Haswell chips will be released during Computex 2013, June 4-8, 2013. They were designed with laptops and tablets, and the main focus was on lowering power consumption, said Rani Borkar, corporate vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group.

The longer battery life reportedly won’t come with a cost to performance, and in idle or standby mode the chips will do even better, extending battery life by up to 20 times.

Intel says Haswell’s revamped on-die graphics processing unit (dGPU) will increase performance between 50 and 300 percent, depending on the model.

Meanwhile, AMD is launching three new families of processors, which the company thinks fill a gap in the market. The new Temash, and Richland chips are largely aimed at tablets, hybrids, and ultrathin notebooks and performance notebooks respectively.

Like Intel, AMD has been working to reduce power consumption while improving performance and stepping up graphics performance in all of its latest processors. The lowest power Temash chips have a TDP of just 3.9 watts and AMD says it could power tablets that get up to 10 or 11 hours of battery life.

AMD says we should see dozens of tablets and notebooks with its latest chips in the coming months, including models from most major PC makers.

RCR Wireless lists the top providers of Wi-Fi offload solutions. With half of all IP traffic expected to be delivered over Wi-Fi within 3 years, Wi-Fi access points and network management software are increasingly important to carriers.

RCR Wireless, Fierce Wireless and Mobile World Live have more coverage of CTIA 2013.

A Nokia Siemens study revealed data consumption by 3G users tripled in one year, showing the rapid and steady increase in mobile data consumption in India. The trend in mobile data growth in India is in line with other high growth mobile data markets around the world, says Nokia Siemens, and that operators worldwide will need to be prepared to provide 1GB of personalized data per user by 2020.

Verizon Wireless will begin rollout of small cells in its LTE network in the second half of 2013. The small cells will be installed strategically to add capacity to high traffic areas. They’ll use gear from Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson. The introduction of Ericsson’s micro RRUS is an industry first deployment.

Other carrier news:

• The major cellular infrastructure players, including Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson and Huawei have signed a MoU to help operators simplify network operations by cross-licensing the OSS interfaces used for multi-vendor network management. It is intended to simplify operations and reduce integration costs, say the vendors. The reciprocal agreement will cover Radio Access, Circuit Core and Packet Core network management. It commits the vendors to a bilateral cross licensing agreements for multi-vendor network support. The cross-licensing and interoperability testing is also open for third-party OSS vendors by joining the OSSii.
• Nokia Siemens Networks is enhancing its Smart Wi-Fi solution with traffic steering between cellular and Wi-Fi networks. The company is also launching a new 3G Femtocell Access Point for seamless connectivity in residential areas.
• Nokia Siemens said their Fuel Cell solution and Liquid Applications have won Emerging Technologies awards under the “Green Telecom” and “Wide Area Network” categories.
  

  Liquid Applications let information about the area surrounding the base station, such as that used in augmented reality applications, or news and video content can be placed at the base station for instant local access to connected devices. Liquid Broadband provides capabilities to intelligently deliver personalized services to subscribers.

  Fuel cell systems provide power for extended periods during outages. The base station and fuel cell combination developed by Nokia Siemens Networks with Ballard can provide 4.5 kW of power for approximately 40 hours on a single tank of fuel.

• Huawei and China Mobile successfully completed the world’s first Flash CSFB to GSM field test on a live LTE TDD network. CSFB as a technology defined in 3GPP Release 8, employs circuit-switched (CS) networks to provide voice services for LTE subscribers. China Mobile operates the world’s largest GSM network and has the world’s largest mobile subscriber base. Their solution reduces call setup times and implements seamless and fast handovers between LTE and GSM networks.
  
• Ericsson says the potential link performance gain obtained with up to 8×8 MIMO transmission, as standardized in 3GPP LTE Release 10, show increasing downlink throughput of 335 Mbps for an 8×8 MIMO configuration on a 20 MHz carrier.
• Ericsson is launching a suite of software and hardware aimed at integrating Wi-Fi into carrier networks. Its real-time traffic steering solution constantly assesses performance indicators in both the 3GPP network and the Wi-Fi network to find the best connection for the user.
• Ericsson transformed a bus window into Wi-Fi antennas. Passengers log in to an internal Wi-Fi network that uses a longer range technology, such as LTE, to connect to the outside world.

The FCC also adopted a process to challenge the eligibility of particular census blocks, establish two different per-location support amounts based on the existing level of Internet access ($550 for homes with low-speed Internet access and $775, as in the first round, for homes with only dial-up access), and make certain other rule changes to encourage participation and ensure accountability and oversight.

On July 24, 2012, price cap carriers accepted nearly $115 million of Phase I incremental support for 2012, committing to bringing broadband to over 145,000 locations that previously had no access to even a minimal level of high-speed Internet access service, and little prospect of receiving service meeting our broadband standard within the next three years.

Phase I eligibility is expanded in the 2nd round to any location currently unserved by Internet service with speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 768kbps upstream (3Mbps/768 kbps) or higher, though a lower dollar amount of support is provided for locations that already have some level of Internet access.

At present, the company has hand-picked a dozen or so singers for the Guitar app, letting you play along. “Sing” and “Guitar” are the first pair of Smule apps that “talk” to each other, says the company.

Smule is an American mobile app developer that specializes in developing social music-making applications for iOS, Android and Amazon.com Kindle Fire.

Powermat, the company that last year allied with Duracell and Starbucks, is the main technology behind the PowerMatters Alliance. Today it announced that it has acquired PowerKiss, a Finnish company. Powermat has about 1,500 locations in the U.S. enabled with its technology. PowerKiss brings with it 1,000 more in Europe.

The move brings PowerKiss fully into the Powermat camp; which had previously been allied with competitor Qi (pronounced chee), the wireless power standard embraced by Nokia and LG.

Last week the Qi camp picked up PowerbyProxi as a new member of its Wireless Power Consortium.

Qi is used in high-end smartphones like the Nokia Lumia 920, HTC Droid DNA, and Samsung Galaxy S4.

A third contender is the Alliance For Wireless Power, or A4WP. Formed in May 2012, A4WP is backed by Qualcomm and Samsung. A4WP says other wireless power designs require precise alignment and close physical contact, unlike their approach. The group still needs to finish testing and certification.

Jennifer Lopez is the chief creative officer and majority owner in Viva Movil. Lopez said the U.S. Latino market represents $1.2 trillion in purchasing power and, on its own, would be equal to the world’s 14th largest country.

The VivaMovil website went live on Wednesday and lists a range of devices including top Verizon phones such as the iPhone 5, Glaaxy S III and Droid Razr Maxx. The plans are typical Verizon ones, including shared data plans and both contract and no-contract plans.

J-Lo is investing in a chain of Latino-focused Viva Movil stores along with wireless company Brightstar and Moorhead Communications — the largest of Verizon’s premium retailers with 850 stores, reports All Things D. Verizon is the exclusive wireless provider but doesn’t own a stake in Viva Movil.

Any Latino-focused partnership between AT&T and Carlos Slim would not likely be as attractive. TracFone acquired Start Wireless’ Page Plus Cellular, a Verizon MVNO with some 1.4 million customers in the United States. It’s TracFone’s second major acquisition after its purchase of T-Mobile’s Simple Mobile and its 1 million customers a year ago.

Slim’s América Móvil, Latin America’s largest mobile carrier, accounted for around US$49 billion of Slim’s wealth. América Móvil owns TracFone Wireless and has brought the Telcel brand to the U.S., targeting Latinos, and launching it as one of the many mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) managed by TracFone.

The world’s second richest man is also creating an Internet TV network that will include an interview show with former CNN television host Larry King, reports Reuters. It will be led by Jon Housman, who was formerly the president of digital journalism at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

In other news, The Office of Cuba Broadcasting has released a smartphone application that will be available for iPhone and Android. It features news alerts, video and audio on demand, and the ability to download and store content, according to a release.

The free app, the organization says, will come in handy not for just bringing information in, but getting it out. “Access to the Internet in Cuba via landlines or Wi-Fi is extremely restricted, but more than 2 million people on the island own cellphones,” according to Will Sullivan, mobile product lead for Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Office in Cuba.

Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

Verizon offers Precision Market Insights to businesses like malls, stadiums and billboard owners statistics about the activities and backgrounds of cellphone users in particular locations.

Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google and Facebook, reports the WSJ.

The companies say they don’t sell data about individuals but rather about groups of people. Privacy advocates say the law permits them to do so. In 2011, Verizon sent notice to customers saying they may use their data in this way.

Verizon’s data service is being used by the Phoenix Suns. The basketball team has used it to map where people attending its games live in order increase advertising in areas that haven’t met expectations, says Scott Horowitz, a team vice president.

Julia Angwin (twitter) recently led a team of reporters from The Wall Street Journal in analyzing the tracking software and discovered that nearly all of the most commonly visited websites gather information in real time about the behavior of online users. Visiting the top 50 internet websites resulted in more than 3,000 cookies embedded into a “clean” computer. Wikipedia had no cookies. Dictionary.com had the most, with over 250 attached to their computer on a single visit.

Chris Soghoian, a privacy specialist at the American Civil Liberties Union, says the ability to profit from customer data could give wireless carriers an incentive to track customers more precisely than connecting calls requires and to store even more of their Web browsing history.

That could broaden the range of data about individuals’ habits and movements that law enforcement could subpoena, Mr. Soghoian says. “It’s the collection that’s the scary part, not the business use.”

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, one of the world’s biggest billboard companies, has agreed to conduct a trial of Verizon’s Precision service, reports the WSJ. The service could allow billboard owners to measure how likely someone driving by is to go to the store being advertised. “You’ve got an industry that was historically about eyeballs,” she says. “Now you know more about who those people are and what their behavior looks like.”

The multi-billion dollar data mining industry is taking target marketing into a New Frontier. Every time you swipe a rewards card at a store, that data goes somewhere to get analyzed. Marketplace’s Stacey Vanek-Smith takes a look and visits a data mining company.

Behavioral targeting captures data on websites, the pages they visit, the amount of time they view each page, the links they click on, the searches they make and the things that they interact with.

Cluster analysis takes a statistical approach. Words are tracked in relation to other words. Your consumer habits define your marketing cluster.

Carriers offer far more data mining potential. Verizon’s new head of public policy insists that Rules for Railroads Don’t Track With the Policy Needs of 21st Century.

Related Dailywireless articles include Mobile TV Shakedown, Behavioral Targeting: Kill/Capture, Behavioral Advertising Opt Out

Single mode phones would use voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and would not require CDMA for voice fall-back. Dual mode phones are compatible with more than one form of data transmission.

Verizon says that its LTE footprint now covers 95 percent of its existing 3G CDMA footprint, so coverage would be nearly the same and devices could be cheaper.

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said on the carrier’s last earnings call that it would have devices without 3G CDMA chipsets next year. At CTIA, Verizon Executive Director of Network and Technology Jim Wales confirmed those devices may possibly include single-mode LTE smartphones by the end of the year.

Rival AT&T has also promised a limited launch for VoLTE phones later this year.

Verizon said it won’t be abandoning CDMA entirely, but the company would be incentivized to get rid of its legacy CDMA network so it can reuse the spectrum for other purposes.

A 3G phase-out would likely take years, however, as many customers are still currently on 3G phones. Wales said it will support 3G through the end of the decade and wants to ensure the best customer experience possible. That’s why the first batch of single-mode LTE devices will likely not be smartphones.

Today Verizon’s only LTE-only devices are in the machine-to-machine (M2M) business, tablets and one LTE router. But a Verizon LTE-only phone may not work in other countries.

Redline’s RDL-3000 is a sub-700 MHz network technology, which operates in frequencies between 470 and 698 MHz and leverages the non-line-of-sight network attributes of the UHF spectrum.

Built on Redline’s recently announced Universal Wireless Transport platform, Redline says it can deliver data rates of up to 100 Mbps over the longest range of any currently available white space technologies. In a single FCC channel (6 MHz), it can operate at speeds of up to 27 Mbps and at distances up to 35 miles (approximately 60 km).

In addition to operating in white space frequencies it can also operate in any frequency up to 6 GHz, including key bands – 900 MHz, 1.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 4.4 GHz and 4.9 GHz and 5.8 GHz.

“Our product combines the greatest capacity with the longest range, and adds the reliability and security that Redline is known for, making our wireless network technology ideal for wide area applications in more remote areas – oilfields, mining operations, public infrastructure monitoring, and for bringing communications to remote communities,” said Bojan Subasic, vice president research and development at Redline Communications.

Engadget had a liveblog. A new Kinect motion-sensing camera that goes alongside the new Xbox One game console is expected to ship with every new console at launch. One of the most impressive features is the ability to wake the console with just a voice command. Simply say “Xbox on”. Skype is also coming to Xbox and Kinect.

In terms of specs, the console has an 8-core CPU, USB 3.0, WiFi direct, Blu-ray, 500GB HDD, HDMI input and output, and 802.11n wireless — no mention of the GPU, reports Engadget. Microsoft touts the Xbox One as delivering 8 times the graphic performance of the 360. If you go by raw transistor count, that performance jump would be closer to tenfold, and the 512 MB of memory has been boosted to 8 GB.

Smart Glass is the tablet and smartphone app. With this new generation, your smart device “will behave like it’s born to work with the Xbox One”.

Music, movies, games and saves are all stored in the cloud. Kinect ties it all together. It’ll detect when you pick up your controller, even let you lift the controller to lift a shield in-game.

The Xbox One will replace the venerable Xbox 360. As of September 30, 2012, 70 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide.

The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005. The original Xbox was released in North America on November 15, 2001, marking Microsoft’s entry into the console gaming industry and selling over one million consoles in the first three weeks.

Microsoft is powering its machine with an x86-based CPU rather than continue with IBM’s PowerPC technology. Sony has also opted to switch from its proprietary Cell processor tech to the x86 architecture.

Sony held its a press conference in February when it revealed details about its upcoming PlayStation 4 – but it has still to show off the console itself. Nintendo launched its next-generation console, the Wii U, last. Both Microsoft and Sony plan follow-up “keynote” announcements at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles on 10 June.