New Yorkers know the end of summer is upon us when the New York State Fair opens every year at the end of August in centrally-located Syracuse. But at this year’s fair, Time Warner Cable has also made it clear the season for its 4G mobile broadband service has also come to at least a temporary end.

Fierce Cable’s Steve Donohue noticed big changes at the cable company exhibit:

When I attended the New York State Fair outside of Syracuse last year, the Intelligo mobile hotspot–which Time Warner Cable offered to subscribers through a partnership with Clearwire –was one of the hottest pieces of technology that it had on display. Time Warner Cable said that it tripled the number of 4G wireless hotspots that it sold at the fair in 2011 compared to 2010. Here in Central New York, where subscribers don’t have access to the Wi-Fi networks that Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Cablevision offer in the New York area, apparently there was a significant demand for mobile hotspots.

‘Intelligone’

This year, the mobile broadband technology is all gone. Both Time Warner Cable and Comcast are no longer selling access to Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX service marketed under each cable company’s brand. Once it became clear they were partnering up with Verizon Wireless to sell each other’s products, the days of Clearwire were numbered.

Both cable companies are still supporting existing Clearwire mobile broadband customers, but for how long nobody is certain. Verizon Wireless’ products have not yet appeared on the western or central New York regional Time Warner Cable websites, but may be forthcoming soon.

Meanwhile, Time Warner’s push this year is on home automation and security. The company has been test marketing its IntelligentHome service in Rochester for quite awhile and has now expanded to other upstate areas. The service offers a respectable suite of traditional security products apps ranging from watching your pets over webcams to controlling your home’s heating and cooling system from remote locations.

In 2010, Time Warner Cable featured celebrity Mike O’Malley at the Fair to shake hands and sign autographs. This year, they have a player and “spokesmodel” from the Syracuse Crunch, a minor league pro hockey team. Time Warner Cable also hired a juggler on a unicycle to attract crowds to their pavilion.

Stuck with snail slow DSL, spotty Wi-Fi, or usage-capped 3G and need faster access? A new project from Connectify is now attracting funding from the Kickstarter project to deliver a new broadband connection combiner that can turn up to 10 different wireless and wired connections into one super-sized broadband pipe.

Connectify’s Dispatch software will manage connections ranging from dialup to Ethernet through a hotspot application that can be run on a desktop PC. The Philadelphia company has been pushing the project primarily to the speed obsessed, demonstrating outdoor connections to multiple open Wi-Fi networks, 3G and 4G mobile broadband that when combined deliver more than 80Mbps of download speed. But the software may also prove useful as a connections management tool that can seamlessly switch from free Wi-Fi when your connection becomes intolerably slow to a different pipe — 3G or 4G wireless broadband — all without missing a beat.

With two weeks left in the Kickstarter campaign, Connectify has raised just over $33,000 of the $50,000 goal. The company recently sweetened the deal early investors get, perhaps to attract an additional burst of funding. Those investing $50 or more will receive a lifetime license with unlimited software upgrades forever.

Some mobile carriers are experimenting with similar technology, mostly to move customers automatically off of their mobile networks to Wi-Fi, where available. Others are experimenting with technology that would allow simultaneous connections to Wi-Fi and 4G networks, moving different types of data across one or both simultaneously.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Connectify Dispatch.mp4[/flv]

Introducing Connectify Dispatch, which can turn multiple slow broadband connections into one fast one. (4 minutes)

T-Mobile is proving once again that as an independent cell phone provider, it is prepared to be a scrappy competitor for your wireless dollar. America’s fourth largest cell phone company today announced it was getting into an emerging “unlimited data” war with its larger competitor Sprint and smaller contender MetroPCS, announcing it will bring back a truly unlimited data plan for its customers.

“We want to double-down on worry-free (marketing),” said Harry Thomas, T-Mobile’s director of marketing. “We want to eliminate the situation of ‘Do I want to stream Netflix for kids or worry about data overage?’ ”

Starting Sept. 5, T-Mobile’s Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data plan will be available for $20 per month when added to a Value voice and text plan or $30 per month when added to a Classic voice and text plan. For example, a single line Value plan with unlimited talk and text combined with unlimited nationwide 4G data will cost $69.99 or a single line Classic plan with unlimited talk, unlimited text and unlimited nationwide 4G data will cost $89.99.  The plan cannot be combined with Smartphone Mobile Hotspot/tethering. Customers who want to share their phone’s data service with other devices will have to choose between a 5GB or 10GB add-on option instead.

TmoNews obtained this screen shot courtesy of an anonymous employee at T-Mobile USA.

T-Mobile says their new unlimited 4G data plan comes without tricks or traps, promising no data caps, speed limits/throttles or bill shock from overlimit fees. But like every provider, T-Mobile will have a provision in its terms of use that allows it to cut the data usage party short in cases of exceptionally extraordinary usage, but the company says it will enforce that only in the most extreme cases.

“We’re big believers in customer-driven innovation, and our Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data plan is the answer to customers who are frustrated by the cost, complexity and congested networks of our competitors,” said Kevin McLaughlin, vice president, marketing, T-Mobile USA.  “Consumers want the freedom of unlimited 4G data. Our bold move to be the only wireless carrier to offer an Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data plan reinforces our value leadership and capitalizes on the strength of our nationwide 4G network.”

T-Mobile doesn’t consider Sprint’s “truly unlimited” plan in the same class, because it currently operates on a much slower “4G” standard called WiMAX, which Sprint is moving rapidly away from. Many T-Mobile customers use the company’s 4G-like HSPA+ network for data, which offers respectable speeds if your phone supports the standard (the Apple iPhone, for example, does not.) T-Mobile is moving forward on its own upgrade to 4G LTE starting in 2013.

T-Mobile’s announcement comes one day after MetroPCS, a regional carrier, announced its own limited-time promotion offering unlimited talk, text, and data for $55 a month (up to three additional lines can be added for $50 a month each). Once a customer signs up for the unlimited service promotion, they can keep it as long as they remain a customer.

The two attention to unlimited data plans from the three carriers are in marked contrast to AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which have both moved to curb unlimited use plans — switching customers to usage allowances and overlimit fees. Both companies, considerably larger than any of their competitors, claim unlimited data is impossible to offer because of wireless spectrum shortages and the expense of continually upgrading networks to meet demand.

But this does not seem to pose any problem for Sprint, T-Mobile, or MetroPCS.

Wall Street believes the new interest in unlimited data is a marketing move to differentiate the smaller companies from the two dominant providers.

Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche wrote in a research note to her investor clients that T-Mobile is strategically re-positioning itself in the market to attract new customers.

“We believe T-Mobile felt the need to make some change in order to attract attention,” wrote Fritzsche.

Other analysts believe T-Mobile needed a “game-changing” marketing move to help it recover from its ongoing losses of contract customers. The company has been losing just over 500,000 “branded” contract customers every quarter for the last year.

The pricing and service changes may require Sprint to revisit its current rates.

Sprint’s $109.99 Simply Everything plan offers unlimited data, text, and voice — and runs $20 higher per month than T-Mobile’s forthcoming offer, $55 more than MetroPCS.

“If you are a voice copper customer and you call in [with] trouble on your line, when we go out to repair that we are actually moving you to the FiOS product. We are not repairing the copper anymore.” — Fran Shammo, Verizon’s executive vice-president and chief financial officer

Verizon has declared the end of the copper wire phone line, at least in areas where the company’s companion fiber optic network FiOS is available. Fran Shammo, chief financial officer of Verizon Communications spoke about the death of the copper-based landline and the company’s strategic plans for its wired and wireless networks in the coming quarter at Oppenheimer’s 15th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference last Wednesday.

Verizon’s quiet and involuntary switch-out to fiber service is part of the company’s grander marketing effort to push customers towards upgrading service.

“The benefit we are getting […]  if you are a voice customer and we move you to [fiber] we now can upsell you to the Internet,” Shammo explained. “If you come over as a voice and DSL customer and we move you to FiOS, you now are a candidate for the video product. So there is an upsell which is definitely a benefit to this.”

Verizon earlier announced it would no longer sell standalone DSL service to customers, and has stopped selling copper-based DSL products in areas where Verizon FiOS is available. It even discourages customers from considering standalone FiOS broadband, with a budget-busting price of $64.99 for stand-alone 15/5Mbps service with a two-year contract or $69.99 on a month-to-month basis. Verizon offers considerably better value when customers sign up for multiple FiOS services.

Scrap heap

Verizon says the reliability of fiber makes maintaining older copper wire networks pointless.

“The bigger benefit is we are transforming the cost structure of our copper business because the copper fails two to three times more than fiber, which means we have two to three more times we have a tech and a truck rolling out to that copper connection. So we are eliminating that,” Frammo said.

Frammo added decreasing repair and maintenance expenses will help improve profit margins for the company.

Both CEO Lowell McAdam and Frammo have made profit margins a much higher priority for Verizon Communications than ever before.

“If you look at the [landline] side of the business, […] we have made a shift that said we are going to focus more on the profitability of FiOS this year. And that is important for us to do, because we need to generate the cash flow so that we can reinvest in those platforms,” Frammo said. “But I think as an industry as a whole you are seeing a different focus now, that it is more on returns, it is more on profitability. Can that continue? Sure. Obviously, you might have your blips here and there based on how fast something grows in one quarter versus another, but if you look at Verizon Wireless and you look at Verizon we are expanding our margins.”

Frammo addressed several key plans Verizon has for both its wired and wireless businesses, and what political priorities the company has for the rest of the year:

Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE Network is a Platform for Profits

Shammo told investors Verizon’s 4G LTE platform is now available to 76 percent of its customers in 337 markets. LTE, Shammo said, delivers not only the speed customers want but reduced operating costs for the cell phone provider. But Shammo said that will not bring reduced prices for customers — Verizon intends to use its LTE network as a platform for increasing profitability.

“When you take that network and you overlay our shared plan with that and now others are following with that shared plan, the entire industry from a shared perspective has a lot of room for growth because when you think about that network and the speed it provides, and then you take all these devices and you think about the number of tablets that have been sold in the United States that are not connected to a wireless network, you now enable people to connect those devices much easier.

“So when you think about that speed and that price plan that pools those data minutes, the growth profile here is really good for the industry and very, very good for Verizon Wireless because we think we have a strategic lead here.

“We are going to have to wait to see what the usage profile of this is. But can we expand our data, our data pricing? Of course we can, so you just add in more tiers. But that is part of where we think the future is going because when you think about the speeds and the video capability of LTE we do project out that that usage is going to continue to substantially increase which then folks will buy up.

“So it is going to be very, very easy for people to attach devices to just go beyond what we know today as a smartphone, a dongle, or a tablet. Now take it to your car, now take it inside your home for remote medical monitoring or whatever else that can happen in that house. Those can also now be attached to that price plan and everything can run off of that network.”

Frammo also hinted Verizon Wireless may be prepared to bring back an old concept from the days of long distance dialing — peak and off-peak data usage rates. Use Verizon’s network during peak usage periods and the company could charge a premium. But its LTE 4G platform also allows it to offer reduced rates when the network is being used less.

Shammo

Killing Off Your Phone Subsidy One Dollar at a Time

Shammo said Verizon Wireless is moving forward (along with other carriers) to gradually reduce equipment subsidies customers get when they upgrade their phones at contract renewal time. Verizon earlier discontinued customer loyalty discounts like its “New Every Two” plan and has stopped offering early upgrade incentives. Now the company is eliminating subsidies for some customers altogether and won’t offer them on several different types of devices.

“The industry has done a lot around trying to reform the upgrade policies and implement upgrade fees to try to strengthen the financial capability of that subsidy on a smartphone,” Shammo said. “We have also taken the track of not subsidizing tablets, less subsidy on dongles. It really is now all around the attachment of those devices into those price plans.”

Shammo added as competitors reduce subsidies, Verizon can continue to bring them down further over time. Shammo said that will improve the company’s margins.

Verizon Prepaid vs. Contract (Postpaid) Customers: “The religious belief is you can’t do anything that is going to deteriorate the postpaid base.”

Despite the company’s improved margins and declining costs from its 4G LTE platform, Frammo said Verizon has no plans to reduce prepaid pricing, because it could erode revenue from customers on two year contracts who might consider switching to a no-contract, prepaid plan.

“Obviously we are a postpaid carrier so anything we do — the religious belief is you can’t do anything that is going to deteriorate the postpaid base,” Frammo said. “I think people are willing to pay a slight premium to get on [Verizon’s] most reliable network and what we are finding is people are coming to that network. I think at this point we are very, very satisfied with where the prepaid market is. We are a premium to that prepaid market and, based on our growth trajectory right now, we are very comfortable with that price point.”

Verizon’s Political Priority for 2012: Where is our corporate tax cut?

While Shammo would not answer a question about which presidential candidate he feels would best serve Verizon’s interests if elected, Shammo made it clear the company is terrified of a so-called “tax cliff” — the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and a capital gains tax increase that would raise taxes on the wealthiest corporations from the current 15 percent to up to 25 percent — still lower than the tax rate paid by many middle class workers.

“Whoever is elected needs to deal with that tax cliff because that tax cliff could be detrimental to the economic performance of the U.S.,” Shammo said. “Then on a longer-term we definitely need corporate tax reform in the United States. We are not competitive with the rest of the world and I think everyone understands that. That is going to be harder to achieve, but I think that Washington understands that there needs to be some change within the corporate tax structure.”

Verizon Wireless has settled a complaint brought by consumer group Free Press that accused the wireless carrier of violating federal rules allowing customers to use their phones as mobile hotspots or for tethering with the apps of their choosing.

The Federal Communications Commission announced Verizon had agreed to pay $1.25 million to the U.S. Treasury for violating the conditions of its 700MHz “C”-Block licenses, which carry the provision that Verizon not “deny, limit, or restrict” customers from using the applications or devices of their choosing.

Instead of abiding by those rules, Verizon Wireless reportedly pressured Google to disable and restrict tethering applications in the Google Play Store, forcing most customers to purchase Verizon’s Mobile Hotspot/Tethering service which, at the time, was priced at an additional $30 a month. Verizon Wireless’ recent plan changes now include tethering and mobile hotspot service for no additional monthly fee, although customers are subject to usage caps and overlimit fees.

“The FCC sent a strong signal to the market that companies cannot ignore their pro-consumer obligations,” said Free Press policy director Matt Wood. “Unfortunately, the fact that Verizon worked to block these apps in the first place is a clear indication that wireless providers have a strong incentive to discriminate against certain content and applications, an incentive that continues to threaten online freedom and innovation.”

Free Press notes consumers of other carriers lack the same protection Verizon’s customers have under the law. Verizon agreed to the more consumer-friendly language as part of its purchase of the frequencies where the company operates its 4G network.