Right now, I would love to be Austin's mayor, Lee Leffingwell. He is getting new fiber internet connections from two of the biggest tech companies in America. Austin is pretty lucky to be honest with you. I can't wait to see how the competition will affect pricing margins. But, Austin will definitely be in the fiber spotlight for at least a year or two.