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The mobile phone industry in the United States is covered in this article. Mobile phones are commonly referred to as smartphones or cell phones.
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The Federal Communications Commission is the main regulator of the mobile phone industry in the United States. Qualcomm is the inventor of and main contributor to cdmaOne and CDMA2000 mobile phone standards.
While it is "mobile phone" in British English, it is "cell phone" in American English. The term "cell phone", short for "cellular phone" came into the day-to-day American English vocabulary during the 1980s when the mobile phone companies had to distinguish their mobile phone that can be carried from one cell to another, each controlled by a land-based antenna, from the earlier Improved Mobile Telephone Service phones. In Wikipedia, "mobile phone" is more often used because it can be used across various technologies.
A personal communications service (PCS) is set of communications capabilities that provide a combination of terminal mobility, personal mobility, and service profile management. This class of services comprises several types of wireless voice or wireless data communications systems, typically incorporating digital technology, providing services similar to advanced cellular mobile or paging services. In addition, PCS can also be used to provide other wireless communications services, including services that allow people to place and receive communications while away from their home or office, as well as wireless communications to homes, office buildings and other fixed locations. Described in more commercial terms, PCS is a generation of wireless cellular-phone technology, that combines a range of features and services surpassing those available in analogue- and first-generation (2G) digital-cellular phone systems, providing a user with an all-in-one wireless phone, paging, messaging, and data service.
Telmex is a Mexican telecommunications company headquartered in Mexico City that provides telecommunications products and services in Mexico,. Telmex is still the dominant fixed-line phone carrier in Mexico. In addition to traditional fixed-line telephone service, Telmex offers Internet access through their Infinitum brand of Wi-Fi networks, data, hosted services and IT services. Telmex owns 90 percent of the telephone lines in Mexico City and 80 percent of the lines in the country. Telmex is a wholly owned subsidiary of América Móvil.
Cellular One is the trademarked brand name that licenses services used by several cellular service providers in the United States. The brand was sold to Trilogy Partners by AT&T in 2008 shortly after AT&T had completed its acquisition of Dobson Communications. Cellular One was originally the trade name of one of the first mobile telephone service providers.
TracFone Wireless, Inc. (TFWI) is an American prepaid, no-contract mobile phone provider. TFWI is a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, and offers products and services under several brands. It operates as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), holding agreements with the three largest United States wireless network operators to provide service: AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile US, and Verizon.
Alltel Wireless was a wireless service provider, primarily based in the United States. Before acquisitions by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, it served 34 states and had approximately 13 million subscribers. As a regulatory condition of the acquisition by Verizon, a small portion of Alltel was spun off and continued to operate under the same name in six states, mostly in rural areas. Following the merger, Alltel remained the ninth largest wireless telecommunications company in the United States, with approximately 800,000 customers. On January 22, 2013, AT&T announced they were acquiring what remained of Alltel from Atlantic Tele-Network for $780 million in cash.
Dobson Cellular Systems, Inc. now part of AT&T Mobility, was a wireless telecommunications provider in several regions of the United States, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Dobson Cellular Systems was a wholly owned subsidiary of Dobson Communications Corporation based in Oklahoma City. It was the provider of Cellular One-branded services in the United States. Dobson operated under the brand name of Cellular One, and provided service on a D-AMPS and GSM network. The company purchased the rights to the Cellular One name from Alltel in December 2005.
Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before it merged with T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The company also offered wireless voice, messaging, and broadband services through its various subsidiaries under the Boost Mobile and Open Mobile brands and wholesale access to its wireless networks to mobile virtual network operators.
Ameritech Mobile Communications, LLC was the first company in the United States to provide cellular mobile phone service to the general public. Cell service became publicly available in Chicago on October 13, 1983. The company was a division of Ameritech which, as of January 1, 1984, was the holding company of Illinois Bell, Michigan Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Ohio Bell, and Indiana Bell, which provides landline service to the Great Lakes region. From around 1986, Cincinnati Bell held a 45% stake in the company. Originally named Ameritech Mobile Communications, it later became known as Ameritech Cellular.
Cricket Wireless is an American prepaid wireless service provider, owned by AT&T. It provides wireless services to ten million subscribers in the United States. Cricket Wireless was founded in March 1999 by Leap Wireless International. AT&T acquired Leap Wireless International in March 2014, and later merged Cricket Wireless operations with Aio Wireless. Cricket Wireless competes primarily against T-Mobile's Metro, Dish's Boost Mobile and Verizon's Visible as part of the wireless service provider brands. Cricket Wireless was previously named Cricket Liberty.
Claro Company is a Mexican company part of América Móvil, a Mexican telecom group. Claro serves clients in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. The company's name means "bright," "clear," and also "of course," in both Portuguese and Spanish.
The term, Subsidy Password, is used by Motorola and other handset manufacturers to refer to the 8-digit code unlock code necessary to remove the operator lock from cell phones. This code is randomly assigned to individual cell phones by the OEM on request of the mobile service operator and prevents the use of a particular phone on a cellular network other than that to which the phone was originally sold.
Leap Wireless International, Inc. was a telecommunications operator that provided wireless services to approximately 4.6 million subscribers, the 5th largest, through its subsidiary, Cricket Communications, Inc.. It was headquartered in San Diego, California. Leap Wireless and Cricket Wireless are now subsidiaries of AT&T.
América Móvil is a Mexican telecommunications corporation headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the 7th largest mobile network operator in terms of equity subscribers and one of the largest corporations in the world. América Móvil is a Forbes Global 2000 company. As of Q1, 2019, América Móvil had 277.4 million wireless subscribers, and 84.3 million fixed revenue generating units.
Claro Puerto Rico is one of the largest telecommunications services company in Puerto Rico. It is headquartered in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, and has operated for almost a century offering voice, data, long distance, broadband, directory publishing and wireless services for the island residents and businesses. It was founded by the Behn brothers, Sosthenes and Hernan. Originally, Puerto Rico Telephone Company eventually spawned ITT Corporation, which was founded by Sosthenes Behn. The company was a public corporation of the government of Puerto Rico for many years until the majority stakes were acquired by GTE in the mid-1990s. It was a subsidiary of Verizon Communications until it was fully acquired by América Móvil in 2007.
Page Plus Cellular is a prepaid mobile virtual network operator in the United States operated by TracFone Wireless, Inc. using Verizon’s wireless network, subsidiary of Verizon Communications.
Digital Telecommunications Phils., Inc., commonly known as Digitel, was the second-largest fixed-line and the third-largest mobile telecommunications company in the Philippines. It was also the company that owned Sun Cellular, a mobile phone service.
AT&T Mexico, also known as AT&T Mexico Wireless and AT&T Mexico Mobility, is a Mexican mobile telephone operator and subsidiary of AT&T. AT&T Mexico is headquartered in Mexico City. Its mobile network is available in 90% of Mexico, serving 13% of the Mexican wireless market. AT&T is the third-largest wireless carrier in Mexico, with 20.362 million subscribers as of December 2021.
Ting Mobile is an American mobile virtual network operator owned by Dish Wireless. Originally established in February 2012 by Tucows, Ting provides cellular service in the United States using the T-Mobile network, while some grandfathered accounts use the Verizon network. The service is sold off-contract with billing that adjusts the cost of service based on actual customer usage.
