AT&T bringing LTE to five cities this summer

AT&T announced last fall that it would begin its LTE rollout in mid-2011, and it's now finally delivered a few more details. The carrier has just confirmed that five markets -- Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio -- will be getting LTE sometime "this summer," with ten more as-yet-unnamed cities set to join them in the second half of the year. All told, AT&T says that should cover about 70 million Americans by year's end. Of course, an LTE network needs some devices, but AT&T unfortunately isn't providing much in the way of details about those just yet -- it's only saying that it plans to add 20 4G devices to its portfolio this year, and that "some of those" will be LTE capable.

AT&T officially announces HP Veer 4G, available May 15th for $100

Well, it's a bit past May 2nd, but AT&T has now finally officially announced that it will be carrying the HP Veer -- or Veer 4G, as it prefers to call it. The diminutive smartphone will be available on May 15th in your choice of black or white for $99.99 on a two-year contract. That will buy you a 2.6-inch 320 x 400 display, an 800MHz Snapdragon processor, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage and, of course, webOS 2.1 for an OS -- all in a package about the size of a credit card. As you might expect, however, that 4G addition does literally come with an asterisk -- the phone itself only has basic HSPA capabilities.

AT&T tells customers using unauthorized tethering methods to pay up or stop

Been using an app like MyWi to enable tethering on your jailbroken iPhone? Then there's a good chance you've already received a message like the one above from AT&T, or perhaps an email like the one after the break. By all accounts, the carrier is now cracking down on all unauthorized tethering, and it's asking folks engaged in such behavior to either pay up for a proper tethering plan or simply stop tethering altogether -- if it doesn't hear anything back for you after sending the message, AT&T says it will automatically enroll you in a DataPro 4GB tethering plan (at a rate of $45 a month). We should note that all the reports we've seen so far are from iPhone users, although that certainly doesn't mean Android users will simply be allowed to slip by unnoticed. Exactly how AT&T is identifying users isn't clear, however, and we could well just be seeing the beginning of a cat and mouse game as folks try to discover workarounds to go undetected.

AT&T makes calling Japan free until the end of March

We imagine that many of you, like us, have been making frantic calls to friends and family in Japan over the last few days without regard to the costs. Now, in the face of otherwise devastating news, we have some good news to share courtesy of AT&T. Ma Bell is offering wired and wireless billing relief for calls made on AT&T between March 11th and March 31st. Under the plan, AT&T wireless postpaid customers will not be charged for international long distance or text messages to Japan from the US and Puerto Rico. Likewise, residential wireline customers can seek credits for up to 60 minutes of direct dialing to Japan. Sure it's a shameless publicity grab but this one seems genuinely helpful.