Verizon 4G LTE Hit With Another Service Disruption

 

Verizon Wireless experienced another 4G LTE service disruption this morning, but the company said in a statement that things are now "returning to normal."

"Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today," a spokesman said in a statement. "Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally."

The disruption comes about two weeks after a similar incident that resulted in connectivity problems for some users.

Verizon did not have any details about what caused this, or the previous, 4G LTE problems.

Here at PCMag, a Verizon 4G LTE USB modem from Pantech was unable to establish a connection earlier this morning (click below), but appeared to be operational as of noon Eastern time.

News of the disruptions started making the rounds this morning via Twitter and on Verizon's message boards.

"I had data service problems on my verizon phone this morning. The internet did not work," one user tweeted.

"Verizon, why do I randomly lose Internet on my phone for extended periods of time in solid 4G locations," another tweeted.

On Verizon's community boards, users reported outages in: Riverside County, Calif.; Long Island, N.Y.; Manhattan; Las Vegas; Richmond, Va.; Teaneck, N.J.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Michigan; and more.

The trouble comes several weeks after Verizon celebrated the one-year anniversary of its 4G LTE network. The service is now available in 190 markets, up from 38 at launch. PCMag gave the network high praise during our 2011 Fastest Mobile Networks test: "We found that Verizon's new 4G LTE network is much faster than other mobile Web options, with speeds that often exceed home Internet connections," PCMag analysts concluded.

To boost that network, Verizon has made a number of spectrum purchases in recent weeks, including PCS and AWS spectrum in various U.S. markets from Leap Wireless for $188 million. Leap in turn bought 12 MHz of 700 MHz A block spectrum in Chicago from Verizon Wireless for $204 million.

That came days after Verizon paid three of the nation's top three cable companies $3.6 billion for 122 spectrum licenses in the AWS band. As part of the deal, Comcast will get $2.3 billion for the spectrum, Time Warner will get $1.1 billion, and Bright House will get $189 million.

Just this week, meanwhile, Cox agreed to sell its 20-MHz spectrum licenses to Verizon for $315 million as part of a deal to resell each other's services.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Verizon brought its ICS magic to our office [VIDEO]

The U.S. version of the hottest Android smartphone of the year made it in front of our camera, folks. The Verizon Wireless exclusive (at least for the time being) Samsung Galaxy Nexus is practically identical to its GSM sibling, save for the CDMA/LTE radio on board.

The smartphone features a TI OMAP CPU with two 1.2GHz cores. There is a gig of RAM on board and 32GB of built-in memory (28GB is available to the user). The display is a gorgeous 4.65? Super AMOLED unit with HD resolution (720×1280 pixels) and a pixel density of 316ppi. It has oleophobic coating. There is a 5MP camera on the back of the device, capable of recording 1080p videos and a 1.3MP front-facing unit for video calls. A full connectivity suite is at your disposal, including NFC.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus measures are 135.5 x 67.9 x 9.5 mm, and its weight tips the scale at 150 grams. A 1850mAh battery powers the smartphone.

In terms of design, the device is unmistakably a member of the Nexus family. Like its predecessor, the smartphone features a curved display for better ergonomics. It is one of the most understated phone designs we’ve encountered – there is a total of two hardware buttons on the entire device. Check out its live shots below.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE live photos

The software of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is certainly its biggest highlight (after all, we’ve seen quite a few impressive spec sheets this far into 2011). The smartphone is the first device featuring Google’s latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Our unit came with the 4.02 update already installed. See it in action below.

We have more features of the LTE packing Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the pipeline, so stick around.

Verizon Galaxy Nexus to come with bloatware, will let you disable them

The mythical creature known as the Verizon Galaxy Nexus has been spotted in the wild and much to the surprise of its spotters was found running some Verizon apps. As you may know, the Nexus phones have been known to come with a stock ROM from Google with nothing but Google’s own applications installed. The Galaxy Nexus will be the first to break this tradition and have some bloatware courtesy of Verizon, tarnishing the name of the Nexus brand forever.

It’s not all bad news, however. If you may recall, Ice Cream Sandwich comes with the ability to disable unwanted applications from the Settings menu. Mind you, you can only disable them and not delete them, which means they will still reside on your memory but won’t be visible in the app launcher.

Thankfully, Verizon has not disabled this functionality, so you will still be able to disable their applications and pretend nothing ever happen. Still, it is disappointing to see Google submit to carrier demands and allow them to install bloatware on their Nexus devices. Whatever happened to the Pure Google Experience?