Verizon Wireless is on track to deploy LTE in 25 to 30 markets, it has previously announced, after successful testing in Boston and Seattle. The rollout will enable LTE to finally begin catching up to WiMax, which Clearwire and Sprint currently offer in 27 U.S. markets.
- Verizon Wireless officials are saying their plans to roll out 4G Long-Term Evolution networks are coming along swimmingly. LTE trials in Boston and Seattle reportedly saw peak download speeds of 40M to 50M bps and peak upload speeds of 20M to 25M bps quot;significantly faster quot; than cu...

Leap Wireless has hired Goldman Sachs and asked its board members to consider selling the company, according to The Wall Street Journal. Leap's shares jumped 13.1% today, to $14.92, amidst investor hopes of a quick deal.

Chances are, selling Leap won't be easy, however. As Michael Nelson, an analyst at Nelson Alpha Research, points out in his Feb. 1 note, "We believe an acquisition by AT&T or Verizon is unlikely, owing to significant regulatory hurdles associated with the companies' high market share at 30% and 32% respectively." A deal would mean major divestitures.

The most likely buyer, MetroPCS, has long resisted merging with Leap. The two companies' cultures differ, and its management had been known to exchange potshots during a prior merger attempt.

Moreover, the combination would basically bring together two companies that are struggling to grow and prosper. In the first nine months of 2009, Leap's losses mounted. Metro is in the black, and growing, but that may change. Amidst rising competition, both companies have been aggressive on pricing, and Metro's financials could suffer as a result. "We expect no free cash flow generation in 2010 and note that next year's free cash flow generation will be highly dependant on how far the company can cut capital spending," Pali Capital analyst Walter Piecyk wrote in a Jan. 14 note.

Leap has other options: A private-equity investor could take an interest in Leap, or facilitate a Leap-Metro merger. A foreign telco could buy Leap to gain a toehold in the U.S. market.

Ad spending by wireless companies is going through the roof. Sprint Nextel's ad spending might have hiked 40% in 2009 over 2008, according to Jan. 22 report from Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett and TNS Media Intelligence. It now adds up to 4.4% of Sprint's revenues -- double the level of its peers.

Yet, whether Sprint's aggressive marketing has paid off is debatable. "The astronomical growth in ad spending by Sprint is not translating into increased gross additions," Moffett writes. "Sprint accounted for 26% of Big Four ad spending, but just 14% of Big Four post-paid gross additions." While Sprint is struggling to retain its subscribers, Verizon Wireless, which actually slashed its ad spending 7% last year, has managed to grow its customer base. While ad spending by U.S.'s six largest wireless carriers declined steadily throughout 2008, it jumped 4.3% last year, Moffett estimates.

What's clear is that carriers' ad spending no longer translates into subscriber gains. As Sprint has kept losing subscribers over the past several years, many analysts blamed that on lower advertising spending by the company. Well, now that Sprint has ramped that spending up, it's not helping as much as hoped.

On Jan. 6, Qualcomm announced that accessories maker mophie has built an antenna to catch Qualcomm MediaFlo TV's programming into its cases for the iPhone and iPod touch. The move will allow Qualcomm to sell its TV service while bypassing wireless service providers, which haven't been as successful as hoped in pushing the service thus far.

Carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless have long offered the MediaFlo service for select phones carrying Qualcomm's antennas, but it's not taken off as fast as many analysts hoped. Many people balk at paying a monthly fee for the service when they can get plenty of free programming online. And the market growth has been inhibited by the limited availability of MediaFlo-ready phones. The iPhone -- one of the most popular smartphones in the world -- had lacked the feature.

Now that an antenna is being built into a smart smartphone case, at least one of the barriers to MediaFlo's adoption will come down. iPhone fans will no longer have to wait for Apple to built the antenna into the smartphone in order to receive MediaFlo broadcasts. They will still have to pay Qualcomm fees for using the service. But at least Qualcomm won't have to share the revenues with the carriers.

Later on, mophie could make similar cases available for other devices, such as BlackBerry and Android-based phones, I suspect. Qualcomm is sure to benefit from no longer having to depend on carriers for so much of its MediaFlo traction and revenues.

Now that gearmaker Avaya and Web-calling service Skype share a private-equity owner, the two companies are discussing ways they can better work together. "We are having conversations with [Skype]," Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said in an interview today. Kennedy didn’t go into detail, but these talks most likely focus on how the companies can work together, as opposed to some sort of combination of operations.

It's not difficult to imagine Avaya helping Skype enter new markets, such as the premises of its large business clients. While Skype's Web-calling service is already widely used by small businesses, it's yet to prove that it's reliable enough to serve the needs of large enterprise customers. Perhaps Avaya, whose business is focused on the enterprise, could help Skype make its Web-calling service more attractive to such large companies.

What's more, Skype could be integrated into Avaya's products, which include certain Nortel gear (Avaya closed its Nortel acquisition today). Nortel has long helped carriers like Verizon service their corporate customers. By integrating its offerings with Skype's, Avaya could help reduce these customers' telecommunications bills.

Consumer awareness of Android, an operating system for smartphones pushed by Google, is on a steep climb, which bodes well for vendors like Motorola and HTC. Of consumers expecting to shop for smartphones in the next three months, 17% are considering an Android-based device, according to comScore's new survey of 2,300 consumers. In fact, devices based on Android aren't far behind the iPhone. Some 20% of consumers are in the market for the Apple device.

The results represent a stark contrast to consumer sentiment of only a few months ago. In August, 7% of consumers were contemplating buying an Android device, while 21% of them were considering the iPhone.

The splash that Motorola's Droid phone, based on Android, has made recently is partly responsible for increased attention that Android is getting. "In August 2009, just 22 percent of mobile users had heard of the Android, while in November 2009 this figure had reached 37 percent, largely prompted by the Verizon Droid advertising campaign launched in the fall," according to the report. Android may get a further boost next year, when more Android devices should come onto the market. While the Android movement could still get derailed -- for instance, if Google decides to release Android phones under its own brand -- it certainly appears to be on the right track now, and rolling along with an ever-increasing speed.

By 2013, carriers will sell 31% of all notebooks, according to a Nov. 18 report from consultant In-Stat. What this means is, in three years, nearly a third of new laptop buyers will be paying carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T a monthly laptop service fee, which stands at around $60 in the U.S. today. That fee would come in addition to what consumers pay for their mobile phone service.

For carriers, this additional fee spells a revenue bonanza. An average American pays $50 in wireless service fees today, according to industry association CTIA. As consumers tuck on additional data services, such as those for their new laptops, netbooks and smartphones, that amount could begin to climb, even if voice minute charges keep on shrinking. Average monthly bill amount has been essentially flat since 2003.

This morning, Verizon Wireless announced Droid Eris, a new phone from HTC. The announcement comes on the heels of another, of Motorola Droid, another smartphone device based on Android software developed by Google and its partners. So Verizon Wireless has decided to develop a single brand for all Android-based phones it puts out: Droid, a company spokesperson confirms.

This strategy is a smart one: Currently, very few consumers are even aware of Android, or know what it is. With the Droid brand, Verizon Wireless is likely hoping to change that, and to make Droid phones stand out in the consumers' minds in the same way the Apple iPhone does. Indeed, Android-based phones are highly differentiated products: They are the only phones that can connect to and download apps from the Android Market, an app store for mobile games, calendar and productivity applications. They also can access services such as Google Maps Navigation, which offers voice turn-by-turn directions. It's important to point out these differences to consumers, and a single Droid brand can help achieve just that.

Last Thursday, I went down to Union Square in downtown New York City and ran into Verizon's marketing juggernaut for its new Droid phone.

The new Motorola device, which was released today to the general public, is being supported by the single largest marketing campaign that Verizon has ever launched for a single device.

So what does all that money buy? Well, lots of glitzy TV commercials but also some cheesy live marketing events. As I got off the train at Union Square, I noticed a long line of about 75 people. The people were waiting to get the chance to play a game in which you could scoop up a Droid phone in one of those boardwalk games with the little hand-operated cranes. All that was missing was a carnival barker shouting into a megaphone with a monkey perched on his shoulder.

Verizon is clearly pulling out all the stops to turn the Droid into a hit. And so far, it seems to be working.

-- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to read more.

The inclusion of the free Google Maps Navigation app on the new Verizon Droid isn't the only thing shaking up the until-now lucrative mapping and business. Google, which seems to want to own all of the world's data, is now very much in the mapping business, on which is is starting to work its disruptive magic.

Until now, Google licensed map data from a variety of sources including Tele Atlas, INEGI, MapLink, and Europa Technologies. But these days, if you look at a U.S. map on Google, the only copyright notice you are likely to see is Google's. In the course of driving the country collection pictures for Google Street View, Google has built up its own database of maps as well as the data needed for turn-by-turn driving instructions.

Google's possession of its own map data and its willingness to make it available free, though sometimes sprinkled with ads, could be very bad news for companies that have spent a fortune building and maintaining map information databases. Suddenly, two of last year's big deals, Nokia's $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq and TomTom's $4.3 billion purchase of Tele Atlas, look like they may not have been among the swiftest of corporate M&A moves.

Developers making Android apps on heels of Droid news from Verizon, according to study.

The number of applications such as games and calendars that developers have begun working on for cell-phone operating system Android has jumped 94% between September and October, according to Flurry, which provides in-app analytics software for mobile devices.

The increased developer hustle and bustle around Android comes as no surprise: In November, Verizon Wireless is expected to launch its first Android phone from Motorola, and the carrier has already started a major marketing blitz around the device. Android-based phones from other makers, like HTC, are selling well. About 20 Android-based devices are expected to come out this year, and 30 more in 2010, according to analysts. As more Android phones get into users' hands, more people will start using these devices to download apps from the Android Market, which currently features more than 10,000 applications. Naturally, developers want to get in on the game.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Android Market catches up to the Apple App Store, which currently offers more than 85,000 apps, in the number of applications it carries in the next year or two. Consider: By 2012, Android should become the world's second-largest mobile operating system, according to consultant Gartner. At that point, more people will be buying Android-based phones each year than the iPhones. And users of Android devices download as many applications -- about 10 -- each month as iPhone owners do. Since developers always want to make apps for the largest possible pool of users, Android Market's applications count should skyrocket.

Google and Verizon, often at odds in the past, this morning announced a deal to co-develop handsets and other services using Google's Android operating software. (Full release is below.)

In the next few weeks, Verizon will introduce Android-based handsets. Whether those handsets will come anywhere close to the utility and, let's face it, sexiness of the iPhone remains to be seen, but if Verizon wants to get some of those iPhone lovers who now reluctantly use AT&T because that's the only choice (in the U.S.), they'll need to come closer than most Android phones have so far. For Google, though, getting Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., on board no doubt will give a boost to Android, which has been seen as slow to take off.

The conference call with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam is now underway. Cutting through the marketing-speak, here are the highlights:

Less than a year after Verizon Wireless declared the Hub as the landline of the future, the nation's No. 1 carrier quietly drops the VOIP phone.
- Well, back to the drawing board. Verizon Wireless said Sept. 30 it was discontinuing sales for its Verizon Hub, a VOIP home phone that also served as a Web tablet. In January, Verizon Wireless said it was reinventing the standard home phone with the Hub. The Hub retailed for $199 and required a ...