Brian Gongol
US Cellular customers from St. Louis to Chicago to Fort Wayne will be moved to Sprint soon
That means they'll have to buy new phones. Both networks are on CDMA, but the companies claim the antennas within the phones are tuned to the wrong frequencies to make the switch. Strange move on the part of US Cellular to sell off 11% of its customer base, but they did, slicing a meaningful piece out of the carrier's national retail footprint. Customers in other US Cellular markets should still be able to use their phones, but it seems like a signal that US Cellular is trying to boost its cash supply. (Also interesting about the move: US Cellular is headquartered in Chicago, where they paid mightily for naming rights to the White Sox ballpark...$68 million for a 20-year deal. Wrigley Field remains named for the chewing-gum magnate, without a naming-rights deal. The carrier is facing a lot of upset customer comments on Facebook for selling them to Sprint. This is all happening as Sprint fights off losses of half a million customers per quarter and weighs which takeover bid (from Softbank or Dish Network) suits them best.
Fake reporter, real bylines
An Australian publication uses a fake name as a byline for articles written by their editors. On one hand, it's misleading -- if no such reporter actually exists, then the articles are not really accountable to the individual who wrote them. But it's not entirely different from the practice of radio and television hosts who change their names to make them more palatable to the audience. "Mark Twain" wasn't, "Dear Abby" isn't, and the use of house names isn't original by any means. And the number of people who go by contrived identities online probably outnumbers those who go by their own names...so is a "house name" for editor-written articles all that bad?
First estimate of last quarter's US GDP: 2.5% growth
But the revisions to GDP figures have been large and frequent recently, so it's hard to say for certain what the final number will be. But it definitely won't be the 3% to 5% high-growth, low-inflation rate assumed by the White House in its recent budget proposals.
This week in trends, tips, and technology
A preview of the WHO Radio Wise Guys show for April 27, 2013
