Sprint Nextel has allowed its majority share in Clearwire Corporation to drop below 50 percent in a strategic move to rebalance its voting and economic interest in the wireless partnership.

Clearwire runs the WiMAX 4G network Sprint sells to its customers, but America’s third largest cell phone carrier shares that 4G network with several other companies that resell access under various brands, including Time Warner Cable Mobile, Best Buy Mobile, and a range of smaller “MVNOs,” which mostly offer prepaid access.

Clearwire’s troubled existence forced Sprint to reduce its involvement and ownership in the company last year, when some analysts predicted the company faced imminent default on its debt. Had that happened, Sprint would have found itself inextricably tied to Clearwire’s fate as a majority owner, and could have been forced to help bailout the enterprise.

Clearwire has been trying to reinvent itself after Sprint declared it planned to construct its own 4G LTE network that would gradually replace the older WiMAX technology Clearwire uses.  That news challenged Clearwire because Sprint in the largest user of the network, providing 9.7 million customers with access. Clearwire’s own retail service, under the Clear brand, has just 1.3 million customers. More than one-third of Clearwire’s income comes from Sprint.

As Sprint customers gradually depart from WiMAX, Clearwire is trying to find new markets reselling access to the older technology to prepaid startups and discount resellers including FreedomPop, NetZero, Simplexity, and most recently Jolt Mobile.

But even Clearwire understands the days of its WiMAX network are limited. The company plans to build its own TD-LTE 4G network to remain competitive, and will resell wholesale access to prepaid services and to larger concerns like Leap Wireless’ Cricket and Sprint as those companies work to gradually expand their own LTE networks.

Clearwire believes their enormous spectrum assets could help smaller wireless companies fulfill demand for 4G service, particularly if those companies lack sufficient spectrum to fully provide the service themselves.

“We believe that, as the demand for mobile broadband services continues its rapid growth, Sprint and other service providers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy their customers’ demands with their existing spectrum holdings,” Clearwire indicated in its last quarterly report. “By deploying LTE, we believe that we will be able to take advantage of our leading spectrum position to offer offload data capacity to Sprint and other existing and future mobile broadband service providers for resale to their customers on a cost effective basis.” .

Clearwire plans to have 5,000 TD-LTE cell sites functioning by mid-2013 and quickly grow the network to 8,000 cell sites nationwide. Among the first cities expected to get the new LTE 4G service first are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Clearwire 4G LTE Trials Results 1-2011.flv[/flv]

Clearwire holds more wireless spectrum than any other American wireless company, with 150 MHz in the 2.5 GHz band in the nation’s top 100 metro areas. Unfortunately for them, their high frequency spectrum does not penetrate buildings  as well as lower frequencies, such as 700MHz (Verizon & AT&T), making reception problematic indoors, especially in areas where signal strength is lower. Despite that, Clearwire believes its huge swath of spectrum gives it the ability to deploy extremely wideband 4G LTE service, which this video shows can support faster speeds. But the tests were conducted outdoors, where Clearwire’s network typically performs better. (2 minutes)

Comcast’s claim that its Xfinity Internet is the “fastest in the nation” is demonstrably false and has led to a request by the National Advertising Division, a self-regulating industry group, that Comcast pull the ads.

The NAD found Comcast was basing its claim on this 2011 PC Magazine article that gave high ranks to Comcast, along with Cox and Charter, for fast download speeds. But PC Magazine‘s study failed to account for Verizon FiOS and other fiber broadband providers, who routinely deliver upload and download speeds far in excess of what Comcast can offer.

The report (Case #5463 — available only to subscribers), recommends that Comcast stop making the claims in markets where fiber networks like FiOS are available. Where the company does choose to run the ads, they should disclose the PC Magazine report as its source.

Comcast’s cable broadband can deliver faster speeds than traditional telephone company DSL, but fiber broadband can deliver much faster service with equal upstream and downstream speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Comcast said it would consider the NAD’s recommendations.

Verizon Wireless unveiled their new “Share Everything” Plans this morning, claiming consumers wanted “simpler, easier-to-understand” plans that let them share their data plan across multiple devices:

But a closer examination of the plans, to be introduced June 28, shows many Verizon customers will face substantially higher cell phone bills if they choose one of Verizon’s newest plans. Perhaps more importantly, customers upgrading to a new subsidized phone/contract renewal on or after that date will be forced to forfeit any grandfathered unlimited data plans they still have with Verizon.

“It is an effort to move ARPU up,” Walt Piecyk, an analyst with BTIG LLC in New York told Bloomberg News, referring to average revenue per user, a measure of how much each customer spends each month.

Obviously acknowledging that customers are using fewer voice minutes and are increasingly finding ways around text messaging charges, Verizon’s new plans sell customers on the idea they can now talk and text as much as they want, but as far as data is concerned, customers will potentially pay much more for less service.

Those light on talking and texting are most likely to be hit hardest by the new cell phone plans.

Verizon formerly charged $50 a month for a basic Nationwide Talk Share plan that included 700 shared voice minutes. Smartphone users also paid $29.99 a month for unlimited data. Together, that amounts to $80 a month. Under Verizon’s $40 “Share Everything” Plan, customers can talk and text all they want, but their unlimited data plan is gone, replaced with a 1GB basic plan for $50. That costs $10 more than customers used to pay on Verizon’s 700 minute plan with an unlimited use data plan. Need 2GB a month? Add an extra $10, bringing you a Verizon phone bill of at least $100 a month for the first line on your account, before taxes and fees.

Other family member lines may also be hit. Verizon used to charge $9.99 a month for extra lines on a shared account. The new price is $30 for a basic phone, $40 for a smartphone. Those family members with smartphones on an older Verizon account each would also incur $29.99 a month for their own individual data plan, which was also unlimited.

Although the base fee for the additional line with a data plan still remains around $40 a month, family members will be forced to share the primary line’s data bucket. Customers will quickly find a 1GB data plan is not going to last long on an account with two or three smartphones. That means expensive upgrades, which start at $10/GB.

Accounts with a mix of smartphones and basic phones face an even stiffer price hike. The $9.99 a month customers used to pay for a basic phone for grandma will now run $30 a month. She won’t be talking or texting much, so the extra features built into Verizon’s new plan will represent a pointless $20 monthly rate increase and an invitation to set grandma up with her own prepaid cell phone instead.

Verizon’s new “Share Everything” concept clearly builds major profits into Verizon’s future:

• Customers are forced to pay for unlimited voice and texting services, even as those services lose popularity, costing Verizon little to nothing;
• Data customers are encouraged to add additional devices to their account, but as more data gets used, ongoing upgrades to your data plan at an increment of $10/GB or more will be required;
• Customers considering a new Apple iPhone or other smartphone will be forced to forfeit any existing unlimited data plan to upgrade, which guarantees future profits from customers consuming increasing amounts of data.

The AARP was surprised to learn Idaho was considering loosening the rules imposed on the state’s phone companies to complete repairs on out of service landlines within 24 hours. The organization, which represents the elderly, says the new rules are a serious threat to older Idahoans who are the least likely to have a cell phone and require landlines in case of an emergency.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission is considering relaxing regulations governing service outages at the behest of CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, two of the state’s largest phone companies. Both phone companies argue that consumers have cell phone alternatives and do not need rapid repair of landline service. The companies also do not want to face penalties from regulators over incomplete or delayed repairs to out of service landlines.

CenturyLink claims the declining number of landline customers justifies the reduced regulations on the state’s phone companies.

But the AARP argued otherwise in opposing comments filed last week:

• Give telephone companies twice as long to repair outages (from 24 hours to 48 hours), and even more time if they occur over the weekend.  Opposing the change, AARP reminds the PUC of the importance of landlines to the elderly, and the fact that home and health emergencies also occur over the weekend.
• Remove any penalties to telephone companies for not restoring service within the allotted period of time.  Currently if service is not restored within the repair interval, customers can receive a one month service credit.  AARP says removing the penalty leaves little incentive for timely repairs and erodes consumer protections.
• Lower benchmark for fixing outages. Currently, at least 90% of service outage reports must be fixed, the proposed changes would lower that to 80%.  AARP says the lower benchmark could mean more consumers going without crucial service for a longer period of time.

Other claims made by CenturyLink – such as the assertion that its ability to deploy broadband suffers because its personnel are unreasonably diverted to repair work – are unproven and largely irrelevant to its obligation to maintain reliable telephone services, says AARP.

The elderly advocacy group argues the little known case is one more example of the need for Idaho to establish a Utility Consumer Advocate Office to ensure residential consumers are represented in complex regulatory matters.  Idaho is the only state in the West without such an office and one of a handful nationwide.

Pendleton County, W.V.

Pendleton County, W.V. residents are frustrated by another landline service outage afflicting Frontier Communications in the eastern panhandle region of the state.

The latest disruption began early Friday morning, leaving limited phone service throughout the county, with customers unable to dial any number that was not within the local 249 exchange.

Customers found cell phone service spotty, as it traditionally always is in the county, leaving some with no way to communicate and frayed nerves.

WHSV-TV reports Rosa Propst was extremely upset by the outage which dragged on for nearly two days. Propst’s father was hospitalized in another county and medical personnel could not reach her to report her father’s deteriorating medical condition.

Her ill father was also upset because he could not reach his daughter — or just about anyone else in Pendleton County over the weekend.

“I would have held Frontier responsible for not giving us an emergency services line where we could get to a hospital or call the hospital,” Propst told the station.

Frontier eventually found the problem — a series of fiber cuts over the length of 1,000 feet of cable. A Frontier spokesperson said the company had to replace about 7,000 feet of cable and had to find workers willing to climb 40 foot telephone poles in what was characterized as a rugged area.

Customers complained this was not the first significant outage for Frontier customers in the area.

The company eventually repaired service early Sunday morning.

Frontier has been accused of lacking network redundancy, letting phone companies bypass damaged lines by switching to backup infrastructure.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Customers in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Limited Phone Service 6-10-12.flv[/flv]

WHSV first reported the major service outage to viewers during the weekend local news, noting customers between Brandywine and Sugar Grove had lost landline service. (2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Family in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Phone Service 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

 In this second report, WHSV talks with the Propst family about the human impact extended service outages can have on customers.  (2 minutes)