AT&T TO FINALLY LAUNCH FIRST SET OF4G MARKETS

During the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Entertainment & Communications conference on Thursday, AT&T’s chief financial officer John Stephens said that AT&T will activate its 4G LTE network in its first five markets on Sunday, FierceWireless reported. The network has been active as part of a soft launch in the AT&T’s five markets, which include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Reports have shown a 4g tablet achieving download speeds around 22Mbps and screenshots of a 4G modem achieving 13Mbps download speeds in Chicago. In addition, the same modem reaching speeds up to 25Mbps in Atlanta. Of course all these have been on unloaded systems, so actual speeds may vary. AT&T hopes to activate its network in 15 total markets and launch its first LTE smartphone by the end of the year.

RUMOR: DELL PLANNING TO BUY AMD

Rumor has it that Dell has been looking to buy chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). AMD has been having its clock cleaned for some time now by rival IBM. Senior executives have been fleeing left and right in the last month, with CEO Dirk Meyer departing back in January and COO Robert Rivet also running away from the beleaguered chipmaker last week.

Right now, CFO Thomas Seifert is acting as interim CEO at AMD, but he has asked that the promotion be temporary until a new CEO can be found.

“There is no management team there,” said Patrick Wang, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in New York. He then said there is a “far-reaching possibility” that the company is up for sale, according to “chatter.”

The purchase by Dell would put them in charge of its own manifest destiny, controlling the silicon of both the processors and GPUs that make up its machines.