The Senate confirmed Julius Genachowski to be the new chairman of the FCC after months of delay. Genachowski was officially nominated in March and his confirmation hearing had been delayed until this month.

The Senate also confirmed current commissioner Robert McDowell for a second term at the commission. Right now he remains the lone Republican on the five-member panel. Both Genachowski's and McDowell's nominations were approved by the Senate Commerce Committee last week.

Obama announced his intention to nominate former Bush administration official Meredith Attwell Baker for the remaining Republican seat on the FCC. 

Baker was formerly the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Commerce Department. However, she came under criticism when the NTIA was forced to start a waiting list for people who were seeking coupons for digital TV converter boxes. The waiting list issue was one of the main reasons the DTV transition was delayed from Feb. 17 to June 12.  

Currently the FCC is operating with just three commissioners. Michael Copps, a Democrat, has been serving as the acting chairman, and Jonathan Adelstein, also a Democrat, has been slated to leave the commission and run the Rural Utilities Service. McDowell is the other commissioner. 

Baker's nomination will likely proceed along with that of Mignon Clyburn. Clyburn, a commissioner for the South Carolina Public Service Commission and the daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C), was nominated for one of the Democratic seats on the commission.

For more:
- see this Down Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)

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Palm posted a wider net loss in its fiscal fourth quarter, showing that even though the Pre and its new webOS platform have been launched, the smartphone maker is not in the clear yet.

The company reported a $105 million net loss applicable to common shareholders in the quarter, wider than the net loss of $43.4 million it had in the year-ago quarter. The loss was narrower than expected, however.

Palm had total revenues in the quarter of $86.8 million, down 71 percent from the $296.1 million it posted in the year-ago quarter and down from its $90.6 million revenue total for the previous quarter. The company shipped 351,000 smartphones during the quarter, which is a 6 percent increase compared to the fiscal third quarter, but a 62 percent decrease on a year-over-year basis. One bright spot: As the Palm Pre launched June 6, and Palm's fiscal fourth quarter ended May 29, sales of the smartphone were not included in this quarter's earnings report. However, Palm said that demand for the Pre was exceeding expectations.

"We're successfully ramping supply to meet demand that is strong and growing," Palm CEO Jonathan Rubinstein said on a conference call, referring to the Pre. Analysts are expecting that with Rubinstein at the helm, Palm can refocus on innovation. Rubinstein took over the CEO spot from longtime Palm player Ed Colligan earlier this month.

The company did not release any official sales figures for the Pre. Sprint, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the Pre, has said it will release more sales details when it reports its second-quarter earnings next month. Analyst estimate that Palm has shipped around 150,000 Pre units so far. The company's App Catalog for webOS reached 1 million downloads, according to the mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets. 

For more:
- see this release

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AT&T Mobility has struck a deal with the startup TerreStar Networks, which plans to launch a satellite July 1. TerreStar is developing handsets that use both cellular and satellite technologies. AT&T is set to resell satellite services and phones from TerreStar. The satellite will provide service across the United States and Canada (including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and will use licensed 2 GHz spectrum for voice service. Data speeds, however, will be fairly slow compared to many carriers' high-speed mobile broadband networks, clocking in at 64 Kbps. Initially, AT&T will resell the service to local, state and federal governments. Article

Palm's App Catalog for its webOS platform has hit 1 million downloads, according to the mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets. However, the company has said it won't be drawn into an "apps race" with Apple over the number of applications available or the number of downloads. 

The 1 million download mark was expected to be reached at some point this week, but the number is still fairly remarkable considering there are only some 30 applications in the App Catalog.

"We clearly have to have a product we're proud of," Mitch Allen, Palm's software chief technology officer, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. "Taking a little bit more time right now does trump the excitement that comes from having something that people can play with today."

Apple regularly touts that more than 1 billion applications have been downloaded from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch since it opened last summer. Palm will publicly release the Mojo software development kit for webOS at the end of the summer. 

For more:
- see this NYT article
- see this NYT blog post
- see this Bloomberg News article

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With voice service becoming a commodity, wireless carriers are avidly looking for ways to increase their mobile data revenues.  And the quickest (and perhaps most lucrative) way to do that is by finding compelling data applications that will make consumers upgrade to smartphones, purchase data plans and buy apps. 

This emphasis on data is the reason why so many carriers are forming developer communities and hosting developer-centric events. For example, Verizon Wireless announced it will host a developer event in San Jose July 28. Likewise, Sprint Nextel is hosting a developer event Oct. 26-28 in Santa Clara.  

For developers, this attention from Tier 1 operators is critical because mobile carriers have a lot of clout in the ecosystem. If a carrier supports and markets an app, that can mean instant success for a developer. Of course, carriers aren't the only entities looking for talented developers. Handset makers and operating systems are also avidly searching for developers to make compelling apps that they can then use to populate their app stores. 

I spoke with Roger Guranai, senior vice president of product development at Verizon Wireless, about Verizon's upcoming developer event and he said Verizon is hoping to attract hundreds of developers there. The carrier will provide a roadmap for developers and show how the carrier is planning to open up its applications ecosystem. In addition, developers will get a peek at the company's software developer kit (SDK) and also receive information on how they can get their apps in Verizon's new app store. Verizon will debut its developer portal at the event.

Of course, this new "open" agenda from Verizon doesn't mean the carrier is ditching its BREW platform, which it has been using for eight years as a venue to host its data applications and mobile content. Instead, Guranai said the company is expanding its capabilities by rolling out an open environment with open platforms, open development tools and multiple operating system environments. "Many of the developers will be able to take existing apps already developed and quickly render them on devices on our network," Guranai said.

But perhaps the most important thing developers will learn at Verizon's developer event is the financial arrangement. Guranai says the carrier will be providing incentives for developers to create apps and bring them to Verizon's devices and app store. In addition, the company will direct bill customers for the apps, which is considered an advantage over some other app stores where customers must pay for their app via PayPal or another payment method.

It's becoming increasing clear that as carriers, handset makers and operating systems all compete for the attention of the mobile developer,  developers are quickly moving into the driver's seat. It's time to critically evaluate the various developer programs and decide which one makes the best business sense and can bring the most downloads to the developer. It's nice to see the developer move into the power position for a change. -- Sue

P.S.  The Fierce team is working on the annual Women in Wireless feature. If you know an exceptional female executive in the wireless industry who not only has technical savvy, but  is also a strong leader, send an email to sue@fiercemarkets.com and explain why we should consider her.   

HTC said it expects its U.S. handset sales to grow by at least 50 percent this year, a growth prospect far larger than the company's overall target.

Jason Mackenzie, vice president of sales and marketing for HTC America, told Reuters that the U.S. sales growth over 2008 levels would represent sales of around 6 million phones this year. HTC forecasts a volume growth of 20 percent worldwide this year. The company has established itself as leading handset maker for Google's Android platform, which complements its status as a major vendor for Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS.

Mackenzie said the company would boost sales despite intense competition in the smartphone market from rivals including Apple, Palm and Research In Motion. Although other major handset makers have said they will release Android phones this year, Mackenzie seemed confident.  "Competitively we feel very good," he said. The company released its third Android phone, the Hero, yesterday, which follows the G1 and the myTouch3G. 

AT&T Mobility has been rumored to be the carrier that will first launch the Hero, which Mackenzie said will debut in the United States this fall. 

For more:
- see this Reuters article

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A U.S. District Court judged ruled Sprint will be spared from a class-action lawsuit that alleged the carrier overcharged taxes for customers using data cards and refused refunds.

Judge Robert Bryan, of the U.S. District Court of Tacoma, Wash., handed down the ruling June 23. "The plaintiffs have not proven that the benefits of adjudication of the plaintiffs' claims at one trial would outweigh the complexity of such proceeding," Bryan wrote in his ruling.  

A California consumer-advocacy group, the Utility Consumers' Action Network, sued Sprint in federal court in San Diego in 2007. Bryan took over the case after judges in San Diego recused themselves in April 2008. The advocacy group said Sprint tacked on fees for text messages sent to customers who bought the data cards to access the Internet, and had sought to have the case designated as a national class-action lawsuit.

The judge said the consumer group failed to show how having their claims combined in a national class-action suit would be better or more efficient. 

"While we are pleased with the judge's decision, it is procedural in nature and is the first of many to be made by the court," Sprint spokesman John Taylor told FierceWireless. "Sprint remains committed to providing fair and transparent billing practices as part of a positive customer experience."

For more:
- see this Bloomberg News article
- see this Reuters article

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Ericsson CEO Carl-Heinric Svanberg will step down at the end of the year and become chairman of the oil giant BP. The Swedish equipment maker's CFO, Hans Vestberg, will replace him as CEO on Jan. 1, 2010.  

Svanberg, who is also chairman of Sony Ericsson, will remain on Ericsson's board. He will leave the company as it is in the midst of cost cuts and as the telecom equipment markets remain in flux. Svanberg arrived in 2003 and has helped turn Ericsson into the world's largest wireless equipment vendor. The company has also become a leading proponent of LTE technology under his watch.

Vestberg has been with the company since 1991, and Michael Treschow, the chairman of Ericsson's board, expressed confidence in Vestberg's leadership abilities. Vestberg said in an interview with Bloomberg News that Ericsson would support its Sony Ericsson joint venture with more capital if needed. He also said he did not plan on deepening the cost cuts started this year. "Right now the program we announced at the beginning of the year is the program we're executing," he said.  

Ericsson posted a 35 percent drop in net income for the first quarter, hit largely by its joint ventures. The company will report second quarter earnings July 24.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg News article
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this release

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Best Buy plans to open 40 stand-alone Best Buy Mobile stores this fiscal year and will quintuple its share of the U.S. mobile phone market to 15 percent, the company said.

Brian Dunn, who formally took over the reins as CEO Wednesday from the retiring Brad Anderson, said mobile phones would be a key part of the company's strategy of focusing on devices featuring "connectivity." The company in February said its U.S. mobile phone share in the fourth quarter of 2008 grew to 3.2 percent, up from 1.9 percent a year earlier. At the time, Best Buy said it hoped to have a 10 percent share in a few years, a projection that does not seem so lofty compared to the 15 percent Dunn said the company is now shooting for.

Dunn, who formerly was president of Best Buy's North American retail operations, said the company is experimenting with more interactive Best Buy Mobile store layouts. These experiments will lead to more definite plans on store design, which will then be rolled out more broadly next year, Dunn said.

The electronics retailer has muscled its way into the mobile phone market. It became the first retailer to sell Apple's iPhone 3G last summer, and opened its first Best Buy Mobile outlets last fall. The company has become a go-to destination for popular phone launches. Best Buy was one of the few retailers, including RadioShack and Wal-Mart, to have the Palm Pre when Sprint Nextel launched it June 6.

The company is still the country's largest consumer electronics chain by sales, but its first quarter earnings fell 15 percent, and domestic sales at stores open at least 14 months sagged 4.9 percent in the quarter.  

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)

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Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC unveiled its third phone based on Google's Android platform, the Hero, at a press event in London today. Building on the software innovations that it is pushing in the Touch Pro 2 and the Touch Diamond 2, HTC has added a new software element to the Hero, called Sense.

In an interview on the "Charlie Rose" program last night, Seidenberg said that it still up in the air whether or not Verizon will launch the iPhone. Check out the interview.

Source:'Charlie Rose' via YouTube

Check out the HTC Hero, the company's third phone based on Google's Android platform.

Source: YouTube

Venture capital in the telecom industry may not be what it once was, but the industry is still alive and well. According to data provided by the National Venture Capital Association, the top 10 venture capital deals in the first quarter in the telecom industry were worth a combined $78.7 million. It's interesting to note that many of the companies on the list are involved in wireless services. Here is a countdown of the top 10 VC deals. Slideshow

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC unveiled its third phone based on Google's Android platform, the Hero, at a press event in London today.

Building on the software innovations that it is pushing in the Touch Pro 2 and the Touch Diamond 2, HTC has added a new software element to the Hero, called Sense. The software does several things, including putting a contact's photo alongside their text messages, emails and call history in a single view. Similar to  the Push Internet feature that HTC unveiled at Mobile World Congress, Sense will allow users to have customizable Push widgets like weather, Twitter and email.

"We've been trained to function in this application-centric way. But that's not the way we think," HTC CEO Peter Chou told the Wall Street Journal.  "Today's phones are not really designed for people," he added. Sense will be available on all new HTC devices going forward, the company said.

The phone has a 3.2-inch HVGA display, GPS, a digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. The Hero also has a dedicated search button that allows users to search contacts, emails or other areas on the phone. The phone will be a tablet design, but will also have a "chin" at the end to make it more comfortable against a user's face.

The Hero will be available in Europe next month, and T-Mobile UK and Orange UK have said they will launch it. It will be available in Asia later this summer and a distinct North American version will be available before the end of the year. The company did not provide any pricing information.

For more:
- see this release
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see these pictures
- see this video of the Hero

Related Article:
Report: AT&T will have exclusive on HTC Android device

Verizon Wireless will pay the state of Florida $1.5 million as part of a settlement reached with the Florida attorney general for third-party charges that appeared on consumers' bills.  The customers were charged for ringtones, wallpapers and other mobile content that had been marketed as free or that they didn't realize would result in a monthly charge.

The content wound up costing customers up to $19.99 per month. The charges appeared on the subscriber's wireless bill as company's names, including OpenMarket, M-Qube and M-Blox. As part of the settlement Verizon agreed to adopt "best practices" standards to protect customers from the charges. An investigation found that thousands of Florida customers had been affected by the charges.

"Consumers deserve to get their money back when a company misrepresents something as free that isn't," Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said in a statement. "I commend Verizon Wireless for providing full restitution to their Florida customers and changing the business model to better protect consumers nationwide."

In late February, AT&T Mobility agreed to refund thousands of Florida consumers for the same problem. AT&T agreed to pay Florida $2.5 million and contribute $500,000 toward consumer education on safe Internet use. The carrier also agreed to the same kind of safeguards that Verizon will adopt.

For more:
- see this release

Related Article:
AT&T agrees to refunds over 'free' content

AT&T continues to expand its embedded wireless vision. The company today inked a deal with Cooper Power Systems to jointly market and sell smart grid sensor devices to utility companies. The devices are certified on AT&T's wireless network and will allow utilities to receive real-time system performance data on their grids.

Specifically, AT&T will co-sell two products: the Outage Advisor and the VARAdvisor. The Outage Advisor will help utilities locate problems such as faults on the electrical lines, which will help them anticipate outages. The VARAdvisor will control the voltage supplied to consumers and reduce on-site inspections.

In an interview with FierceWireless, Abhi Ingle, vice president, industry and mobility applications solutions at AT&T, said that the agreement with Cooper is another step in AT&T's plan to become more tightly integrated with utilities. "We have teamed with suppliers and distributors of smart grids to embed wireless in the grid," Ingle said. "We are providing a road map for the utilities that is low bandwidth and low cost. It provides ease of use and remote troubleshooting."

Ingle said that AT&T expects these type of smart grid solutions to only use about 100 Kbps of data to send the monitoring information to the utility.

For more:
- see this press release

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MetroPCS is offering its customers unlimited international calling to more than 100 countries for $5 per month. The deal is the latest option the flat-rate carrier has added to spruce up its prepaid offerings.

Under the new international calling feature, subscribers will be able to call more than 1,000 destinations for no extra charge other than the $5 per month fee. The company said the unlimited calling plan can be added to its $40, $45 and $50 monthly service plans, including family plans.

In April, MetroPCS added unlimited calling to select locations in Mexico for an extra $3 per month. The carrier also recently added a family conference feature that gives family members one number that rings all of their cell phones at once, placing them into a conference call.

Perhaps as a sign of its growing market clout, Standard & Poor's said MetroPCS would replace Tyco Electronics on the S&P 500 stock index. The company will join the index after the close of trading June 29.

MetroPCS reported a 20 percent increase in revenue in the first quarter, to $795 million, up from $622 million in the year-ago quarter. The carrier also had a record 684,000 net subscriber additions in the quarter.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Reuters article

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Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg ducked a question about if--or when--Verizon Wireless would launch a version of Apple's iPhone and also did not directly answer whether the carrier would launch an Android phone before the end of the year.

In an interview on the "Charlie Rose" program last night, Seidenberg said that it still up in the air whether or not Verizon will launch the iPhone. He said the device, which is offered exclusively through AT&T Mobility in the United States, "made smart phones important, or more important." Seidenberg said it would be Apple's decision whether or not to make a version of the iPhone that would be compatible with Verizon's LTE network, which the carrier will launch in 20 to 30 commercial markets next year.

The chief executive also was careful to watch his words when talking about a report in The Wall Street Journal that said Verizon would launch a Motorola-made smartphone running on Google's Android platform before the end of the year, and said only that "it might be true." 

Seidenberg praised Google's expertise with the Internet and said the more success Google has, the greater demand there will be for data services and applications. However, he noted Google provides services like search that wireless carriers either offer or would want to get into, and that this might create tension.

"They also like to provide services that in effect sometimes compete with the things that we do," Seidenberg said. "They're on the right side of most of the things that are important to us in terms of growing the business, and the places where we compete, you know, we're big boys, they're big boys, we'll talk about it when we need to."

For more:
- see this WSJ blog post (sub. req.)
- watch the interview

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Sprint Nextel will continue to see shortages of the Palm Pre, but the company has not experienced any impact from Apple's new iPhone model,  the carrier's CFO said.

"We still have a backlog of subscribers but it's not unmanageable and we get shipments every week," Sprint CFO Bob Brust said during a webcast of an investor conference. "We'll be short for a while but we're catching up." Brust said he saw the phone attracting both new customers and existing Sprint subscribers. Sprint launched the Pre June 6, and is hoping it will help stem postpaid subscriber losses.

Brust said Sprint had not seen any change in Pre sales since Apple's iPhone 3G S went on sale Friday, but sounded a cautionary note. "That may happen," he said. The executive added that Sprint would release more detailed sales figures for the Pre when it reports second quarter earnings next month.

Outside of the smartphone arena, Brust said it will take time for Sprint to turn around its lagging revenue, which he said was a key priority. He said the Pre and the $50 per month unlimited voice and data plan offered by its prepaid subsidiary, Boost Mobile, will help.  

"That's a really tough rate of decline to keep up with," he said, referring to revenue declines of around 3 percent per quarter in recent quarters. "So sometime out into the future, not years but quarters, I hope we'll see that revenue flatten out and then hopefully turn around, and it'll look like a different company financially when that day comes."

For more:
- see this Reuters article

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Venture capital in the telecom industry may not be what it once was, but the industry is still alive and well. The following list is compiled from data provided by the National Venture Capital Association and represents the top 10 venture capital deals in the first quarter in the telecom industry. It's interesting to note that many of the companies on the list are companies involved in wireless services. Accompanying each company is a brief description of what the company does, the size of the deal, who the investors are, where the company is based and a link the company's website. So, counting down from 10 to 1, based on the dollar amount of the deal, here is the list. Click the thumbnails to get started.

The mobile application ecosystem has become more fragmented than ever before. The wide range of choices for mobile app developers presents both opportunities and challenges for developers as they try to navigate the multiple operating systems available for development.  To make some sense of all of this, FierceDeveloper asked a range of mobile software executives to provide advice to developers looking to break into the business. Special feature

Wireless carriers without wireline divisions are asking the FCC to put a cap on the special access fees they must pay to backhaul their customers' voice and data traffic across their competitors' wireline networks. Carriers such as Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and U.S. Cellular, along with a coalition called No Choke Points (whose members include Clearwire and small independent LECs such as Covad Communications),  claim the interconnection fees are a big barrier to broadband access.

Specifically, the No Choke Points coalition claims wireline carriers AT&T and Verizon Communications control 80 percent to 90 percent of the backhaul network in the U.S., and that all operators need to access these backhaul networks to transfer their voice and data traffic from the cell site to the switch. Sprint says one-third of its operating costs for each cell tower are devoted to these access fees.

But AT&T says Sprint's efforts at getting government-mandated reductions in these access fees is a strategy designed to alleviate some of its financial and business pressures that are a result of its merger with Nextel Corp. In addition, the wireline carriers say capping their special access prices would deter Internet deployment because then companies would not build their own connections.

FCC acting chairman Michael Copps has requested more data on access charges, however there has been no more progress on the proposal.

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this article
- see this press release

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Ericsson signed its first LTE licensing deal and indicated that licensing its technology would be a key component of the company's strategy going forward as LTE adoption increases.

The company announced the deal yesterday, and Gustav Brismark, Ericsson's vice president of patent strategies at Ericsson, told Reuters Ericsson already has more than 80 similar patent agreements for GSM and W-CDMA technologies. "The first agreements including LTE have been signed, and over time more or less all these agreements will be renegotiated to include LTE, but that will not be done in a day," he said. 

Brismark also said Ericsson's focus on research and development, coupled with licensing the technologies it develops, would continue to be a part of its business. "We see that we are keeping our leading position as we go from GSM to W-CDMA to LTE," he said. "That is important to be able to continue the strategy of having license revenues as one part of what Ericsson makes money from."

Ericsson has been a key proponent of LTE. Ericsson and TeliaSonera said in May that they launched the world's first commercial Long Term Evolution site in Stockholm, Sweden. According to ABI Research, 10 operators worldwide will launch LTE networks next year, and that 34 million people worldwide are expected to have access to LTE in 2011. Ericsson is one of the vendors Verizon Wireless selected to build the infrastructure for its LTE network, which it will launch in 20 to 30 commercial markets next year.

For more:
- see this Reuters article

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Nokia and Intel announced a partnership on a new class of mobile computing devices, giving Intel another leg up in the wireless market. The two companies did not disclose when the devices would be available or what kind of wireless products they would develop together.

However, some outlines of the detail emerged. Intel will buy Nokia's proprietary intellectual property related to high-speed wireless technology. Nokia and Intel also plan on collaborating on open-source mobile Linux software projects. The two tech titans said they want to define "a new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks" for hardware, software and mobile Internet services.

The deal is a major coup for Intel in the wireless space, but no matter what, if any, products are released as a result of the partnership, Intel will face competition from entrenched market players such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

"The company hopes that taking a slice of the mobile device market will provide an engine for growth outside of its traditional PC and server markets," said Adam Leach, the principal device analyst at Ovum. "However, the current family of Atom chipsets is not suitable for use in handsets and instead Intel has developed a new market segment for larger form factor mobile Internet devices (MIDs) positioned above smartphones and below notebooks." Leach said the announcement showed that Nokia was confident that Intel could produce a chip that was competitive with ARM processors.

Other analysts were confused by the lack of specificity. "It all sounds great, but without any content or timelines on products, it's hard to go with just 'trust us,'" Rebecca Runkle, the managing director of equities analysis company Research Edge, told the New York Times. 

The deal is one of several moves Intel has made recently as it seeks to establish itself in the wireless industry. In February, Intel secured LG Electronics as a customer, and said it would provide a processor for an LG-made mobile Internet device. The company also recently spent $884 million to acquire Wind River, which specializes in helping companies manage and develop software, especially for embedded systems and wireless products. Intel and Nokia have worked together in the past, Leach noted; in 2006 Nokia agreed to supply a HSDPA module for Intel's Centrino platform, but he partnership never resulted in any products.       

For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this NYT article

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Nokia Siemens Networks will close its planned acquisition of Nortel Networks' CDMA and LTE assets by the third quarter of this year. In addition, the company said it's confident that in the wake of the deal it will win contracts from Verizon Wireless.

Nortel last Friday said it would liquidate and sell its largest wireless assets to Nokia Siemens for $650 million. The deal will push Nokia Siemens to the No. 2 position in the CDMA infrastructure market, right behind market leader Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia Siemens CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie told reporters in a conference call yesterday that the deal would boost the company's mobile infrastructure market share in North America from 5.5. percent to more than 30 percent, based on 2008 data.

"We still need to work through the various bankruptcy and regulatory processes in Canada and the U.S. but we are optimistic that we should be able to do this relatively quickly and close by the middle of the third quarter of 2009," Beresford-Wylie said. 

Beresford-Wylie also dismissed suggestions it would struggle to secure LTE infrastructure deals with U.S. wireless carriers, adding that he thought Nokia Siemens was in a better position to get those contracts now that it was acquiring Nortel's LTE assets.

Nokia Siemens also will retain some 2,500 Nortel workers once the deal is complete. However, Nokia Siemens will not  take on Nortel's pension obligations or other debt, said Michael Matthews, the head of strategy and business development at Nokia Siemens.

For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Toronto Star article
- see this FT article

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Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA will launch Motorola-made phones running on Google's Android platform before the end of the year, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The report, which cited unnamed people familiar with the matter, did not provide a timeline for when the carriers would launch the phones.

Motorola has wagered much of the future of its handset division on its success with Android. In late April, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said the company would have Android devices on the market by the end of the year with multiple carriers, and not just in North America. "We are in detailed discussion with multiple carriers around the world," Jha, the head of Motorola's mobile devices division, said at the time. "It won't be one carrier in one region. It will be multiple carriers in multiple regions."

The news is not entirely surprising considering that T-Mobile has indicated it will launch more Android phones this year and not all will be made by HTC, which makes both the G1 and the just-announced myTouch 3G. Verizon has also been upfront about its Android intentions . Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said in late May that the carrier would launch Android phones "in the near future." Currently, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are the only two U.S. carriers in the Google-led Open Handset Alliance.

According to the Journal, T-Mobile will launch a touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard. The phone's software will have an emphasis on social networking, with built-in software from some popular social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. All that is known about the Motorola-made Android phone that Verizon will launch is that it will have hardware similar to the T-Mobile device.

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)

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Sprint Nextel launched two new phones designed for social networking, the Samsung Exclaim, featurings a dual-sliding keyboard, revealing a numeric keypad and a full Qwerty keyboard, and the HTC Snap, which first appeared  at the International CTIA Wireless 2009 show in Las Vegas.

The myTouch 3G, which, like the T-Mobile G1 is made by HTC, is essentially the HTC Magic. The smartphone features a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, no physical keyboard and a 3.2-megapixel camera. The myTouch 3G also has WiFi capabilities, video playback and a music player that comes pre-loaded with a 4 GB microSD card.

The base station market is declining. According to new research from In-Stat, base station market revenue will decline 22 percent this year as the pace of 3G network buildout slows. In addition, the market is facing intense competition from Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE, according to In-Stat. Carriers are pushing for lower infrastructure costs from manufacturers, which cuts into the overall market's revenue. However, there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. In-State forecasts there will be 166,000 LTE base stations deployed by 2013 and that GSM base station shipments should remain strong for few more years. Release

Apple is offering customers who have faced delays in activating their new iPhone 3G S an apology by giving them $30 in iTunes Store credit. 

The company began notifying customers Sunday that if they were having trouble activating their new iPhone they might be in for another two days of waiting due to "system issues and continued high activation volumes." Reports of activation delays began filtering in almost immediately after the iPhone 3G S went on sale Friday morning. 

"We hope you will enjoy this gift and accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused," Apple said in the email.

Last summer, when the iPhone 3G launched, the crush of customers trying to activate their phones overloaded AT&T Mobility's activation servers, which eventually crashed. Apple said it sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G S units over the weekend. An AT&T spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment at deadline. 

For more:
- see this CNET article
- see this Wired post

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Sprint Nextel launched two new phones designed for social networking.

The carrier launched the Samsung Exclaim, which features a dual-sliding keyboard, revealing a numeric keypad and a full Qwerty keyboard. The phone has homesreen widgets for direct access to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The Exclaim is currently being sold for $79.99 with a new two-year contract and after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Sprint also launched the HTC Snap, which HTC first showed off at the International CTIA Wireless 2009 show in Las Vegas. The Snap has a feature called "Inner Circle," which allows users to press a dedicated key that brings up emails from a pre-selected group of people to the top of the inbox. The phone runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, has a Qwerty keyboard, WiFi and GPS support and a 2-megapixel camera. Sprint is selling the Snap for $149.99 with a new two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

For more:
- see this slideshow
- see this release

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T-Mobile USA will launch its second Android phone, the myTouch 3G, in August.  The carrier said that the myTouch 3G will sell for $199.99 with a new two-year service contract, and that current T-Mobile customers will be able to pre-order it beginning July 8. Pre-ordered units will begin shipping in late July and the phone would go on sale nationally in early August. 

The myTouch 3G, which, like the T-Mobile G1 is made by HTC, is essentially the HTC Magic. The smartphone features a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, no physical keyboard and a 3.2-megapixel camera. The myTouch 3G also has WiFi capabilities, video playback and a music player that comes pre-loaded with a 4 GB microSD card. The carrier said the phone will be available in black, white and "distinctive merlot." 

T-Mobile is touting the ways in which the myTouch 3G, and by extension the Android experience, can be personalized, noting that users can customize wallpapers, menus and icons. "The story is personalization," Andrew Sherrard, vice president of product innovation at T-Mobile, told Reuters. The iPhone had a "beautiful aesthetic, but you can't change it," he said.

For more:
- see this slideshow
- see this release
- see this Reuters article

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Apple sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G S units over the weekend, the company today said, reaching the sales milestone with what many pundits described as less fanfare than previous iPhone launches. The company also said six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone OS 3.0 since it was released five days ago.

The new iPhone model, the 3G S, sports a faster processor, greater memory storage, video capability and other bells and whistles. It went on sale Friday. The 1 million sales figure is impressive because it matches last summer's three-day sales figure for the iPhone 3G. However, the 3G S was sold in only eight countries while the iPhone 3G was launched in 21 countries.

In other Apple news, The Wall Street Journal disclosed Apple CEO Steve Jobs received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. Jobs has been on medical leave since January, and the company has repeatedly stated, in almost mantra-like fashion, that Apple looks forward to his return at the end of this month.

For more:
- see this release 
- check out this video
- see this WSJ article on Steve Jobs (sub. req.)
- see this Fortune blog

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Can a patent pool work in an industry whose licensing regime has been dominated so long by bilateral agreements? Yung Hahn, president of the Open Patent Alliance, formed last year to create an IPR framework for WiMAX, believes so. And I'm beginning to agree with him, despite the fact that I've said in the past that all major stakeholders need to be involved to make it work.

Hahn makes a compelling argument. First of all, the 4G ecosystem--for both WiMAX and Long Term Evolution technologies--is drastically different than the 3G world. The vision for 4G is a plethora of ecosystems such as operators, PC makers and consumer electronics vendors coming together. Vendors in the 3G world are accustomed to bilateral agreements, but intellectual property rights licensing in the PC and consumer electronics worlds are typically done through a patent pool. Moreover, OFDM/OFDMA technology, the foundation of WiMAX and LTE, dates many decades back in various industries such as the television industry. As such, companies outside of the mobile industry also claim patents. (The OPA, by the way, believes its work in the WiMAX industry will be transferable to the LTE industry as well.)

"We aren't patent-pool bigots, and clearly it didn't work in 3G, but in the case of WiMAX, we have concluded that it will work and work well in combination with bilateral agreements," Hahn said in an interview.

Many of the major wireless vendors that plan on using bilateral agreements for WiMAX and LTE IPR don't plan to change their licensing structure much in the 4G world. Or, they have already announced their licensing plans. And if a group like the OPA, which issued a call for patents in conjunction with Via Licensing today, can gain a critical mass of licensees in the patent pool, that could create an environment that enables predictable IPR costs. Hahn said such critical mass could also give the court system an idea what is fair and reasonable.

It's not clear what that magic number of patents would be to create fair and reasonable pricing environment, but suffice to say that a 50-percent threshold would be a powerful percentage. Vendors like Alcatel-Lucent, Intel, Cisco, Samsung, Clearwire and Huawei are already a part of the OPA. Bringing PC makers and CE vendors into the fold has, in Hahn's words, taken longer than the OPA has liked. Acer is the only company representing the PC and CE vendor community to join the OPA so far. These companies' participation is key to changing the way WiMAX and LTE patents are applied. If the OPA can get these companies on board, this combo of bilateral agreements and a patent pool can really work. Hahn is hinting at another top PC player joining the OPA shortly.

This critical mass won't happen overnight, however. This project will be an ever-evolving process that will take plenty of time, education and patience. The effort may be complicated, at least on the LTE side, by a number of groups trying to create a patent pool for LTE. Last month, Sisvel, VIA Licensing and MPG LA called on companies claiming to hold patents essential to LTE to give them a call or send an email so they can evaluate the claims and create a patent program. This latest turn on the LTE field likely will confuse the LTE patent domain more than offer the cost clarity. But if the OPA can do most of the dirty work for the LTE industry, there's no reason why a patent pool can't work for LTE either.--Lynnette

Source: Boost Mobile

Taking a page from Craig McCaw's playbook, Clearwire has amalgamated various spectrum licenses and combined its assets with Sprint Nextel to form the widest bandwidth footprint in North America, according to Maravedis analyst Robert Syputa. Clearwire's business strategy essentially turns cheap spectrum into more expensive spectrum, similar to buying cheap real estate and then sprucing it up to increase its value. If the company can gain momentum with deployments and subscriber revenue, according to Syputa, it will achieve "real estate" success. Commentary

Tutorials on turning smartphones into modems via tethering are springing up on the Internet, but some wireless carriers are still debating whether to allow the feature on their most popular smartphones.

Tethering guides for Apple's iPhone and Palm's Pre have been posted by popular gadget blogs such as Gizmodo, according to the Wall Street Journal. Since smartphones have always-on wireless connections, users connect can connect them to laptops for wireless Internet access.

So far, though, AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel have not officially allowed tethering for the iPhone and the Pre, respectively. AT&T has said it will add tethering functionality for the just-launched iPhone 3G S sometime later this year, but has not said when or provided details on what it will charge. A Sprint spokesperson told the Journal that the carrier is not offering Pre tethering, and declined to comment on whether it would introduce the service at a later date.

Sprint's comments are notable in light of action at the Pre Dev Wiki webOS developer site, which recently agreed to a request from Palm to stop talking about tethering for the Pre--because, according to the Pre Dev Wiki website, such discussions would probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm.

Interestingly, Sprint and other carriers currently offer tethering for other smartphones such as Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices, charging up to $60 per month.

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)

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Verizon Wireless launched a new USB modem that will give customers global access to mobile data by offering support for CDMA networks in North America and GSM networks abroad.

The modem, called the USB1000 Global Modem, is made by Novatel Wireless and will cost $150 with a new two-year service agreement and after a $50 mail-in rebate. The modem joins a few other devices from Verizon that are global, including Research In Motion's Blackberry Storm and the Samsung Saga.

The modem has support for EV-Do Rev. A (800/1900 MHz), WCDMA/HSDPA/HSUPA bands (850/1900/2100 MHz) and GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz). The data plans, however, do not come cheap.

The minimum global plan costs start at $130 per month, offering 100 MB allowance in 31 destinations (with $0.005/KB overage charges). That price also gives customers in the U.S. and Canada a 5 GB allowance (with $0.05/MB overage). And, for $220 per month, customers can get a 200 MB allowance in those 31 select destinations and a 5GB allowance in the U.S. and Canada, with the same rates for overage as the $130 monthly access plan.

Verizon is also offering a global access pay-per-use plan with the USB modem, but said customers must sign up for its 5GB mobile broadband service plan in the U.S. for $60 per month if they choose to take that option. The carrier said the pay-per-use rates are $0.002/KB in Canada, $0.005/KB in Mexico and $0.02/KB in more than 175 other destinations.
 
For more:
- see this release
- see this Information Week article

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The FCC will investigate whether exclusive deals for hot phones between wireless carriers and handset makers stifles competition. 

Acting chairman Michael Copps said that he has already directed the FCC to look into the matter. "The commission as the expert agency should determine whether some of these arrangements adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices, and it should take appropriate action if it finds harm," Copps said at a conference in Washington, D.C., yesterday. 

Julius Genachowski, who is awaiting confirmation to become the agency's new chairman, said he supports the review. "Yes, if confirmed, I will ensure that the full record on the [rural carriers' complaint] is reviewed, and act accordingly to promote competition and consumer choice," he said.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and three other senators had requested earlier this week that the FCC look into the matter. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the issue Wednesday, in which the nation's largest wireless carriers were pitted against smaller, regional competitors. Larger carriers argued that the market remains competitive despite the deals while smaller players said such deals limit consumer choice.

In other FCC news, the Commerce Committee yesterday approved Genachowski's nomination, along with that of Robert McDowell. McDowell is up for one of the two Republican seats on the commission. The full Senate still has to confirm them, but it is unclear when that vote will take place.  

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this Washington Post article
- see this Reuters article

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Lines formed this morning at AT&T and Apple retail stores across the country for the commerial launch of the iPhone 3G S.
Click here to check out our full coverage.

<--Back to the story.

AT&T Mobility's recent move to allow some iPhone 3G owners to upgrade to the iPhone 3G S ahead of schedule got me to thinking about the various pricing tactics employed by the nation's wireless operators. I think a bit of an overhaul is necessary.

But more on that later.

First, I think it's worth pointing out how AT&T's move could backfire. After all, what about the rest of the carrier's customers? What about the AT&T BlackBerry users out there who are a few months shy of their upgrade eligibility? Or maybe all those AT&T Nokia fans who will have to make sure they complete their contract, thereby presumably paying back AT&T's subsidy on their device, before they upgrade to something else? I guess it just seems like iPhone owners are getting all the attention lately.

Anyway, that's really not my point. My point is that the wireless industry could use some clarity in terms of pricing plans and subsidies. While the nation's Tier 1 carriers continue to tweak their postpaid plans with unlimited this and bundled that, I think in reality they're just making things more confusing--and as evidence I would point to the growing interest in prepaid (Strategy Analytics said one-third of total first quarter net additions in North America were prepaid, the highest level seen so far this decade). Don't get me wrong, I think there's still a big business for postpaid and unlimited, but I think we need a little retail sanity.

Specifically, I think carriers should separate the cost of the device subsidy from the cost of their service. This would essentially allow users to choose when their contract ends.

For example, on signing a contract, a shopper could be given several options:

• Pay full price for their device and get onto a month-to-month postpaid contract.
• Sign a one-year contract and spread the cost of their device over the course of that year.
• Sign the standard two-year contract and spread the cost of the device over those two years.

This sort of setup would allow shoppers to make more educated decisions about the products and services they're buying. And though I realize that this scenario introduces additional choices to an already complicated purchasing process, I would argue that bringing clarity to the sometimes shady subsidy model would endear customers to whatever carrier was offering it. (Getting rid of mail-in rebates would also be nice.)

 Further, such a practice could forestall problems like the one AT&T encountered with its iPhone 3G-to-iPhone 3G S upgrade process: If users know upfront that they're repaying the cost of their device over a certain period of time, they presumably would be much less likely to create an online petition urging their carrier to offer them a new device before they finished paying off their old one.

Of course, this approach also implies that people would be willing to pay for what they get, and get what they pay for, which is not always the case. --Mike

Apple launched the iPhone 3G S in countries across the world today, and customers lined up in cities from New York to Tokyo to get their hands on the new model. However, the launch of the 3G S appeared to spur a little less fanfare in the U.S. than the iPhone 3G, which launched last June, and the original iPhone, which debuted in the summer of 2007. Many lines were shorter because many customers were able to pre-order their device and have it shipped to them. In addition, many AT&T and Apple stores adopted a new strategy by opening early to accommodate customers with pre-orders, thus alleviating some of the lines.

At an Apple store in the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, a line started forming at 6 a.m. and by 7:15 a.m. about 30 people were waiting for a iPhone 3G S. However, the line was significantly shorter than it was last year, when people arrived at the mall at 4 a.m. to purchase their iPhone 3G. Likewise, at a nearby AT&T store, a line of about a dozen people waited for a iPhone 3G S.

At AT&T's flagship store in downtown Washington, D.C., a small lined formed in the early hours of the morning for the new iPhone. There were about a dozen people waiting when the doors opened at 7 a.m. Kendrick Brown, 30, of Washington, D.C., said he had been waiting in his car across the street from the store since 1:30 a.m. When a line started forming around 5 a.m., he decided to get in line and was fourth in line.

"As I saw people starting to line up, I was like, OK, being fourth is not that bad," he said. "I'll still get a phone." Brown said he switched from Verizon Wireless to AT&T in March to buy an 8 GB version of the iPhone 3G, not knowing there would be a new iPhone coming out. He said he sold his iPhone 3G and will pay $399 for the 16 GB iPhone 3G S. Brown said he was drawn to the iPhone because of the apps. "It's almost like reinventing your phone constantly," he said.

Missy Lane, 30, also from Washington, lined up for her iPhone 3G S at 6:30 a.m. She said she switched to AT&T a month ago after three years with Sprint to get the iPhone 3G. Lane said she was dismayed that the iPhone 3G did not have video capability and cut and paste functionality, so she decided to get the newer model. "I thought [the iPhone 3G] had all of that stuff, I just assumed it would," Lane said. "And when it didn't, I couldn't believe it didn't."

Lane said because of the updated functionality, the new iPhone would get people to switch to AT&T. "They finally have all of the bells and whistles that most people who look into these things--I didn't, I just assumed it had it," she said. "People who are looking into it will find that this phone has all of those things, and I'm sure they'll switch over for it."

Colin Martin, AT&T's director of sales for company-owned retail for Washington, D.C., and Virginia, said that because customers have been allowed to pre-order the new model, he expects there will be a steady stream of shoppers throughout the day, and not massive crowds in the morning. "There's no need to sit in line" for hours he said. "You can come in any time today, or tomorrow or during the next seven days and get your phone, whereas last year everybody had to wait in line no matter what."

Announced earlier this month at Apple's developer conference, the new iPhone 3G S features increased performance speeds and other tweaks, and is being sold to new customers for $199 for the 16 GB version and $299 for the 32 GB version for customers who sign a two-year contract.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg News article
- see this Reuters article
- see this Fortune live blog from New York City
- see this Fortune blog post
- see these photos 

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Research In Motion posted strong results in its fiscal first quarter, which ended May 30, reporting net income of $643 million, above the $518.3 million it recorded in the previous quarter and 33 percent higher than its $482.5 million in the year-ago quarter.

The BlackBerry maker said it had revenue of $3.42 billion in the quarter, down slightly from $3.46 billion in the previous quarter but 53 percent above its revenue of $2.24 billion in the year-ago quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were looking for revenue of $3.43 billion. Devices made up 81 percent of RIM's revenue and the company said it shipped 7.8 million devices in the quarter.

RIM also said it added around 3.8 million BlackBerry subscriber accounts in the quarter and that its BlackBerry subscriber account base stood at around 28.5 million at the end of the quarter. The subscriber additions were down slightly from the 3.9 million new account activations RIM had in the previous quarter. RIM also boosted its gross margin sequentially to 43.6 percent, up from 40 percent in the last quarter, but down from 50.7 percent in the year-ago quarter.

Though the company continues to score gains--indeed, RIM increased its worldwide smartphone market share to 19.9 percent in the first quarter, up from 13.3 percent in the year-ago quarter, according to Gartner--analysts remain worried about increased competition from the likes of Google, Apple and Palm. Nokia remains the worldwide leader in terms of smartphone market share, with more than 41 percent, according to Gartner. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in a conference call after the earnings were released that the company wasn't too worried about the crowded smartphone market. "We don't really, sort of, fret those kinds of things," he said. 

And it seems the BlackBerry maker will soon lose the benefit of a major promotion: A Verizon spokeswoman confirmed this week to FierceWireless that the carrier's buy-one-get-one promotion, which has been running since February, would be ending shortly. NPD Group said the promotion helped RIM's BlackBerry Curve unseat Apple's iPhone as the best-selling consumer smartphone in the first quarter.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Associated Press article
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)

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Emerging markets have grown increasingly complex: Some operators are facing voice saturation due to a glut of competition while others are looking to deploy mobile broadband and expand beyond their traditional zones of influence. And as such markets mature, all of the various players must deal with slowing growth rates and crowded playing fields. According to Saberio Romeo, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan, today's emerging markets, such as Indian and China, are embarking on a new and different evolution path. Feature

A magistrate judge ordered Motorola's patent infringement lawsuit against Research In Motion to be put on hold while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office looks into the issue.

The judge overseeing the patent spat, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Sanderson, said that the civil suit was "still in its infancy." RIM asked the patent office to look into 10 Motorola patents listed in Motorola's claim. The judge was apparently not persuaded by Motorola's argument that any further delay would let RIM gain more market share.

The two companies traded lawsuits in February 2008 regarding a series of cross-licensing deals that never came to pass. Motorola accuses RIM of infringing on 14 handset patents, while RIM accuses Motorola of infringing on nine patents.

At the time, Motorola said that RIM was "willfully" infringing on its patents. RIM countered that Motorola was charging "unreasonable royalties" for patents that RIM licenced.

For more:
- see this article
- see this article

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T-Mobile USA will launch an updated version of the Dash, called the Dash 3G, which will be the carrier's first 3G-enabled Windows Mobile smartphone.

The HTC-built device will run on T-Mobile's UMTS network and stands as further evidence of T-Mobile's efforts to expand its smartphone and 3G offerings following the launch of its 3G network last year. The Dash 3G will run Windows Mobile 6.1 and features WiFi connectivity, a Qwerty keyboard and a trackball. The Dash announcement comes just ahead of T-Mobile's expected unveiling of its second phone running Google's Android platform, reportly dubbed the myTouch 3G.

T-Mobile said the phone will be available in July, but did not release any pricing information.

For more:
- see this release

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Shares of both Sprint Nextel and Palm fell yesterday after a report by an analyst at Wachovia Securities indicated the Palm Pre was doing little to attract new customers to Sprint.

The report, by Wachovia analyst Jennifer Fritzsche, concluded after a survey of retail outlets that most Pre buyers are existing Sprint subscribers. Fritzsche suggested that, at least so far, the Pre was not peeling off subscribers from other carriers such as AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint stock fell 33 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $5.11 per share yesterday at the close of trading--its biggest drop since May 13. Palm stock fell 68 cents, or 4.7 percent, to $13.67 per share at the close yesterday. This morning, Sprint stock was trading up 7 cents to $5.18 per share, while Palm was down 30 cents per share to $13.37.

Sprint has lost more than 4 million postpaid subscribers over the past year and is hoping the Pre will help at least stop the defections. Palm, meanwhile, has been rumored of late to be a possible acquisition target.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg News article

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Senators questioned representatives from the nation's top wireless carriers at a hearing yesterday over whether handset exclusivity arrangements hinder competition. Larger carriers argued that the market remains competitive despite the deals while smaller players said such deals limit consumer choice.

The hearing, before the Senate Commerce Committee, pitted Tier 1 operators such as AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless against smaller, regional carriers, including Cellular South and U.S. Cellular.

"Competition in the wireless marketplace is white hot," said Paul Roth, AT&T's president of retail sales and services, in testimony before the committee. Roth added that AT&T's exclusive deal for Apple's iPhone has led to "unprecedented competitive frenzy" in the wireless industry. Verizon, for its part, said in comments sent to Congress that it would be "totally unworkable" to regulate the exclusivity deals.

But Hu Meena, president of Cellular South, criticized the deals as stifling competition by locking out smaller carriers. "The largest carriers use their market power to prevent competitors from having access to devices and roaming," Meena said in testimony. "If this trend continues, and I believe it will without intervention from Congress, then there will once again be a duopoly in the wireless industry."

Eric Graham, Cellular South's vice president of government relations, told FierceWireless the 80 or so regional wireless carriers still left in the United States compete very well in terms of network quality and customer service with national carriers--or in "all of those things that are in our control."

"So if you want to stamp out competition you take over things that aren't in [smaller carriers'] control," such as handset exclusivity agreements, he said.

Earlier this week, four senators sent a letter to the FCC urging the commission to look into the issue.

Meanwhile, a spat between Verizon and Cellular South over a related matter took another turn yesterday. Cellular South sent Verizon a letter ordering the company to stop making factual misrepresentations about a deal Verizon offered to the Associated Carrier Group, of which Cellular South is the largest member. The deal was supposed to reduce the duration of Verizon's handset exclusivity deals with LG and Samsung in a bid to help rural carriers get the phones faster by providing the ACG carriers with the phones no more than six months after Verizon launched them.

Cellular South said in the letter that Verizon distorted the intent of the agreement after it was signed by giving the rural carriers access to the devices and specifications only when Verizon released the devices to the general public, and not before, as had been previously agreed to.

"Accordingly, we would ask that your spokespersons cease and desist from misrepresenting the agreement with ACG when in fact Verizon unilaterally altered the terms to extend its period of handset exclusivity and prolong the anti-consumer consequences that such exclusivity entails," Cellular South wrote in the letter.

Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson called Cellular South's letter a distraction from the larger issues at stake in the debate over handset exclusivity.

"This is a sideshow intended to blur the fact that on our own, voluntarily, Verizon Wireless has been dealing with the issue of handset exclusivity, recognizing that it's an issue for some of the smaller carriers that we compete against," he told FierceWireless. "Let's not the lose sight of that fact."

Nelson said that Cellular South and the ACG walked away from the deal after it was agreed to, and that Verizon did not change course or reverse itself on the terms of the deal, counter to the letter Cellular South sent. "The question I'd ask of Cellular South or its lawyers or whoever is speaking for them, is, explain the emails," he said. "If something happened after that, show that, because nothing did."

For more:
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
- see this Reuters article
- see this Cellular South letter

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AT&T said it will reverse course and offer the iPhone 3G S at new-customer prices to some current iPhone 3G owners starting Friday, a move apparently geared to mollify a large, vocal and potentially valuable subset of the carrier's customers. AT&T initially resisted the move, presumably due to concerns over recouping the millions of dollars it spends subsidizing the cost of the high-end gadget.

Announced earlier this month, the new iPhone 3G S features increased performance speeds and other tweaks, and is set to be available Friday to new customers for $199 for the 16 GB version and $299 for the 32 GB version. AT&T initially said that current iPhone 3G owners would have had to pay $399 for the 16GB version and $499 for the 32GB version because they were not yet eligible for the new-customer price. The carrier said it has a formula to calculate when it has recouped its iPhone subsidy: IPhone customers who spend more than $99 a month per line generally are eligible for an upgrade between 12 and 18 months into their contract.

Thus, under that formula, those who purchased the iPhone 3G wouldn't be eligible for the fully subsidized iPhone 3G S price of $199 until July at the earliest.

However, the carrier announced on its Facebook page that it will offer, for a limited time, the fully-subsidized iPhone 3G S price starting Friday to subscribers who would have been eligible for an upgrade in July, August or September under the previous setup.

"All of that said, we've been listening to our customers," the company wrote on its Facebook page. "And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time."

AT&T said that customers who are eligible for the upgrade but have already pre-ordered an iPhone 3G S from an AT&T store will have the price of the device adjusted when they pick it up. If customers who are eligible for the new upgrade offer pre-ordered the device with AT&T online, the carrier said it will send the customer an email and issue them a credit.

For more:
- see this AP article
- see AT&T's Facebook page

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The following is a countdown of the top 10 most satisfying cell phones in the United States in April, according to research firm comScore. The following list is derived from an April survey of 38,586 U.S. mobile subscribers over the age of 13. ComScore asked respondents to rank their satisfaction with their device on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Slideshow