Adam Bender

A wireless partnership and broadband expansion could slow access line loss, CEO Ed Mueller told investors as the Bell released Q4 results Tuesday. In Q4, retail access lines declined 6.5 percent year-over-year to 11.5 million. That’s “arguably one of the worst rates of decline in the industry,” Bear Stearns analyst Mike McCormack said during a Q4 conference call. The Q4 loss is “more of the same” for Qwest, Mueller said. The slowing economy had “some impact,” but cable competition hasn’t increased, he said.

Level 3 has fixed many of its sales process problems and “generally returned” to quality levels extent before it integrated six network companies acquired the past two years, officials told investors as they reported Q4 results. Last quarter, Level 3 offered lower 2007 and 2008 expectations after struggling to integrate provisioning processes among the acquisitions (CD Oct 24 p11). “We now believe we've created additional installation capacity and we're working hard to increase the rate of sales to use this capacity,” said CEO James Crowe. “What we need to do is under our own control.”

Qualcomm added LTE to its device and base station roadmap, announcing Thursday that three chipsets support the technology. Qualcomm expects to sample the chips in Q2 2009, it said. The chips are backward compatible with existing 3G UMTS and CDMA2000 networks, and two support UMB. No major U.S. carrier has announced plans to use UMB, but many in the industry see the Qualcomm-developed UMB as an LTE rival. Not so, a Qualcomm spokeswoman said. Qualcomm strives to be “technology agnostic,” supporting “as many technologies as possible,” she said. UMB is still on the Qualcomm roadmap, but the chipmaker also sees a “market need” for LTE, she said. Also Thursday, Qualcomm said international operators Hutchison 3G, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telstra will trial HSPA+ technology this year. HSPA+ is an upgrade to HSPA technology, increasing mobile broadband speeds up to 28 Mbps. Qualcomm expects to se HSPA+ to appear commercially in 2009, it said.

Multi-billion-dollar share repurchase programs announced by Verizon and AT&T won’t hold back wireless network expansions, but could reflect an economic recession, analysts said in interviews. Verizon said Thursday it would buy back 100 million shares of common stock, worth $36.95 after the market closed. In December, AT&T said it would buy back 400 millions shares, worth $37 each. The Verizon buyback expires in 2011. AT&T’s finishes in 2009.

AT&T will raise DSL prices outside the former BellSouth territory, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Subscribers to the three lowest-tier AT&T plans will pay $5 more monthly, he said. Prices rose “to better reflect the value of our broadband service and market conditions,” he said. Charges won’t increase for U-verse plans, a $19.99 naked DSL plan or a $10 promotion for new AT&T DSL customers, he said. Increases take effect Feb. 16 for new customers and in March for current subscribers, he said. AT&T may be raising prices “to take advantage of customer inertia and customer frugalness to support revenues,” said Moody’s analyst Dennis Saputo in an interview. “Customers with these DSL speeds are probably quite satisfied with the speed or else they would have gone to cable which generally offers much higher speeds,” he said, and AT&T may have decide those customers would swallow a $5 rise. But it isn’t a good idea, he said: “The $5 increase will push some customers to cable and once they go they are unlikely to ever return, especially if the cable company is upgrading its service offerings.”

The International Trade Commission is studying Broadcom evidence related to Qualcomm workarounds, Chief Financial Officer Eric Brandt said at the Thomas Wiesel Conference in San Francisco. The ITC must decide if an injunction won by Broadcom against Qualcomm also applies to chips designed to work around infringement. Brandt also spoke of a potential Motorola mobile division spinoff and the macro-economic environment. On Motorola, Brandt said he’s “not sure that it’s good or bad at this point,” noting that a Motorola split could “create opportunities for us.” Broadcom and Motorola’s relationship “remains strong,” he added. On the economy, Broadcom sees “storm clouds on the horizon but it’s just not raining here yet,” Brandt said. Due to the semiconductor maker’s “end of the whip” industry position, Broadcom won’t see impact before customers do, he said. Meantime, Broadcom will keep inventories “as lean as possible,” he said.

A patent holder is suing Nokia for $17.7 billion in Germany, Nokia confirmed last week. IP-Com sued Nokia Dec. 13 in the Mannheim, Germany, district court after Nokia refused to pay that price for a license. “We demand at least 12 billion euros in license fees for the patents which we own and which Nokia uses in its products,” Christoph Schoeller, managing director of IP-Com, told Reuters last week. That claim is “completely unrealistic” and Nokia “will of course defend itself,” a Nokia spokeswoman said. The patents in the suit originally belonged to Bosch, she said. Bosch “refused to honor its commitments to standardization organizations and Nokia,” instead selling the patents to IP-Com, a company owned by Bosch outside counsel, she said. Nokia believes the patents are “invalid and not infringed,” and has claims pending against Bosch, she said.

There’s enough room in wireless for WiMAX and LTE to coexist, said an official from WiMAX equipment maker Alvarion in an interview. “I think everyone loves conflict but the reality is it’s a huge world,” said Patrick Leary, assistant marketing vice president. A similar battle of words was fought between CDMA and GSM network technologies, he said, but both are still going strong. Even if WiMAX and LTE split the wireless market fifty-fifty, “there’s hundreds of billions on either side,” he said. WiMAX has advantages, he said: “WiMAX as a technology has this ability to solve distinct problems that distinct carriers may have.” Alvarion sells equipment to a “wide swath” of operator customers using WiMAX for different end goals, he said. AT&T is using WiMAX in Alaska because it’s the least difficult way to deploy a broadband network there, he said. Virginia startup DigitalBridge is using WiMAX to carve out a market niche serving under-served areas, he said. Digicel is a “pure cellular” voice carrier in the Caribbean seeking to increase competitiveness against incumbent rivals, he said. TDS, a CLEC from Madison, Wis., launched a WiMAX network in late January to escape adverse impact from wireline deregulation in the region, he said.

Sprint said Wednesday that it’s committed to the Nextel push-to-talk network, but some analysts have doubts. “Nextel Direct Connect provides a differentiated experience for our customers,” CEO Dan Hesse said. “The Nextel National Network (iDEN) is key to delivering Nextel Direct Connect. Sprint has invested significantly during the past two years and the network is performing at best-ever levels. Customers can expect to see continued investment and the introduction of new handsets to utilize the network’s unique capabilities.”

NTT America demonstrated an IPv6-based Earthquake Early Warning System at Wednesday’s State of the Net Conference. The system, built for Japan, alerts people about tremors 10- 20 seconds before they strike. Twenty seconds doesn’t sound like much but studies show it makes a difference, said NTTA Vice President Kazuhiro Gomi in an interview. “If you are in the kitchen, you can shut down all the fires, and if you're in a dangerous zone you can quickly get away from that place and hide yourself from anything hazardous.” The technology works because data moves over fiber faster than an earthquake’s waves course through the ground, he said. In Japan, NTT detects quakes with Japan Meteorological Agency sensors and then sends IPv6 devices messages detailing the scale and timing of a tremor. The alert system can be used for disasters other than earthquakes, provided there are sensors to detect them, said Chris Davis, NTTA product marketing director. Such a wide scale alert system wouldn’t be practical in IPv4, Gomi said. IPv4 has multicast capabilities, but they were added on later and most ISPs haven’t turned them on, he said. “Even though you [can] send out the multicast packets on IP version 4, the chances are the packets are dropped all over the place.” Another problem is the network address translator (NAT) IPv4 requires to sustain the growing number of Internet capable devices, he said. “NAT is a good solution as long as you're just doing e-mailing or Web surfing,” he said, but it doesn’t let a central server reach out directly to an end point device, he said. NTTA is present at State of the Net to show IPv6 to government agencies that must implement the network protocol to satisfy a 2005 mandate requiring government agencies to implement the next-generation network protocol by June. NTT America sells a dual-stack IPv6 network that supports IPv4, Davis said. Offering backward compatibility is important, he said: “In the short term, I don’t think we see the U.S. government switching their networks to IP version 6 and all the sudden running up a whole different protocol,” Davis said. “There will be revenue from IPv6 transit,” but the government will keep legacy systems and applications that need the old version, he said.