The Federal Communications Commission has taken an interest in the $175 or $200 per-line fee charged by cellular telephone providers when you cancel service before the end of a 1-year or 2-year service contract. Their polite interest may turn into a mandate to justify, pro-rate, and reduce these fees, but there's also an easier way out you can use today. These fees grew in size and unbreakability after number portability kicked in for cellular carriers, as a phone number no longer provided a lock on a customer.

The FCC is working on brokering a deal that would allow cancellation with no fee within 30 days of signing a contract or 10 days after receiving the first bill--longer than the typical 7 or 14 days offered by many carriers for service rescission. Prorating fees, reducing them monthly by a proportional amount, would also be required if the deal goes through.

Verizon Wireless already prorates, AT&T began a few days ago for new contracts, and Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile will modify their plans this year (T-Mobile promised by June 30 last year; Sprint by the end of 2008). Any FCC deal would supercede current options, as well as take over the task from states. That last move is sure to irritate consumer groups--the AARP has already tsk-tsk'd it--because states are often the first bulwark and a strong advocate for consumers in disputes. The feds, much less so.

Whatever happens, it appears unlikely that $175 or $200 termiantion fees that remain constant over 2 years will remain in place. The worst case might be a $60 fee at 1 year and 11 months; the best might see the fee drop to zero before 2 years is up. There may be exceptions for poor coverage, too; if you can't get good service today where you need it, there's no exception that lets you avoid the fee.

These fees may involve some gravy for a carrier, but because U.S. carriers so heavily subsidize handsets and some smartphones, the fee also covers the portion of that phone's cost that they didn't recoup from you in subscription profit while you were a subscriber. That obviously decreases over time, but it's a real cost.

Now I said there's an easier way to deal with these fees. Horse trade. A few years ago, when I reviewed T-Mobile's regional launch in Washington state of HotSpot@Home, a converged cell/Wi-Fi calling service, for The New York Times. T-Mobile wasn't making review units available, so I went to a store kiosk, bought a plan, router, and handset, and returned it all within 14 days with the Times paying the small amount of service fees involved.

When I went to return the phone and router, without anyone knowing I was a reporter, the kiosk's manager tried to hard sell me on keeping it. I said, the service worked fine, but I have two Cingular lines, and it would cost me $200 each to cancel and switch. He said, no problem, we can credit you that and give you an extra $150 if you stay with the service for a year. I said, would you put that in writing? He said, of course.

This isn't unusual. If you're looking to sign up for a plan that's about $60 to $80 per month from another carrier, bring them a gross fee of between $1,500 and $2,000 before any overage charges and add-on services you buy, salespeople on the phone or in company stores will typically be happy (after pulling a green-lit credit check on you) to eat your early-termination fees. They know that you might pull the same on them in the future, but then they'll get their termination fees, too. (The same works with switching subscription television among cable, satellite, and fiber.)

You can sometimes turn double agent, too, calling your current provider and explaining that another carrier has offered to pay the fees in order to get a new subsidized  phone before your contract is up.

Rumors swirled yesterday that Sprint Nextel would follow its competitors' lead on unlimited 3G (third-generation) data plans with cell data modems and cap monthly usage at 5 GB of combined upstream and downstream data. The company didn't respond to my request for comment on information discussed at the Sprint Users forum, which was based on an alleged leaked internal memo. (The forum has no relationship with Sprint.)

In a recent interview, a Sprint executive told me that their mobile broadband service was truly unlimited, save for abusive activities that degraded the network, such as operating a server over the connection or running continuous downloads at full speed for periods of time. It's not surprising that Sprint would downgrade unlimited to 5 GB, given that their two leading competitors haven't found it necessary to offer an uncapped service. If Sprint actually implements this cap on usage,it would almost certainly apply only to new contracts.

Previously, AT&T had extended free Wi-Fi to its DSL customers with 1.5 Mbps or faster connections, all its fiber-optic U-Verse subscribers, and business remote access users. AT&T has a higher tier of Wi-Fi, Premier, which includes another 53,000 international hotspots, full US airport roaming, and some hotels excluded from the Basic package. The Wi-Fi Home service is available only to AT&T customers; Premier is $20 per month for everyone else.

The business case for AT&T is clear: moving data from its expensive 3G network, limited by both the constraints of its spectrum licenses and its cellular tower backhaul, to its much-cheaper-to-operate aggregated hotspot network provides faster and more consistent connections in many cases, especially indoors, while improving 3G service for everyone outside. This is especially true for customers who may routinely get 3G speeds while traveling, but have patchier or no 3G coverage where their office or home is located. AT&T is expanding its 3G mobile broadband network from 270 to all 350 of the top metropolitan markets in the US this year, as well as increasing upload speeds. This still leaves out quite a large area of the country, although only a percentage of the population. (AT&T operates Starbucks itself through a managed services provider, Wayport, that has a separate contract with McDonald's; Wayport resells McDonald's access to AT&T.)

This announcement doesn't address smartphones. AT&T keeps accidentally slipping the kimono on its iPhone plans, enabling free access at Starbucks, then turning it off; changing their service plan details to list free access at hotspots, then removing it. (I blogged about this back on May 8.) Word on thes street is that smartphone free Wi-Fi will be added later in 2008. Timing it with the launch of the 3G iPhone, expected for June 9 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference would be wise, no?

The free offer requires the use of AT&T Communication Manager, which works only with Windows; AT&T, unlike Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, have no unified connection manager for Mac OS X, although they do support that operating system.

In late 2004, the idea of city-wide Wi-Fi networks was electric. These metro-scale Wi-Fi networks would cross the chasm of the digital divide by bringing affordable broadband to low-income parts of major cities, and broadband of any kind to marginal neighborhoods, small towns, and largely rural counties. In mid-2008, the juice has drained out; yesterday, the last of the three major independent city-wide Wi-Fi network builders, MetroFi, said they're pulling the plug. EarthLink, another of the large providers, had already given notice of their exit in August 2007, and filed suit this week to remove the equipment for their flagship Philadelphia network. (Kite, a provider mostly in the Southwest, abandoned their Wi-Fi networks starting in early 2008.)

MetroFi predates the muni-Fi movement, having being founded in the early part of the century when broadband penetration via cable and DSL was still modest in many parts of the U.S., prices were high, and current and future speeds were low and expected low. Wi-Fi could compete admirably against these wired networks, it was thought, and against the weak first wave of third-generation (3G) cellular, on price, speed, and availability.

The incumbents don't stand still, and Wi-Fi, designed for interiors, didn't scale well. While it turns out to be possible to build a large-scale seamless Wi-Fi network that delivers from 1 to 4 Mbps of service outdoors to a laptop, and indoors through a $100 to $200 signal booster, it also proved true that a provider needed two to three times the number of Wi-Fi nodes across a city to achieve those speeds than was estimated when networks were largely bid out in 2005 and 2006. If you budgeted for 20 to 25 nodes per square mile and need nearly 50 of these multi-thousand-dollar transceivers, it's hard to imagine how that affects the bottom line. USI Wireless, which biult Minneapolis's network, appears to be the only firm that got the numbers and engineering to add up for them so far.

Artwork: Chip Taylor

That's not out of line with the day rate at hotels and airports, where the walk-up rate can be from $7 to $15, but hotspot aggregators like Boingo (which owns many airport Wi-Fi operations) and iPass pay the provider a wholesale rate that can be as low as 50 cents per session. Wholesale providers and aggregators typically don't release these wholesale rate numbers.

Small businesses are treated like the last child picked for a baseball team in the broadband world. Too small to afford connections faster than DSL, which might be inadequate for their needs, and too large to find plans acceptable that, while affordable, don't provide them necessities like static, public IP addresses and business-level support. They're standing there with their ball and glove, waiting to play.

The AT&T U-Verse for Business service should therefore be of great interest to firms that want the fastest service with the least fuss. Cable providers have been offering business cable for some time, typically at just a slightly higher cost than residential service, but AT&T is pairing free hotspot office with very high-speed download rates, which could hit their offer out of the park.

The company is offering tiers from 1.5 Mbps downstream and 1.0 Mbps upstream for $40 per month up to 10 Mbps/1.5 Mbps for $100 per month. This includes providing a single Wi-Fi gateway for the office, and unlimited use on the AT&T Wi-Fi Basic network, which is Starbucks, McDonald's, Barnes & Noble, and airports that AT&T operates, but excludes hotels and roaming airports.

The service, initially offered in 40 markets served by AT&T, is enormously cheaper than what a T-1 line typically costs in the same place: usually hundreds of dollars per month for 1.5 Mbps/1.5 Mbps. T-1 lines can come with extremely high-level service level agreements, like 99.999 percent uptime, something that's not mentioned in today's announcement for U-Verse for Business.

That's part and parcel of this offering, though, which is focused on business users, not business servers. There's no mention on monthly data transfer limits, whether servers are allowed, or other similar issues. But for offices that need more oomphf and less expense, this should lower your bills, either through a switch to AT&T's service, or through increased competition from currently higher priced offerings.

Hate paying for Wi-Fi but want a reliable, decent connection that your corner coffeeshop might not be able to offer? (Mine can, but that's not uniformly the case.) Two developments this week may keep your pocketbook full. AT&T slipped out and Cablevision announced significant additions in Wi-Fi access for their current customers.

AT&T is taking over the Wi-Fi service from T-Mobile for Starbucks corporate-owned, standalone stores--over 7,000 in the U.S.--and slipped their kimono last week by accidentally (perhaps) making an iPhone-tailored gateway page available at Starbucks that prompted subscribers for their cell number. Enter it, and you were in, gratis.

That portal disappeared after a few days, but AT&T revised its iPhone plan features sometime in the last day or two to include access to all 17,000 of its domestic hotspots at no additional cost to iPhone subscribers. (That's 17,000 once the Starbucks transition is done, but T-Mobile and AT&T are engaged in a very goodsportsman-like handover in which subscribers to both networks will have access throughout; T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers will continue to have service for at least five years at Starbucks locations, too.)

AT&T already offers free Wi-Fi on its domestic network (excluding hotels and some airports, but including McDonald's, Barnes and Noble, and Starbucks) to its 1.5 Mbps and faster DSL customers, all fiber subscribers, and remote business access users--12 million in all!

(Just as I was about to post this, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer posted this story that AT&T had scrubbed that information from their site. Up, down, up, down, let's not call the whole thing off. It'll be back--but maybe not until the June 9 Apple developer's conference kickoff at which the iPhone 2.0 software, production software developer's kit, and 3G iPhone are all expected to ship or be released.)

Cablevision meanwhile dropped a bombshell today when they announced that they'd be building a $350 million--yes, million--Wi-Fi network across a big hunk of their coverage territory in New York, especially focused on Long Island. This service will be built over two years and be free to its millions of cable broadband subscribers, who already get among the highest speeds of any cable system in the US: 15/2 Mbps (downstream/upstream) and 30/5 Mbps flavors are their two listed offerings. Non-subscribers will pay to use the network, which they claim will have 1.5 Mbps of downstream Wi-Fi service.

Cablevision is building this network clearly to remain in play with a "quadruple" play: that is, voice, fixed broadband, video, and mobile broadband. Sprint and Clearwire's deal with Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable operators has both a direct and indirect impact on Cablevision, which while not in competition with other cable providers, must fight back other video, data, mobile, and voice firms.

All I know is that additional services at no additional cost means a win for the consumer, and I'm happy to see it continue to expand.

 

Sprint and Clearwire have agreed to form a joint venture that will bring wired broadband speeds to mobile users starting as early as late 2008. The new venture combines all the spectrum licenses owned by the two companies into a new firm called Clearwire; Sprint will retain its cellular business and third-generation (3G) data network. The new venture is valued at an estimated $14.5 billion, which includes an infusion of over $3 billion in cash from Google, Intel, and several cable operators.

Some laptop adapters will support both Sprint's current 3G service and Clearwire's 4G WiMax, allowing the fastest speeds as the WiMax network is built. Without dual cards and the cross-selling deals between Sprint and Clearwire, WiMax would likely never have had a chance in the U.S.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers will release LCD monitors this summer that use no power during standby mode, and charge the same price for their existing monitors. Standby mode typically consumes very little power with LCD monitors; an EPA Energy Star qualified monitor must use 2 watts or less in standby and 1 watt or less in off mode. Two watts can add up, however: that's nearly 9 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, which can cost as much as one or two bucks, depending on your electricity prices.

You may ask: why does a computer pull power in standby or off mode, anyway? Isn't "off" off? Of course not. Just as in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the eponymous guide's power-down feature changed at one point to "Mode Execute Ready," so, too, does all our electronic equipment that doesn't have a satisfying power switch clicker await our instant bidding. In off mode, monitors anticipate that you'll press the soft switch--a software controlled button--to turn them on; in standby mode, they're listening for signals from the computer to spring to life.

Fujitsu Siemens says that their monitor uses a simpler circuit that detects a signal from a computer, and that's brought their standby usage down to zero; the circuit is activated by the signal.

Five to 10 dollars over the lifetime of an LCD (perhaps five years) isn't enough to spend more for the feature. But companies that can include a zero-watt option may be able to shift firms spending the same dollars on their products instead of competitors.

As Google founder Larry Page noted in a somewhat unexpected approach to his CES 2006 keynote address, the complexity of power supplies is more than ridiculous. Google has, since then, talked about the inefficiency of power cords that connect power supplies to AC outlets--they can shed double-digit percentages of power as heat--and the ridiculous number of different voltages required on a computer mother board and the consequent inefficiency of PC power supply.