Last summer Verizon introduced their new shared data plans for contract customers, which provide users with unlimited text and voice, but imposed low caps and steep overages on data and per device connection fees to make up for it. A little less than a year later and Verizon now says that about one third of their postpaid customers now use the shared data plans -- or about 30% of the company's 93.2 million postpaid contract customers.

Verizon's CFO Fran Shammo this month stated Verizon is absolutely thrilled with the plans, since they nudge users to connect more devices, and thereby use more overall data:Shared data plans and AT&T and Verizon's quiet war on unlimited wireless data plans have had their critics, who worry that the usage allotments will shrink as the overage fees soar. However, a J.D. Power and Associates study from earlier this year suggested that shared data customers are actually more satisfied -- in part because that, for now, they're saving money over previous plans.

France was one of the first countries to impose laws that require ISPs terminate the service of users who repeatedly engage in copyright infringement. Under the rules, copyright offenders were tracked by a newly-created taxpayer-funded agency dubbed Hadopi and a hired company named Trident Media Guard (TMG).

Back in April we noted that AT&T was imposing a new $0.61 "Mobility Administrative Fee" on all postpaid wireless subscriber bills. According to AT&T's website, the sneaky fee "helps defray certain expenses AT&T incurs," though like AT&T's equally nonsensical "regulatory recovery fee," those expenses should be included in the cost of doing business, and not buried beneath the line.

The latest report (pdf) from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index highlights that consumer satisfaction with cable TV services remains among the worst in any industry -- and broadband ISP service satisfaction is even worse. While some companies made small strides, they haven't been enough.

Leap Wireless' Cricket brand this week launched what they're calling "Half is More" pricing, which the company claims offers users "unlimited plans for half the price of the competition." According to a Leap/Cricket press release, the company's new $45 Offering provides unlimited text, voice and data services. However, the company rather buries the fact that by "unlimited" they mean around 1 GB, after which you're throttled back to dial-up era speeds for the remainder of the month. "Cricket is challenging consumers and asking the question that if you can pay only half and get the same thing, why wouldn't you?" the company asks. Perhaps because you historically abuse the hell out of the word "unlimited"?

The Wall Street Journal this week seemed rather surprised to learn that wireless carriers are now happily selling user location data for additional profit. According to the Journal, "carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc." As we've noted for some time, this data is purchased by everyone from marketers to city planners, but is generally not as anonymous as carriers claim. As the Journal notes, the data also provides governments with an additional treasure trove of data to hoover up (or for hackers to acquire), and there continues to be no real consumer privacy protections in place to protect users. Tune in tomorrow when the Journal learns that pay TV and broadband services in the Unites States are expensive.

A Florida woman has filed a $5 million class action lawsuit against Apple because the power button on her iPhone 4 broke. According to the lawsuit, Apple knew about a defect in a flex cable that controls the on-off button, but refused to acknowledge the flaw in order to sell more phones. The plaintiff's lawyers are claiming Apple colluded with AT&T to violate federal RICO racketeering laws -- while also claiming that Apple has violated California consumer protection laws. Apple just got done sending out $15 checks after settling a lawsuit over the faulty antenna design in the iPhone 4, which resulted in users in low signal areas losing connectivity if they held the phone in a certain way.

Over the years there have been no shortage of studies showing that pirates actually buy significantly more content from legit outlets than anybody else. That point was brought up repeatedly as the entertainment industry tried to pass rules requiring these users be kicked off the Internet.

KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh recently examined FiOS customer complaints (via Consumerist) about dying batteries in Verizon FiOS ONT units. The batteries generally give users about eight hours of talk time during a power outage, but let out a repeated, shrill beep when the battery is depleted (usually after a year or two).

According to a new report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, gaps related to faster broadband availability continue to persist, especially in rural regions. According to NTIA data, while nearly 100% of urban residents can get speeds of at least 6 Mbps, 82% of rural communities can access those same speeds.

"We don't focus on megabits, we don't focus on gigabits, we focus on activities," Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter stated at an investor conference last week, clearly trying to counter some of the buzz around Google Fiber. "We go to the activity set to get a sense of what customers are actually doing and the majority of our customers fit into that 6 Mbps or less category."

Granted many Frontier customers in our forums will tell you they're lucky if their copper and loop length supports anything more than 3 Mbps, and those who can get faster speeds may not be able to justify paying Frontier's steep price premiums.

Porn copyright trolls like Prenda law already do plenty of sleazy things in their attempt to frighten BitTorrent porn downloaders into ponying up extortion settlement money. While Judges are just now starting to take aim at these firms, the trolls remain busy trying to frighten porn downloaders into ponying up cash.

Cablevision has spent the last few years deploying Wi-Fi to NYC metro region commuter areas, and now says they're getting close to offering service on the trains themselves. Speaking on their recent earnings conference call, Cablevision executive Tad Smith stated the company is "in active, productive, very positive conversations with the trains" but that deploying such technology has been "complicated." The company filed a proposal with the MTA back in 2010 and originally hoped the project would be up and running within twelve months. Still, Smith says the company is "optimistic for the future" of the project, which is making slow but steady progress. Whether commuters (most of whom now have an LTE connection in their pocket) will need or use it might be something else entirely.

Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference earlier this month, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo stated that the company's earliest FiOS markets are now reaching penetration targets and that most of their new customers are signing up for faster speeds.

DirecTV is contemplating embedding an antenna into their set top boxes in order to offer live over the air broadcasts, thereby circumventing retransmission fees. Speaking at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference in Boston, DirecTV chief financial officer Patrick Doyle stated they didn't have a timeline on the project, but that it makes financial sense due to the soaring price of retrans fees and the landscape shift that's occurring courtesy of Aereo. He also stated that whenever it does get deployed, it would only be initially made available to new customers. "We’ll probably test in some markets an over-the-air integrated tuner set-up and make sure the customer experience is there," insists Doyle.

Microsoft this week introduced the company's long-awaited successor to the Xbox 360 video game console: the Xbox One. According to Microsoft, their new console will come with 8GB of RAM, USB 3.0 ports, built-in 802.11n, and support for Wi-Fi Direct -- but that's about as technically specific as Microsoft was willing to get. Like Sony, Microsoft held back most of the details ahead of their full reveal at E3, though unlike Sony -- Microsoft did actually show what the console looks like. The company also highlighted how the new Kinect sensor will be dramatically more sensitive and supposedly useful, as well as a new redesigned game pad. Microsoft's full announcement can be found here.

For years Verizon has marketed their FiOS fiber to the home service as a superior alternative to cable. Part of that sales pitch has been the argument that the service doesn't require bandwidth caps -- though Verizon has historically always chosen their words very carefully to leave the possibility open sometime in the future.

In early 2011 MetroPCS joined Verizon in suing the FCC to overturn the agency's already fairly-flimsy network neutrality rules. With MetroPCS and T-Mobile now merged, T-Mobile announced late last week that it would be withdrawing the lawsuit against the FCC they acquired as part of the deal.

Cash set aside for broadband development in urban areas is sitting idle thanks to EU bureaucracy, according to those overseeing the project. It’s likely that the £150 million, which was set aside for upgrading infrastructure to provide 80Mbps and up speeds, will instead be used to provide public wi-fi in city centres, for other projects that don’t require EU approval or, if the opposition Labour party get their way, redirected completely to provide access for rural areas.

While there has been some twitching from the corpse of LightSquared in DC, it has been fairly clear to everyone that the company has been dead for quite some time. Now insiders tell Bloomberg that Charlie Ergen made a $2 billion "stalking horse" bid to acquire LightSquared's assets and spectrum. One problem with such a deal -- the FCC still hasn't given their approval for use of the interference-prone spectrum, the core reason that LightSquared died in the first place. LightSquared has until May 31 to accept the bid. Dish has slowly been engaged in a series of spectrum acquisition deals to aid the company's potential launch of their own LTE network.