Last week a leak surfaced suggesting that Verizon would soon be offering no contract wireless cellphone service. Today, Verizon has confirmed those rumors, by announcing they're offering no-contract plans to new customers who either bring a CDMA device with them, or buy one from Verizon at full, unsubsidized price. It's pretty clear that this is some preparatory re-arrangement of Verizon's offers ahead of their "open access" tier launch. Verizon's description of the new option from their press release:I was under the impression that Verizon already offered this, so I asked Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney exactly what was different. "You are partly correct in that customers whose contracts have expired may continue their service on a month to month basis," she says. "What is different is customers may now come to us and select a Month-to-Month agreement in lieu of a contract."

All of Verizon's service tiers are now available at the same price point as long-term contracts, without having to pay an ETF. This of course is particularly handy if you're bringing a compatible device over from another carrier. Of course if you want a new phone, the trade-off will be you'll be paying the full unsubsidized price for it.

Florida is a market that is getting a lot of attention from a variety of service providers right now. AT&T is in the process of launching U-Verse VDSL and IPTV service there and Comcast has been responding to the launch with offers of 16Mbps "Blast!" service in the same areas beginning to be served by U-Verse. The latest big announcement from Florida comes from Verizon which has completed enhancements to its EVDO Rev A 3G network. In a process that took about two years, Verizon says that it has finally managed to be able to offer the enhanced service to approximately ninety-five percent of the state across 25,000 square miles.

About a year ago Verizon announced that the company was planning an acquisition of a small wireless network called Rural Cellular Corp. The acquisition didn’t get a lot of media attention due to the fact that the news about Verizon at the time of the announcement centered around the now-complete Fairpoint sale.

Most people are familiar with the top three wireless carriers in the United States: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. But not everyone can name the remaining seven in the country’s “top ten”.

Twenty one thousand square miles of Southern California just sped up a little bit with the widening of the Verizon Wireless 3G network to include that area. This reflects a big chunk of new investment in California by the company which hasn’t been seen to this extent since 2000 when Verizon Wireless first started speeding things up in the state. Verizon has spent over $45 billion on broadband expansion in the last eight years in an attempt to lead the way with high-speed wireless access.

Google got a lot of attention last fall when it announced the creation of the Open Handset Alliance, a coalition of companies committed to supporting open standards for mobile devices (particularly Google’s Android). However, there had already been another similar Linux coalition developed in January 2007 which had similar goals but didn’t achieve backing in America.

Verizon claims that Sprint Nextel owes the company $10 million in outstanding interconnection charges that the company has been trying to get from Sprint for years. The statute of limitations on the issue is coming close so Verizon has filed a lawsuit to attempt to get that money.

“Green” has been the buzz word in recent months for industries across the tech landscape. However, the average wireless consumer is more concerned with the dependability of networks and products than with the eco-friendly factor.

As we mentioned yesterday, Verizon Wireless customers need to opt out of a new plan to share customer CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) data. That data includes all numbers called or called from, the length of each call and additional information on services purchased.

For some time, both Sprint and Verizon Wireless have forced customers to extend their contract for another year or two if they make changes to their plan -- for instance, shift to a different minute package. Sprint was just sued for the practice by the Minnesota AG, who says Sprint tricked users and extended their contracts for such things as adding or subtracting minutes or replacing phones.

Verizon Wireless is taking some heat on the network neutrality front for refusing to carry text messages from a pro-choice advocacy group. To be clear, the system proposed by Naral Pro-Choice America would have only sent text messages to interested users who signed up to receive them, but Verizon insists they have the right to block "controversial or unsavory" messages.