Courtesy 9 to 5 Mac

AT&T has begun sending out warnings to wireless customers deemed to be using too much of their “unlimited data plans” and are now subject to speed throttling that will reduce their wireless Internet experience to one more familiar for dial-up users.

Life in the slow lane is the price AT&T customers pay for being a member of the Top 5% Data User Club.  Running the numbers, that means using more than around 4GB of wireless usage per month.  One customer who managed to rack up 11GB in September, even before the new speed throttle plan took effect Oct. 1, has already found himself in the speed reduction doghouse with a warning message he received Sept. 29.

Although the customer did not reveal what he was doing to achieve 11GB of usage in one month, the two most common ways to run up usage are watching a lot of streamed video or using your phone to tether to other wireless devices, especially laptops.  Some wireless customers are attempting to use their unlimited data plans as a home broadband replacement, especially in rural areas where cable or DSL service is not available.  That’s an option AT&T doesn’t seem to want customers to consider.

In addition to eliminating unlimited use plans for new customers more than a year ago, the company has increasingly cracked down on existing customers grandfathered into unlimited use plans.  In addition to banning third party tethering apps, AT&T is now simply reducing speeds for heavy users to make high bandwidth applications like video and even some forms of streaming audio impossible when residing in the penalty box.

But don’t worry: you can still use your data plan to read e-mail or browse simple web pages.  The company also advises customers can use unlimited amounts of Wi-Fi, whether they provide it or not.

A ZCom owned Verizon Wireless store in New Jersey

Verizon Wireless executives forced independent authorized resellers of the company’s prepaid wireless service to buy cheap phones and activate them with their own money, fraudulently boosting the number of so-called “new activations” Verizon reports to its stockholders.

That is the chief allegation in a new lawsuit filed not against Verizon Wireless itself, but its largest franchisee, ZCom.

The NY Post reports Verizon Wireless executives who managed independent New York Verizon retailers masterminded the alleged scam by suggesting Verizon Wireless’ biggest franchisee, ZCom, “fraudulently increase the number of Verizon Wireless new account activations through the fabrication of fraudulent prepaid accounts,” the suit charges.

ZCom, which sub-leases authorized retail locations for Verizon products, was the defendant in the suit because ZCom can make or break independent store owners who sub-lease, staff, and manage the retail stores.

Plaintiff Shelly Bhumitra, who sub-leased several Suffolk County stores from ZCom, told The Post he was pressured to fraudulently activate pre-paid phones when a Verizon Wireless executive came to his store with ZCom’s owner, Iminder “Vikas” Dhall.

“They suggested that with our own money we should buy inexpensive phones [not smartphones],” and then load them with $30 of prepaid minutes, he said in an interview.

Bhumitra said he was then told to “give them away as bonus phones” to customers so that when used they would count as new activations.

The store owner said he was also instructed to load prepaid minutes onto phones that customers were throwing away and activate them with fictitious names. He was told to keep them in a drawer and make calls on them once or twice a month, echoing charges in the suit.

A store owner would ultimately earn $55 from each activation — enough to more than make up for the $30 outlay.

The three Verizon Wireless executives outed for allegedly taking part in the scheme have all recently resigned, according to the lawsuit.

Verizon itself is taking several measures to distance itself from the case.  Not being named as a defendant has allowed the company to avoid commenting, claiming it would be “inappropriate.”  The company also canceled its contract with ZCom, which generates $150 million in revenue for Big Red every year and holds the “master lease” to 130 Verizon Wireless stores, which are all over downstate New York.  For now, those store locations will remain open.

ZCom’s lawyer denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

Quarterly financial reports can make all the difference for shareholders who can make or break a stock based on financial results.  Verizon Wireless has had an increasingly challenging time managing to grow its prepaid division, which industry observers say used to charge more than its competitors for no-contract plans.  By inflating the number of new activations in company results, shareholder value is artificially protected.  Store owners can be convinced to play along because of lucrative new customer signing commissions, and to meet required sales targets.  Poorly performing store manager/owners can find their leases terminated and, in a worst-case scenario, the store location itself can be closed.

Bhumitra claims he was intimidated into going along with the alleged scam.

Verizon Wireless has tried to compete more aggressively in the prepaid category in 2011, with some success.  After creating new monthly packages bundling voice minutes with data and texting at lower pricing, the company added 879,000 new prepaid customers in the first quarter, and 1.3 million in the second, the Post reports.

Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Comcast Corporation today announced it has launched a new company — CTI Towers, Inc., which will own, operate, and develop telecommunications towers throughout the United States. CTI Towers’ is launching with a portfolio of approximately 800 towers that were previously owned and operated by Comcast Cable subsidiaries. Headquartered in Boston, CTI Towers will actively lease tower space to wireless operators and other tenants, creating additional tower capacity for rapidly evolving businesses and technologies across the U.S.

“Consumers are increasingly relying on their mobile devices and consuming high bandwidth applications, such as streaming video, requiring a next generation of wireless communications infrastructure,” said Dave Zilberman, Principal at Comcast Ventures. “Newly formed CTI Towers will work with mobile operators and other service providers to improve the quality of the wireless network experience to their customers by leveraging the extensive footprint of urban and suburban towers in CTI’s portfolio. With Tony Peduto’s significant experience managing and developing towers and his deep understanding of the tower business, CTI is well positioned to aggressively support the build-out of new wireless networks.”

CTI Towers will take its place among more than a dozen other multiple tower owners as 12th largest in the country.  Its management of 800 towers pales in comparison with Crown Castle, which owns more than 22,000 towers across the United States.

But Comcast’s cable infrastructure comes with the deal, and that could be very lucrative for the venture.  Cable companies are increasingly leasing space on their cable networks to provide backhaul connections between the cell tower itself and the mobile operator.  LTE and other 4G networks require bandwidth greater than traditional telephone company circuits.  While many towers increasingly rely on fiber connections, cable companies that have room to spare on their own networks can more than meet the needs of most cell tower operations.

Courtesy: Wireless Estimator

Wall Street is pushing back against Justice Department efforts to unwind a merger proposal between AT&T and T-Mobile that will leave America with three national carriers.  Some investment firms even believe three carriers are still “too many” and want mergers and acquisitions to accelerate to allow two dominant national carriers to emerge.

“It’s pretty clear what the end game is in wireless,” said Julie Richardson, managing director at Providence Equity Partners Inc. “LTE, 4G — you have to have those services to compete. One of the most interesting things to watch in telecom will be these players coming together.”

Richardson shares the view among many on Wall Street that carriers forced to build costly 4G services like LTE need less competition and more cash-on-hand to pay for upgrades and to obtain needed spectrum.

Only AT&T and Verizon Communications have the resources to support a national 4G Long Term Evolution network, Richardson said. Sprint, the third-biggest U.S. wireless operator, is struggling to compete against larger rivals and has lost money for 15 consecutive quarters, Bloomberg News reports.

Among smaller players, Richardson believes the future is clear: mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships.  Sprint is moving increasingly closer to the nation’s cable companies, which have sought a cost-efficient way to deliver the ultimate “quad-play” service package that includes wireless, landline, cable-TV, and Internet service, all from the cable company.  But talk of constructing competing cell networks has gone largely nowhere, and cable companies that do offer some type of wireless service typically resell an existing service under their own brand.  Road Runner Mobile, from Time Warner Cable, for example, is really Clearwire under a different name.  Same for Comcast’s wireless Internet service.  Cox is pitching “unbelievably fair” wireless phone service that actually comes from Sprint.

But cable operators currently don’t seem to be interested in outright acquisitions of cell companies like Sprint, preferring to partner with them instead.

Clearwire, which needs financing and better wireless spectrum, may eventually find a friend in Dish Networks, the satellite TV company.  Dish controls wireless frequency spectrum it currently does not use, and has expressed an interest in expanding beyond a traditional satellite television provider.  An acquisition of Sprint or Clearwire could help them accomplish that.

Some of Clearwire’s very first, and most loyal customers in the Pacific Northwest are receiving an unwelcome message of thanks for their years of service with the company: a massive rate increase.

The company is nearly doubling rates for customers who were promised special “lifetime” discounts for agreeing to remain with the wireless 4G broadband service, which has been experiencing financial problems recently.

D.B. in Seattle has been a Clearwire customer for years, even before the company upgraded to WiMax speeds.  In 2009, Clearwire sent him an offer he couldn’t refuse: stay with Clear and pay just $22 a month (plus $5 modem rental fee) for life.

“Of course I accepted immediately,” D.B. writes. “Then Clear [sent me a letter recently] telling me my monthly fee was going up to approximately $47 a month with the modem fee.”

D.B. has been calling and e-mailing Clearwire asking what happened to the $22-for-life promotion he has in writing from the company, but “nobody knows anything.”

Clearwire says they have improved their service recently in Seattle, but D.B. isn’t impressed.

“I’m here to tell the world that is not true,” he says. “Plus the times I’ve had this thing freeze up has greatly increased, and usually I have to unplug the modem for five minutes [to get service back].”

Mireille in Seattle managed to get an even lower “lifetime” rate from Clearwire two years ago.

“They offered me a monthly rate of $19.95 for as long as I maintained uninterrupted Clearwire service. That means forever and ever until I cancel.,” she says.  “Last week they sent me an email letting me know that they were raising my rate to $35.95 a month (that includes a $10 a month ‘long time customer discount’) and since I was such a good customer I was being offered that rate for the life of my uninterrupted Clearwire service. Sound familiar?”

Mireille calls it something else: breach of contract.

“I spoke to three different people and no one had anything to say besides that they were sorry but they were not able offer me that rate anymore.”

Customers in the Portland, Ore. area are getting similar e-mails, and The Oregonian took note:

Clearwire Corp., a wireless Internet provider that operates as Clear, is raising prices for 30,000 customers who signed up for the service soon after its 2009 launch.

The Kirkland, Wash.-based company didn’t provide details of the rate hikes, but e-mails to customers show that monthly rates for some home Internet plans will rise from $35 to $45 beginning in October.

Clearwire said the rate hike affects both home and mobile customers who subscribed when the service was first available, at a time when rates were lower or promotional prices were available.

Clearwire still offers a home Internet plan for $35 a month, but it limits download speeds to 1.5 megabits per second — one-eighth the speed of Comcast’s standard plan. Clear’s standard plan, which now costs $45, promises downloads between 3 and 6 megabits per second.