JD Power’s latest call quality study has been released this week and unsurprisingly Verizon once again tops the list, for the 13th straight time.
The carrier had the best call quality in the northeast, southeast, southwest and west and tied with AT&T in the mid-atlantic.
In the north central, US Cellular held its annual lead.
The rest of the major carriers were mostly mixed bags, but T-Mobile and AT&T had some terrible scores in some regions. Sprint remained in the middle for all regions.
T-Mobile was by far the worst in the northeast while AT&T took home the lowest score of the study for its showing in the west, anchored by infamously bad coverage in San Francisco.
Interestingly, the company says smartphone users and frequent texters encountered more problems than average, around 13 out of every 100, while average users had 11 problems.
Result for: san francisco
After reaching a $65 million settlement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2008, ConnectU founders Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss are now appealing the settlement.
The twins agreed to a settlement in 2008 that got them $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock, valued at $36 per share. Now, the pair are alleging that they were misled about the real value of Facebook stock in 2008, and have brought the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
A skeptical three judge panel began considering today whether the Winkelvoss twins have a case. They scrutinized the argument put forward by the twins through attorney Jerome Falk. “The (ConnectU) founders are pretty smart people themselves, the twins also have a father from Wharton School who is very bright,” Judge John Wallace said.
“If you have all these people to advise you, isn’t it difficult to say this is one of those things where you were taken advantage of?”
Wallace was pointing out that the settlement was reached by teams of lawyers and a top mediator. The Winkelvoss brothers had valued the Facebook stock based on a news report that Microsoft had bought a small piece of the social networking site in a deal that valued the stock at around $36, and the company at $15 billion.
Result for: san francisco
Adobe stock jumped on Thursday following reports in the media that Microsoft has identified it as an acquisition target. The New York Times reported that Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer met with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in San Francisco recently to talk about Apple’s dominance in smartphones.
According to the report, which cited employees and consultants familiar with the situation, the two discussed several options to deal with the situation, one of which would see Microsoft acquiring Adobe. Adobe stock rose 17 percent to a high of $30 before settling back to close up 11.5 percent at $28.69 on the Nasdaq.
A Microsoft acquisition of Adobe would cost $15 billion or more based on Adobe’s current market value. It would provide Microsoft with control of Adobe’s flash player, used all over the web for video and graphics. Wall Street analysts see it as a possible way for Microsoft to integrate graphics and video capabilities into software it develops for phones and tablet computers.
“It’s certainly possible,” said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran of a potential deal. “It may be a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and both Microsoft and Adobe have a common enemy in Apple. The Flash platform in Microsoft’s hands might be an interesting competitive weapon against Apple.”
Microsoft already has its own Silverlight media platform, but it has failed to gain prominence in the market.
