Picture this: Photosynth debuts for Windows Phone 8

Photosynth is now available for Windows Phone 8.

(Credit:
Photosynth)

Microsoft's Windows Phone app store has just gotten a little bigger, thanks to the addition of Photosynth. The software giant said Photosynth, a 3-D panorama photo app, has now debuted for the latest version of Microsoft's smartphone operating system. It's available for free from the Windows Phone Store.

The app allows users to stitch together photos to create panorama images or even full 360-degree views. After shooting and stitching the images, users can publish their photos to the Photosynth site or Bing or can share it via Facebook and Twitter.

New features added for Windows Phone 8 include:

• Camera lens integration -- Quickly capture and view panoramas by launching Photosynth directly from the built-in camera app


• View shared panoramas -- View panoramas shared with via email, Facebook, or Twitter directly on a mobile device


• More camera controls -- Adjust for various lighting conditions by using new exposure and white balance locking options


• General improvements such as various bug and stability fixes

One of the biggest criticisms of Windows Phone (as well as BlackBerry and other smaller phone systems) is that there aren't as many apps available as there are for
Android and iOS. However, Microsoft has been steadily increasing the number of apps available for its newest smartphone operating system to catch up with its bigger rivals.

Earlier this week, Twitter updated its Windows Phone app to add a slew of discovery features that had been included in its iOS and Android apps for some time. And Spotify last month launched a new Windows Phone 8 app in beta.

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With no pope, cardinals summoned for conclave

VATICAN CITY The Catholic Church has awoken with no pontiff following Benedict XVI's resignation, in which he pledged obedience to his successor and described himself as "simply a pilgrim" starting the final part of his life.

Now begins a period known as the "sede vacante" or "vacant see" — the transition between the end of one papacy and the election of a new pope.

During these few days — no more than 20 — a few key players take charge running the Holy See, guiding the College of Cardinals in their deliberations and organizing the conclave to elect Benedict's successor.

In one of his first official acts as dean, Cardinal Angelo Sodano on Friday officially summoned cardinals to Rome to participate in the conclave, a formality given that most are already here. Sodano sent official "convocation letters" to the cardinals' offices around the world Friday, along with electronic versions via email, summoning them to the Vatican.

And in one of his first official acts as camerlengo, or the chamberlain who actually runs the Holy See in the transition, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sealed Benedict's apartment in the Apostolic Palace on Thursday night. It will not be reopened until a new pope is elected.

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Pope Benedict XVI officially retires

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Pope leaving behind unfinished business

With the 8 p.m. Thursday end of Benedict's papacy, every department head in the Vatican lost his job — except for those whose offices are crucial for the smooth running of the transition period itself.

Cardinals on Monday will begin formal meetings to set the date for the conclave and discuss problems facing the church; major topics of discussion are expected to be the report Benedict commissioned into the leaks of sensitive Vatican documents and the dysfunction currently reigning in the Vatican bureaucracy.

The date for the conclave of cardinals to begin their deliberations has not yet been set, although one of Pope Benedict XVI's final acts before resigning his office was to amend the rules governing the election of a successor, allowing the cardinals to meet earlier than the usual 15-day transition between pontificates.

On Thursday, soon after Benedict left the Vatican on his final day as pope, Monsignor Carlo Maria Celli, a papal communications officer, hinted that the date could be March 11. That could not be immediately confirmed.

The date of the conclave's start is important because Holy Week begins March 24, with Easter Sunday March 31. In order to have a new pope in place for the church's most solemn liturgical period, he would need to be installed by Sunday, March 17

"What we talk about ... will be certainly the governance of the church and in that context there may be questions to people who did the report," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George. "I think we will find out a lot from a lot of sources to figure out what is necessary now to govern the church well here in Rome itself."

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Benedict Departs Vatican for the Last Time as Pope

Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.

Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby heliport.

In a tweet sent from Benedict XVI @Pontifex as his motorcade rolled to the heliport, Benedict said, "Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

With church bells ringing across Rome, he then embarked on the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence just south of the city and his home for the coming months when he'll be recognized by the church as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus.

When Benedict landed in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries, including the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and back into a car, Benedict headed to the palace.

In the plaza at Castel Gandolfo, a crowd of supporters, many waving flags or banners, some peering out of windows, gathered to welcome Benedict. When Benedict finally appeared on the balcony, the crowd erupted in applause.

"Thank you for your friendship, your affection," Benedict told them.

Benedict said he was "just a pilgrim starting the last lap of his earthly journey."

After his brief address to the crowd, Benedict waved one last time and walked back into the palace as the sun set around the square.

9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI

In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.

Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

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Pope leaves Vatican on historic final day

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican on Thursday for the last time as pontiff before he steps down as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, becoming the first pope to resign in 700 years.

Benedict boarded a white helicopter emblazoned with the Vatican flag for the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo near Rome, flying over the Vatican for the last time as pope.

As he took leave of his closest aides in an emotional parting ceremony in the Vatican, staff lined the route of his motorcade and applauded.

The bells of St Peter's Basilica rang out as the helicopter took off from the Vatican's helipad.

"Thank you for your love and support," the pope said in a final tweet sent from his @pontifex Twitter account just before taking off.

"May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

The Twitter account will now be suspended until a new pope is elected in a conclave next month.

The 85-year-old, who has said he can no longer carry on, will then bid one last goodbye to residents of Castel Gandolfo before retiring out of the public eye forever to a life of prayer.

At 1900 GMT, Benedict will no longer be pope.

The Swiss Guards -- a military corps that has protected the papacy since the 15th century and is best known for its brightly-coloured uniforms -- will then leave their posts and return to Rome.

Following tradition, staff in the Vatican will meanwhile apply seals to the doors of the papal apartments and the lift that leads up to them -- to be broken only once a new pope has been elected.

Benedict is only the second pope to resign in the Church's 2,000-year history and in his final hours as pope on Thursday he took the unprecedented step of pledging allegiance to his successor.

"Among you there is also the future pope to whom I promise my unconditional obedience and reverence," the pope said as he bade farewell to cardinals in the Vatican's ornate Clementine Hall.

"Let the Lord reveal the one he has chosen," said the pope, wearing an ermine-lined red stole over his white cassock as cardinals doffed their berettas and lined up to kiss the papal ring.

Benedict will remove the personalised signet ring -- known as the "Fisherman's Ring" -- before he leaves office and it will be destroyed, a tradition to ensure the papal seal is not misused.

"We have experienced, with faith, beautiful moments of radiant light together, as well as times with a few clouds in the sky," Benedict told the cardinals, reprising his remarks to a crowd of 150,000 faithful in St Peter's Square on Wednesday.

"Let us remain united, dear brothers," he said, in the final moments of an eight-year pontificate often overshadowed by infighting at the Vatican and divisions between reformers and traditionalists in the Catholic Church.

The Vatican has said pope will live in Castel Gandolfo for the next two months before taking up permanent residence inside a former convent on a hilltop in the Vatican grounds overlooking Rome.

The German pope stunned the globe when he announced on February 11 his decision to step down, saying he no longer had the "strength of mind and body" required by a fast-changing world.

The news has captured massive media attention, with the Vatican saying that 3,641 journalists from 61 countries will cover the upcoming conclave -- on top of the regular Vatican press corps.

The ex-pontiff will formally carry the new title of "Roman Pontiff Emeritus" or "pope emeritus" for short, although he will still be addressed as "Your Holiness Benedict XVI".

The only other pope who resigned by choice was Celestine V, a humble hermit who stepped down in 1294 after just a few months in office out of disgust with Vatican corruption and intrigue.

Once Benedict takes up residence inside the Vatican, the Church will be in the unprecedented situation of having a pope and his predecessor living within a stone's throw of each other.

Commenting on the new arrangement, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said that Benedict "has no intention of interfering in the positions, decisions or activities of his successor".

Benedict has said he will live "hidden from the world" but the Vatican indicated he could provide "spiritual guidance" to the next pope.

Vatican analysts have suggested his sudden exit could set a precedent for ageing popes in the future, and many ordinary Catholics say a more youthful, pastoral figure could breathe new life into a Church struggling on many levels.

From Catholic reformers calling for women clergy and for an end to priestly celibacy, to growing secularism in the West and ongoing scandals over sexual abuses by paedophile priests going back decades, the next pope will have a tough agenda.

Meanwhile the suspense was building up in Castel Gandolfo -- a tiny mediaeval hilltop town which has hosted visiting popes for centuries and where many locals work at the sprawling papal residence.

"It's a very emotional day," said Patrizia Gasperini, 40, who works in a gift shop next to the imposing wooden doors Swiss Guards will shut at 1900 to signal the end of Benedict's papacy.

Gasperini, who named her eight-year-old daughter Benedetta in his honour, said: "We've been privileged to see a different, more humane side to him over the years, and grown to love him."

-AFP/ac

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iCloud nearly back to normal after early morning outage

Apple's iCloud status at 8:41 a.m. PT

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Apple's iCloud had a major outage this morning, but things are slowly but surely returning to normal.

The outage was reported this morning on Apple's Status page, showing that 11 percent of users were affected. All of iCloud's services, including Mail support, Notes, and sign-in weren't working. Since then, the services have made a comeback and fewer users have been affected.

As of this writing, just Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, and Backup are not working. Apple says that it's affecting "less than 1 percent of users."

Apple's iCloud is no stranger to issues. In September, the service was hit by an outage that lasted a couple of days. Last week, the company's App Store,
iTunes, iCloud, and the MacBook App Store were inaccessible to many people through part of a day.

CNET has contacted Apple for comment on the latest outage. We will update this story when we have more information.

(Via 9to5Mac)

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Manning makes sudden admission in WikiLeaks case

Updated at 11:43 a.m. ET

FORT MEADE, Md. An Army private charged in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history offered guilty pleas Thursday to 10 of 22 charges against him and a military judge said she would allow the soldier to read a statement explaining his actions.

Pfc. Bradley Manning would plead guilty to sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, in violation of military regulations but not in violation of federal espionage laws.

The judge, Col. Denise Lind, must decide whether to accept the guilty pleas, which could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors could still pursue a court-martial on the remaining charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

The 25-year-old Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010 while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad.

The Obama administration has said releasing the information threatened valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments. Experts say that by seeking to punish Manning, the administration is sending a strong message that such leaks will not be tolerated.

Manning supporters — who held events Saturday to mark his 1,000 days in confinement — consider him a whistleblowing hero whose actions exposed war crimes and helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring in late 2010.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Manning has submitted a written statement about the leak and the motive behind it that he wanted to read in court during Thursday's hearing. Prosecutors objected to the statement, but the judge said Thursday she would allow him to read it.

Manning has won few significant victories in his lengthy pretrial proceedings, which included testimony from the soldier about how he was deprived of his clothing and told to stand at attention naked while on suicide watch at the maximum-security Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Va. He has since been transferred to medium-security confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The judge ruled that Manning was illegally punished for part of the time he spent at Quantico and that 112 days should be cut from any prison sentence he receives if convicted.

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Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions.

"There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."

With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among a small chorus of conservatives saying bring on the cuts.

Read more: Bernanke on Sequester Cuts: Too Much, Too Soon

Lucas cited duplicative equipment purchases, military-run golf courses and lavish food on larger bases -- unlike the chow he endured at a combat operations post in Afghanistan with about 120 other soldiers.

"These guys would have very good food, and I'm talking almost like a buffet style, shrimp and steak once a week, ice cream, all this stuff," Lucas said. "They had Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and McDonald's. And I said to myself, 'Do we really need this?'"

Lucas and AFP would like to see the sequester modified, with federal agencies granted more authority to target the cuts and avoid the more dire consequences. But the group wants the cuts to happen.

"We're very supportive of the sequestration cuts but would prefer to see more targeted cuts at the same level," said the group's spokesman, Levi Russell.

As President Obama and his Cabinet members are sounding the sequester alarm bells, AFP's willingness shows that not everyone is running for the hills.

Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo

Speaker Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass' Watch Video

Sequester Showdown: Automatic Spending Cuts Loom Watch Video

President Obama Details Consequences of Sequester Cuts Watch Video

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

Obama traveled to Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday to speak at a shipyard about cuts and layoffs to defense contractors. In his most recent weekly radio address, he told Americans that the Navy has already kept an aircraft carrier home instead of deploying it to the Persian Gulf. And last week, he spoke before national TV cameras at the White House, warning that first responders would be laid off.

Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano has warned that the sequester will "leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks." Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned that air travel will back up after the Federal Aviation Administration furloughs air traffic controllers. And the heads of 18 other federal agencies told Congress that terrible things will happen unless the sequester is pushed off.

Some Republicans have accused the president of scaremongering to gin up popular support for tax hikes. Obama has warned of calamity and demanded compromise in the next breath, and a few Republicans have rejected this as a false choice.

Read more: Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass'

"I don't think the president's focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "For 16 months, the president's been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill."

After Obama spoke to governors at the this week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Jonathan Karl outside the White House that the president is exaggerating the sequester's consequences.

"He's trying to scare the American people," Jindal said. "He's trying to distort the impact."

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Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West wary

ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran gave an upbeat assessment of two days of nuclear talks with world powers that ended on Wednesday, but Western officials said Tehran must start taking concrete steps to ease mounting concerns about its atomic activity.

The first negotiations between Iran and six world powers in eight months ended without a breakthrough in Almaty, but they agreed to meet again at expert level in Istanbul next month and resume political discussions in the Kazakh city on April 5.

Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, is watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran denies any such aim.

Iran's foreign minister said he was optimistic an agreement could be reached with the powers - the United States, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and China - on the country's disputed nuclear program.

"Very confident," Ali Akbar Salehi told Reuters when asked on the sidelines of a U.N. conference in Vienna how confident he was of a positive outcome.

The six powers offered at the February 26-27 Almaty meeting to lift some sanctions if Iran scaled back nuclear activity that the West fears could be used to build a bomb.

Tehran, which says its program is entirely peaceful, did not agree to do so and the sides did not appear any closer to a deal to resolve a decade-old dispute that could lead to another war in the Middle East if diplomacy fails.

But Iran still said the talks were a positive step in which the six powers tried to "get closer to our viewpoint".

Western officials had made clear they did not expect major progress in Almaty, aware that the closeness of Iran's presidential election in June is raising political tensions in Tehran and makes significant concessions unlikely.

"I hope the Iranian side is looking positively on the proposal we put forward," said European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who led the talks on behalf of the powers. "We have to see what happens next."

The United States did not expect a breakthrough and "the result was clearly in line with those expectations," a senior U.S. official said.

The meeting was "useful" as the two sides agreed dates and venues for follow-up talks but there was a need for progress on confidence building measures, the official added.

UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR SITE

The West's immediate priority is that Iran halts higher-grade uranium enrichment and closes an underground facility, Fordow, where this work is carried out. The material is a relatively short technical step from bomb-grade uranium.

"What we care about at the end is concrete results," the U.S. official said.

One diplomat in Almaty said the Iranians appeared to be suggesting at the negotiations that they were opening new avenues, but that it was not clear if this was really the case.

Both sides said experts would meet for talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul on March 18 and that political negotiators would return to Almaty on April 5-6.

Russian negotiator Sergei Ryabkov confirmed that the powers had offered to ease sanctions on Iran if it stops enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile purity - a short technical step from weapons grade - at the Fordow underground site where it carries out its most controversial uranium enrichment work.

Western officials said the offer of sanctions relief included a resumption of trade in gold and precious metals.

One diplomat said that lifting an embargo on imports of Iranian petrochemical products to Europe, if Iran responded, was also on the table. But a U.S. official said the world powers had not offered to suspend oil or financial sanctions.

The sanctions are hurting Iran's economy and its chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, suggested Iran could discuss its production of higher-grade nuclear fuel, although he appeared to rule out shutting Fordow.

In comments in Persian translated into English, Jalili told a news conference Fordow was under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog and there was no justification for closing it.

MOOD "MORE OPTIMISTIC"

Asked about the production of 20-percent enriched fuel, he reiterated Iran's position that it needed this for a research reactor and had a right to produce it.

Iran says its enrichment program is aimed solely at fuelling nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil, and that Israel's assumed nuclear arsenal is the main threat to peace in the region.

But Jalili did indicate that Iran might be prepared to talk about the issue, saying: "This can be discussed in the negotiations ... in view of confidence building."

Iran has also previously suggested that 20-percent enrichment was up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead. It also wants sanctions lifted.

"While an agreement to meet again may not impress skeptics of diplomacy, an important development did occur," said Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran. "The parties began searching for a solution by offering positive measures in order to secure concessions from the other side.

Another expert, Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "I note that the mood is more optimistic and that's great, but a deal still hasn't been reached and in my view its unlikely to be reached before the Iranian elections have come and gone."

(Additional reporting Fredrik Dahl in Almaaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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New Singapore ambassadors to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland

SINGAPORE: The government has appointed Mr Wong Kwok Pun as Singapore's first resident Ambassador to the State of Qatar, Mr Lawrence Anderson as Singapore's next Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Mr Tee Tua Ba as Singapore's Ambassador to Switzerland (resident in Singapore).

Mr Wong and Mr Anderson will assume their post on 17 March 2013 and 30 March 2013 respectively.

Mr Wong joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1975. His most recent appointment was as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (August 2009 to February 2013), with concurrent accreditation to the Kingdom of Bahrain (January 2010 to February 2013).

Mr Anderson joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1984. His most recent appointment was as Director/Special Duties in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and concurrently as Diplomat-in-Residence at the Civil Service College (February 2011 to February 2013).

Mr Tee was Singapore's Non-Resident Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from April 2008 to December 2012.

- CNA/de

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Sorry, LTE compatibility in the U.S. still years away

Unfortunately, AT&T's iPhone 5 is only LTE at AT&T.

(Credit:
CNET)

BARCELONA, Spain--Here's the good news: the U.S. wireless industry is working to ensure that you'll eventually be able to take your LTE-enabled phone from one carrier to another and get the same experience.

The bad news: it likely won't happen for a few years.

That's according to T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray, who spoke to CNET in an interview at Mobile World Congress. Ray says the industry is keen on phones that can operate on different carriers, but that there remains a lot of complexities.

The advent of 4G LTE technology was supposed to unify the industry, joining together factions that spent years in their respective technology camps, or CDMA and GSM. That's been a big hurdle, particularly large countries such as the U.S. and China. In the U.S., for instance, phones can move between AT&T and T-Mobile USA, but will not work on Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel.

But alongside the rise of a common technology in LTE is a new problem: spectrum fragmentation. Because of the lack of consistent spectrum bands, each carrier has built their networks using incompatible spectrum frequencies. AT&T and Verizon actually run on the same frequency, 700 megahertz, but are in different parts of the band and can't work with each other. T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel are each using their own different bands.

The industry is already doing a lot of work to address the complications. Qualcomm told CNET that it will solve the 4G LTE roaming problem this year by introducing a chipset that can run on multiple frequencies. CNET broke the story that Verizon would have international roaming partners for its 4G LTE network by next year.

So while there's been progress on the chip side, there remains a problem with the radios and how many bands they can actually handle, Ray said. He added there were additional complications handling both low and high bands of frequency.

Another wrinkle: additional spectrum that will eventually be made available to the wireless industry that adds even more new frequencies. That comes on top of different bands of spectrum held by AT&T and Dish. So achieving interoperability is like hitting a moving target.

Verizon has said that while it may have some agreements in place next year, it will take some time for phones which are compatible with certain frequencies to hit the market.

There seems to be more of a push for the carriers to work with international carriers than their domestic competitors. The carriers, of course, have a vested interest in keeping the customer locked into its network, so the idea of interoperability may not be high on the list.

The legacy network incompatibility, meanwhile, means these devices couldn't work together either way if a 4G LTE connection wasn't available.

Ray, who also serves as chairman of 4G Americas trade group, said he is a big believer of consumer portability. Indeed, T-Mobile has pushed to get AT&T iPhones switched over to its carrier. But in many markets, those iPhones drop from a faste connection to a slower one because of spectrum incompatibility. Only in select markets does T-Mobile and AT&T have compatible bands for HSPA+, a fast network they both call 4G. But an
iPhone 5 on AT&T wouldn't get LTE with T-Mobile.

How quickly this gets addressed depends a lot on how rapidly the industry puts the new bands of spectrum to use. Ray said he believes this is an important issue.

"Ultimately, that problem has to be fixed," he said.

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