NBC’s Saturday Night Live proves an important point about today’s smartphones and data products.  Only a handful of consumers really understand what LTE, 4G, and 3G are really all about.  Just as few can tell you what a “gigabyte” is or how many they used, or increasingly important — how many they have left before the overlimit fees kick in.  (2 minutes)

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A Virginia television station is warning customers planning to switch their wireless service to AT&T to think twice.  The company recently announced it was increasing prices on data plans for new customers, although existing ones can keep their current plans.  Virginians considering leaving Sprint, Verizon Wireless, or T-Mobile will find themselves locked into the new, higher prices if they move to AT&T, WTKR in Norfolk reports.  The “grandfathered” service plan, exempted from price hikes and service restrictions, is increasingly becoming a customer retention tool.  (1 minute)

Research in Motion headquarters in Ontario

The two co-executives of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion, maker of the formerly-popular BlackBerry, quietly resigned this weekend, turning over leadership of the faltering company to a new chief executive who suggested little needed to change at what used to be Canada’s most valuable company.

Thorsten Heins will replace co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis effective immediately in what analysts are calling a last-ditch effort to rescue a company that has lost at least 88 percent of its peak value and has a share in the cell phone market now below 10 percent.

Heins’ initial comments, intended to calm investors about the company’s precarious position, have instead caused share prices to tumble further out of fear the new CEO remains in denial about the serious state of RIM’s future.

Heins told reporters that no “drastic change” was needed at the company, even though consumers are increasingly abandoning BlackBerry products in favor of Android or Apple iPhone smartphones.  RIM’s tablet, the PlayBook, never got far off the ground and is now regularly being cleared off store shelves at deeply discounted prices.

“If Thorsten really believes that there are no changes to be made, he will be gone within 15 to 18 months. He will be a transitional CEO and this will be a transitional board,” Jaguar CEO Vic Alboini, who leads an informal group of 16 RIM shareholders calling for a radical restructuring told Reuters.

Heins

Corporate users who formerly appreciated the BlackBerry’s secure platform and business-oriented apps are increasingly allowing employees to adopt competing phones because of recent BlackBerry service outages, fewer BlackBerry-compatible apps, and what some have called “endless” software upgrade delays.

Some analysts have dismissed RIM’s former leadership structure for months as “rudderless,” existing in an environment where cut-throat competition between Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s wildly popular iPhone and iPad are reducing BlackBerry’s place in the North American market to an afterthought.

“RIM had its era, but now it seems very hard to gain back market share in the smartphone market even if the top managers are changed,” Mitsushige Akino of Tokyo-based Ichiyoshi Investment Management told Bloomberg News. “The iPhone and Android are well established in the market.”

RIM acknowledged its market share in North America, particularly among younger consumers, has faltered in recent years, but noted BlackBerry products remain popular in certain European, African, and Middle Eastern countries, with growth also seen in Latin America and parts of Asia.

But perceptions of a company past its prime continued last year with the introduction of RIM’s PlayBook tablet, which was criticized for bringing nothing innovative or new to the tablet marketplace.  Even worse, RIM took a drubbing for releasing the tablet without any e-mail application, an ironic lapse for a company that touted it was “the first to reliably deliver e-mail over airwaves” in the 1990s with its BlackBerry devices.

The BlackBerry Playbook

Several serious service outages, some lasting for days, also had a major impact.  RIM’s next major software overhaul, dubbed BB10, has been long-delayed and will not be released until the latter half of 2012 — perhaps too late for the company to regain its footing.

Still, Heins suggests he is prepared to rejuvenate the company’s products with updates to the PlayBook and a new generation of BlackBerry devices.  The company’s better market share overseas may buy some additional time, but analysts warn RIM will fail to attract much attention in the U.S. or Canada if its products do not deliver something better than current generation Android and Apple phones and tablets.

As consumers invest in a growing number of platform-specific apps, a switch to a competing device becomes correspondingly more difficult.  Corporate users also will not tolerate many more major service outages, especially those that extend for days, not minutes or hours.

“There is yet another ace up RIM’s sleeve — the rate plans of North American wireless companies,” said one optimistic RIM shareholder. “BlackBerry devices are not known for consuming a lot of data, so RIM could market their devices to budget-minded consumers that might not be able afford the latest iPhone or Android phone and a high volume data plan to accompany it.”

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Canada’s news networks treat coverage of Research in Motion on about the same level American news media treats Apple, Google or Microsoft.  RIM remains an important contributor to Canada’s economy, so this weekend’s developments got considerable attention from the media.  CTV National News led with the ouster of the two founding co-CEOs of Research in Motion. Here is how CTV viewers saw the news unfold.  (3 minutes)

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RIM Resets: CBC introduces its coverage with a round-up of this weekend’s developments, noting a management shakeup could have profound implications on the Ontario company.  (4 minutes)

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 CBC’s News Now talks with Research in Motion’s new CEO Thorsten Heins about his plans for a revamped BlackBerry and the long-term future for the company.  (8 minutes)

Comcast’s controversial deal with Verizon Wireless to cross-promote cable and wireless service has come to fruition in Washington and Oregon with a new introductory offer pitching Comcast’s Xfinity cable with Verizon Wireless service that includes a $300 customer rebate.

The first appearance of the new joint marketing effort started this week in metro Seattle and Portland, and includes nearby communities.  Comcast employees are now staffing at least eight Verizon Wireless stores in Seattle, primarily to pitch the company’s cable service.

The most aggressive offer includes a Visa prepaid card rebate of up to $300 for new customers who agree to bundle Comcast’s phone, Internet, and television service with a new Verizon Wireless smartphone or tablet plan, assuming the two companies can find enough new customers who do not already subscribe to cable or mobile service.

Traditional telephone companies like CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, which provide service in the region, appear to be most at risk from the bundled service promotions.  CenturyLink provides landline telephone service and DSL bundled with satellite television.  Frontier does the same and also offers a limited part of the region FiOS fiber to the home service it acquired from Verizon Communications.

Should customers sign on to the bundled offer from Verizon and Comcast, there would be little reason to do business with either CenturyLink or Frontier.

Consumer advocates like Public Knowledge, along with smaller cell phone companies, satellite provider DirecTV, and other consumer groups have co-signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission raising questions about the parameters of the cross promotion deal, which the companies and groups say “could be a significant realignment of the competitive landscape in these industries.”

AT&T has announced an across-the-board rate increase for smartphone and tablet data plans, raising prices $5 Sunday for most plans while including incrementally larger usage allowances:

• Lite Usage: 200MB for $15 is now 300MB for $20;
• Average Usage: 2GB for $25 is now 3GB for $30;
• Higher Usage: 4GB for $45 is now 5GB for $50.
• Regular Tablet Plan:  2GB for $25 is now 3GB for $30.
• A new, higher use tablet plan will offer 5GB for $50.
• Overlimit fees are now $20 for 300MB of additional usage on the lite usage plan, $10/GB on all other plans.

AT&T originally charged $29.99 for unlimited-use data plans.  The company claimed in the summer of 2010 its new limited-use plans would save most customers money, but except for very light users, that is no longer true.

AT&T's throttles are engaged.

AT&T says the new usage allowances reflect customer resistance to paying overlimit fees when they exceed AT&T’s existing caps.  But the company has also previously said the vast majority of its customers never exceed the old allowances. According to AT&T, 65 percent of its customers use less than 200MB per month and 98 percent of its smartphone customers use less than 2GB of data per month. That effectively means every customer will now face a $5 rate hike for increased usage allowances most will not currently use.

Existing customers can hang on to their old data plans indefinitely, but those who bounce between carriers will be forced to choose from a more limited, and expensive, menu of options.

Considering that AT&T’s most significant rival Verizon Wireless currently charges $30 for just 2GB per month, AT&T officials are still able to claim their new prices represent a “great value.”

Customers grandfathered under AT&T’s old unlimited-use plans are also discovering they are anything but unlimited.  So-called “heavy users” who exceed 2GB of use per month are first warned by AT&T they are in the “top 5%” of usage-hungry users, after which their wireless connection is throttled to as little as 15kbps for the remainder of the billing cycle.