There's been a flurry of rumors lately surrounding T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and their desire to improve T-Mobile's fourth-place fortunes in the U.S. wireless market. Rumors recently suggested that Deutsche Telekom wanted to buy Sprint and merge the company with T-Mobile, despite some headache-inducing technical and network integration differences. When that rumor was debunked, a new rumor surfaced saying that Deutsche Telekom wanted to partner with Clearwire, funding Clear deployment in exchange for access to spectrum. This week, insiders tell the German Handelsblatt newspaper that Deutsche Telekom is still looking for a U.S. network investment partner, and is in fact considering some kind of deal with AT&T, MetroPCS and/or Clearwire.

Apparently taking a page out of this month's advertising debate between AT&T and Verizon, Canadian carrier Telus has sued Rogers Communications for ads claiming that the Rogers wireless network is "the fastest and most reliable in the country." Telus and Bell Canada have of course just launched their new, $1 billion HSPA network, which offers speeds up to 21 Mbps to Canadian customers. As such, Telus demanded earlier this month that Rogers stop making advertising claims that they held the 3G speed edge -- a request Rogers ignored, since they too offer 21 Mbps HSPA+ service. "Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance and we look forward to vigorously defending our position in court," says Rogers.

After spending the last week or so taking pot shots at each other, AT&T and Verizon met in court yesterday to do legal battle over Verizon's latest wireless ads, which criticize AT&T's 3G network coverage and performance. AT&T had complained to the courts that the 3G coverage maps (clearly labeled as such) in the ads could confuse customers into thinking customers didn't get voice and EDGE coverage in non-3G markets. The Judge overseeing the case has not surprisingly denied AT&T's request to have the ads pulled, but has set a December 16 date to hear further arguments in the case.

Of course by the time this is settled, the "damage" to AT&T will already have been done -- made worse in this case by all the extra attention AT&T's suit brought to Verizon's ads, and in turn AT&T's network coverage. To try and make up some ground, AT&T has launched a new series of ads featuring Luke Wilson, proclaiming rather vaguely that AT&T offers "the best 3G experience." Surely there's some AT&T customers who'd like to take AT&T to task on that claim after the last year's worth of iPhone connectivity issues, belated MMS functionality and other problems?

At this point, AT&T's probably better off just giving those advertising and legal fees to their network engineers, who are in the field busily trying to upgrade the network and migrating markets to 850MHz.

As promised, the FCC today voted to impose a shot clock aimed at speeding up municipal approval for the placing of wireless towers. According to an FCC news release (pdf), the new agency rules impose a 90 day limit to states and municipalities to approve or deny collocation (tower sharing) requests, and 150 day limit to act on new tower placement requests. It's something the wireless industry has been lobbying for for a while. According to wireless industry lobbyists, (pdf) there's currently 760 new tower placement applications nationally that have been waiting for approval for at least a year, and 180 applications that have been waiting at least three years (though the industry has been known to play up government dysfunction for effect). Municipalities are expected to challenge the ruling in the courts over fears that they'd be ceding too much state zoning control to Uncle Sam.

Telecompetitor directs our attention to a study by ABI Research that indicates that femtocell shipments this year have been well, less than impressive. The technology, which creates essentially a micro-cell tower in the home, helps with coverage issues by allowing users to make calls over their home broadband connection.

Last week AT&T tried their best to get Verizon's new ad campaign shuttered. The series of ads poke fun at AT&T's lackluster 3G coverage and network performance, something AT&T didn't find amusing. Verizon has now filed their 53 page legal retort (pdf) to AT&T's complaint, which as you'd expect argues that illustrating AT&T's network limitations is a perfectly fair form of advertising. On page seven sits this gem: "AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s 'There’s A Map For That' advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts." As for AT&T's claim that the maps used to highlight AT&T's 3G coverage are unfair? "AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison," says Verizon.

Back in 2007, Minnesota's Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Sprint for extending a customer's long term contract without their knowledge. Just a few years back, most of the major wireless carriers had a nasty habit of extending a user's contract quietly every time even minor plan changes were made, then socking the user with early termination fees when they though their original contract was up and tried to leave. Minnesota's suit gained national attention, and carriers have since backed away from the practice. Today Sprint settled with the State of Minnesota, and Minnesota Sprint customers can get their early termination fees refunded in full. Impacted Minnesota consumers can either call the Minnesota Attorney General's Office at 1-800-657-3787 or 651-296-3353, or fill out this form and mail it in.

Sprint today has announced that they've launched their faster Mobile WiMax wireless broadband service in both Austin and San Antonio. According to Sprint, customer plans for the new service cost $69.99 monthly for access to both the Sprint 3G and 4G network.

The significantly more open nature of the Android mobile operating system is going to test Verizon's promise to open up their network and devices in short order. As recently noted, Verizon in 2010 hopes to charge an additional $30 a month for tethering, on top of the $30 user's already pay for data -- all of which will be capped at 5 GB of data use per month. As Wired notes however, the open source nature of the Android operating system driving the Droid should have hackers providing a slew of additional functionality (including tethering) in short order. The source code for Android 2.0 hasn't been released yet, but Wired apparently didn't know there's already tools available that are allowing Droid owners to tether, for free, before Verizon even offers it officially. Of course there's no getting around that 5 GB monthly usage cap.

Whether it comes to triple play broadband or wireless service, pricing plans are often designed to give the illusion of value -- instead of the real thing. Bundle plans are often designed to prevent direct comparisons with a competitor's service, and plans are almost always designed to get you to pay more money than you'd like.

Earlier this week we reported how a free, tiny (1,000 feet total) municipal Wi-Fi network in Ohio was forced to shut down after an MPAA legal warning. A network user had apparently transferred a file copyrighted by Sony Pictures, and instead of risking a costly legal fight, the network decided to simply shut down.

Back in June, Virgin Mobile announced a new wireless broadband service dubbed "Broadband2Go." Broadband2Go operates over Sprint's EVDO network, offering users the choice of buying pay-as-you-go cards in 100MB ($10), 250MB ($20), 500MB ($40) and 1GB ($60) increments. Not only are those not particularly impressive prices -- given Sprint itself offers 5GB of connectivity for $60 -- but Virgin Mobile puts an expiration date on the cards. While these caps are downright silly, such connections are marginally useful from a convenience perspective, assuming you don't have a 3G connection or can't find a (usually free) Wi-Fi hotspot. According to an announcement today, those of you not put off by the pricing can get the service from over 1,000 Best Buy Mobile stores, over 4,300 Radio Shack stores, Sam's Club kiosks via Radio Shack, Walmart.com and Target.com as of December 1, 2009.

AT&T and Verizon's fight over 3G coverage maps just keeps rolling along, with Verizon recently running new ads that mock AT&T's wireless network, and AT&T lawyers working very hard yesterday to get those advertisements pulled by the courts. The decision to fight the ads doesn't seem to be all that wise, given the debate has simply managed to push the ads (and AT&T's recent network issues) further into the spotlight.

You might remember how during the summer, Teresa Dixon Murray at the Cleveland Plain Dealer did a great job highlighting a phantom $1.99 fee Verizon was hitting consumers with -- even if they didn't use any data. The phantom charges were being incurred when phones were off, phone batteries were dead, Internet access was blocked, or the phones didn't have the necessary software to go online.

It has been interesting watching Blockbuster video adapt to the broadband age, with the company seemingly not trying very hard out of fear of cannibalizing their brick and mortar revenue and losing control. Early efforts to mirror Netflix's success at broadband video delivery have seemed relatively lackluster, and the company's CEO, when announcing such broadband initiatives, seems to almost expect them to fail.

According to Clearwire's latest quarterly earnings, the company now serves about 555,000 subscribers. About 173,000 of those are using Clearwire's new Clear Mobile WiMax service.

AT&T and Verizon's legal spat over Verizon's ads attacking AT&T's network continued this week, with Verizon running a series of three new ads that continued to poke fun at AT&T coverage gaps and performance issues. AT&T in turn threw some additional money at their lawyers, who last night filed an amended complaint in Atlanta demanding that all of the Verizon ads be pulled immediately. AT&T continues to claim that the ads, which compare Verizon and AT&T 3G coverage, don't highlight how customers outside of 3G areas can still get voice service and slower EDGE connectivity. Surely Verizon enjoys all the added attention AT&T has created in the media for the new ads.

Apple Insider cites several sources that indicate that AT&T's exclusive agreement to offer the iPhone probably won't be extended, and that you'll see the iPhone make its way to Verizon's network next year. Despite Verizon's current ad campaign that pokes fun at the iPhone (though more specifically AT&T's network), vendors appear to be in the early stages of constructing a slightly smaller, new iPhone that would be compatible with both CDMA2000 (EVDO, Verizon) and UMTS 3G (HSDPA, AT&T) networks.

Before Sprint and Clearwire created the new Clearwire joint venture, Sprint had already launched Mobile WiMax service in the Baltimore market under the XOHM brand name. As of yesterday, Clearwire started the migration of XOHM Customers to the Clear WiMAX network. Users write in to note that Clearwire is sending impacted users an email which includes a link to this URL. According to the e-mail, Clear will "flip the switch" on December 2nd and is asking users to order new modems as soon as possible. The replacement modem(s) are free.

Being the first carrier to launch a phone with the Android OS got T-Mobile lots of attention, though it also drew attention to the fact the carrier's 3G HSDPA network footprint was a little lacking. T-Mobile faced delays in getting the network up and running, and in 2008 blamed Uncle Sam for being slow to vacate the 1700MHz spectrum they purchased from the old fellow. They've since been playing catch up, and are doing a rather good job of it. Glenn Fleishman offers a good refresher on the company's plan to move quickly to HSPA 7.2, and ultimately to 21 Mbps service. HSPA+ should see deployment in 2010 on a "fairly broad-scale" basis, T-Mobile tells Fleishman.