T-Mobile announced on Wednesday a new "Even More" unlimited 4G data plan that will throttle down a user's Web speeds after they use more than 2GB per month.

The Even More plan, which comes at a cost $79.99 per month with a two-year contract and is currently available, could save users about $350 a year when compared with unlimited plans from its larger-rivals Verizon and Sprint and it's possibly-soon-to-be-owner AT&T, T-Mobile said in a statement.

The new plan offers unlimited nationwide calling, texting and data with no charges for passing 2GB of data used per month, T-Mobile said. Once a user passes 2GB of data in a month, speeds are slowed until the next billing cycle begins, the carrier said.

T-Mobile's 4G network is currently available in 167 different markets and 4G users consume an average of 1 GB of data per month.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: A T-Mobile billboard near the Bellevue, Wash., headquarters of T-Mobile USA advertised the 4G network. Credit: Ted S. Warren / Associated Press

AT&T is coming out with its first prepaid smartphone.

The LG Thrive, available April 17, will untether users from a long-term service contract. The Android phone will feature a 3.2-inch touch screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera -- and data packages with no locked-in contract (although if you want one, it's available). 

Customers can choose between being charged by the minute (10 cents a minute) and an unlimited daily talk and text plan ($2 a day). But if you want to browse the Web (and really, what's the point of a smartphone if you can't?), it will cost extra: $5 for 10 MB, $15 for 100 MB or $25 for 500 MB. If you're a frequent user of Internet on the go, the bill might get hefty.

The phone itself will cost $179.99. With a standard two-year contract, the price drops to $49.99.

For anyone considering a prepaid smartphone, consider the pros and cons:

The pros: For a budget-conscious person, or someone who isn't glued to his or her phone, the prepaid plan could save money. And if you're not happy with a mobile carrier, you can easily switch.

The cons: The phones themselves usually cost substantially more than if they were purchased with a long-term contract. The choice of phones might also be slim. And unless you're careful or go for an unlimited prepaid option, you could very easily run through your minutes or data plan quickly and end up spending more per month than you would have on a standard contract.

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Photo: Front of the LG Thrive, AT&T's first prepaid smartphone option. Credit: AT&T

AT&T Inc. announced Sunday it would buy T-Mobile USA in a cash and stock deal worth $39 billion, a move that would combine two of the largest U.S. wireless providers and build a telecommunications behemoth that would tower over Verizon Wireless, the other leading cellular network.

The merger would combine AT&T's 95.5 million wireless subscribers with another 33.7 million from T-Mobile, a division of the German communications conglomerate Deutsche Telekom.  With close to 130 million subscribers on a wireless system that would combine the vast national networks of both companies, the resulting union would far outstrip Verizon and its 94.1 million customers.

AT&T suggested that increased competition resulting from the deal could benefit consumers but did not explicitly say the plan would mean lower prices for its customers.

“This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation’s future,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

AT&T highlighted the efficiency savings it would garner from a merger, given that both companies use similar cellular technology -- as opposed to a different model used by Verizon -- and both are planning to take similar steps toward the next generation of faster 4G networks.

Part of AT&T's gambit has to do with the steep rise in the use of data services by consumers with sophisticated smart phones.  With many more users adopting video-ready, Internet-connected phones such as Apple's iPhone and the many Google-powered Android devices, demand for wireless bandwidth among consumers is quickly increasing, and the industry has been struggling to stay ahead of that demand.

AT&T said data traffic on its wireless network had grown 8,000% over the last four years.

"Because AT&T has led the U.S. in smart phones, tablets and e-readers -- and as a result, mobile broadband -- it requires additional spectrum before new spectrum will become available."

Critics quickly warned about the perils of conglomeration, saying federal regulators should scrutinize the deal carefully lest it actually lead to less market flexibility.

"Don’t believe the hype: There is nothing about having less competition that will benefit wireless consumers," said S. Derek Turner, research director at media industry watchdog Free Press, in a statement.

“A market this concentrated -- where the top four companies already control 90% of the business, and two of them want to merge -- means nothing but higher prices and fewer choices, as the newly engorged AT&T and Verizon exert even more control over the wireless Internet."

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T-Mobile's Philipp Humm on how the iPhone 'fundamentally changed our industry'

-- David Sarno

Photo: Deutsche Telekom Chairman and CEO Rene Obermann, left, and AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson pose for photos in New York on March 21, 2011. AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $39 billion that would make it the largest cellphone company in the U.S. Credit: Mark Dye/Newscast/AP Photo

Philipp Humm, the new CEO of T-Mobile USA, has come from sister company T-Mobile Germany to try to boost the carrier's fortunes in the U.S.  Humm is visiting dozens of cities around the nation, holding grassroots town halls with employees to get a sense of where they feel the company should be heading.

Humm sat down with The Times recently to talk up his plans to make smart phones affordable, to get everyone a tablet, and how he'll face off against his bigger rivals in Verizon and AT&T.  He also has a few words about the iPhone (which T-Mobile doesn't yet have) and Apple's Steve Jobs. 

What is one of the more important lessons you learned from operating in the European market?

The best way of being a good challenger is by having played defense for a while.  Now you know how the defenders play the challenger game.  Back at the time in Germany we had very good challengers attacking us.  Looking at how other people attacked you is a very good way to determine how you’ll make your next attack.

Verizon Wireless acknowledged that BlackBerry users on its network have been facing delays and outages with e-mail and data transfers this week, saying that fixes to its network were in the process of rolling out. The company said it was working alongside BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to investigate the underlying cause of the outage.

"BlackBerry customers have been experiencing an issue with some delays," Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said. "We have escalated it with tech folks at RIM and our company on the network side."

A number of users online, many of whom say they are from California, have reported trouble receiving e-mail and surfing the Web on their devices.

Two days ago, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton joined the chorus of frustrated users when he tweeted that he would switch to a different carrier if Verizon didn't "get your #BlackBerry issues fixed ASAP! Grrrr!"

Similar reports could be found across Twitter and in the blogosphere.

Verizon's Muche said the company did not yet have a final analysis of the problem. Asked if the outage affected systems on which the upcoming Verizon iPhone would run, he said, "I haven't seen any evidence of that at all. I want to make sure that our root cause analysis is completed before I can give a definitive answer either way."

Verizon has not yet said if it will offer affected users a credit for the service interruption they experienced.

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Verizon is going to offer an unlimited data plan for the Apple iPhone 4, at $30 per month, echoing a plan that AT&T offered when the iPhone first arrived.

AT&T stopped offering unlimited data plans to new customers last June, just before the iPhone 4 hit its stores.

Lowell McAdam, Verizon's chief operating officer, confirmed the unlimited data plan for the iPhone 4 to the Associated Press on Tuesday.

"That's a competitive advantage for us right now," McAdam said. But the offer isn't permanent. Verizon is going forward with its plan to switch to limited data plans soon, he told the AP.

Verizon will begin selling its version of the iPhone 4 on Feb. 10.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: An Apple iPhone 4 is displayed during an event in New York on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011, to announce that Verizon will start selling a version of the iPhone 4. Credit: Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg

Sprint Nextel is increasing its monthly service fees by $10 a month for smart-phone customers, coming closer in cost to rivals Verizon and AT&T.

The rate increase, which Sprint called a Premium Data add-on charge, will go into effect Jan. 30, the carrier said in a statement, adding that its smart-phone owners use about 10 times more data than non-smart-phone consumers.

The increase will put Sprint's starting price for monthly smart-phone service at $79.99, and data use will still be unlimited.

"The charge will assist Sprint in offering simple and affordable unlimited plans for its customers while maintaining a wireless network able to meet the growing appetite for a richer mobile experience," the company said.

The base smart-phone plan also includes 450 minutes of calls to land-line phones, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes and unlimited text messages, Sprint said.

A similar plan through Verizon would run about $110 a month, according to Reuters.

AT&T no longer offers an unlimited data plan, instead capping data use at 2 GB a month, but its closest plan would run about $85 a month, with extra fees when a user goes over the data allotment, Reuters reported.

T-Mobile offers 500 minutes, unlimited Text and unlimited Web data for $79.99 a month.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Photo: Seth Chapman, right, of Silver Lake checks out items for his new HTC Evo 4G smart phone at a Sprint store in Los Angeles in June. Credit: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times

In a conference room bathed in red light and featuring a giant UFO-like lighting panel hanging from the ceiling, bass-heavy music blared Thursday afternoon at the Consumer Electronics Show. A quickfire movie played across the huge convex screen onstage and a trio of Verizon Wireless executives bounded  purposefully onstage. 

It was Chief Executive Dan Mead, chief technology officer Tony Melone, and chief marketing officer Marni Walden come to herald the arrival of "4G LTE," the company's initiative to boost customers' smart phone speeds into outer space.

With substantial and rather high-budget pomp and circumstance, Verizon showed off 10 or so new devices that would work on the network, including Android-based tablet computers and smart phones from Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

But the presentation was short on demonstration. The chief executives from the above-mentioned Asian manufacturing firms came briefly out to hold up the yet-unreleased phones and tablets, but the devices themselves were not shown in action, leaving the audience to guess what was special about them.

Nor were launch dates for the new devices  offered, save to say they'd all be available by mid-2011. One of them, the Samsung phone, didn't even have a name yet. Verizon did not say whether it would allow users to "tether" their phones' Internet connections to their computers. And though 10 devices were displayed, no price was offered for any.

(Generally smart phone users have to pay a monthly fee in addition to the cost of the device.)

Verizon, Mead told the audience, was going as fast as it could to build its next-generation cellular network, which will allow smart phone, tablet and laptop users to get hyper-fast Internet speeds over the air. Verizon has only 38 cities covered in 4G now, but by the end of the year, it says, it'll be up to 178. Verizon has said that its 4G network won't match the footprint of its 3G network until 2013.

The company's announcements came right on the heels of rival T-Mobile's press event, where the Bellveue, Wash.-based carrier showed off new tablets from Dell and LG and made sweeping claims that its 4G network was the largest and fastest in the U.S.'s top 100 markets.

"We're at a moment in time where the wheels are just leaving the ground with this," Verizon's Mead said. "And we're taking off to a future of superfast wireless networks."

-- David Sarno

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Photos, from top: Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead; upcoming 4G phones from Verizon including an unnamed Samsung, Motorola's Droid Bionic and HTC's Thunderbird. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

If you stare at the above collation of images from AT&T's new advertising campaign for its mobile network, a peculiar theme emerges.

In each case, a poster paints a picture of a fanciful, non-existent world -- Camelot, Lilliput, Atlantis, "state of Euphoria" and Neverland. The image is accompanied by a statement that, if there really were such a made-up place, AT&T would "have you covered."

Except, there are no such places. Does that mean that AT&T, then, doesn't have you covered?

It seems to follow the classic logical rule that, "If false, then anything." Meaning that: If the statement upon which the logical rule depends is itself false, then it doesn't matter what the conclusion is. For example, if we began a sentence with,"If the moon was made of green cheese," then you could finish it with anything. If the moon were made of green cheese, then it would rain dollar bills seven days a week.

That's a logically sound statement, even though it doesn't have much application to the real world.

AT&T took licks earlier this week, being ranked the overall worst cellphone network by Consumer Reports, coming in last in a number of categories used by the magazine. But the provider has been rallying, putting out a press release recently noting a research firm found its network was the fastest among all major carriers -- more than 60% faster than Verizon, and 40% faster than Sprint. Its competitors did not explicitly disagree with those findings.

Still, the question remains: Why doesn't AT&T want to focus on reality?

-- David Sarno

Photos: Posters from AT&T's new advertising campaign. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles TImes

Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it would turn on its 4G wireless network Sunday in 38 U.S. cities, though the new network will not support smartphones until the first half of 2011.

Instead, the 4G network -- which the company says is up to 10 times faster than the current 3G network -- will start out with a pair of USB modems from LG and Pantech.  Those devices, which users can plug into their laptops to tap into 4G speeds on the go, will cost $99 with a $50 rebate and two-year data contract.

Those contracts will be priced at $50 per month for 5 gigabytes of data, or $80 per month for 10 gigabytes.  Verizon executives said nearly everyone would be accomodated by one of the two plans.

"It's a quantum, generational step up from what our customers experience today," said Verizon's vice president and chief technical officer, Tony Malone, in describing the company's 4G technology, which is called LTE, or Long Term Evolution. "We're the first to offer LTE at the scale that will really make a difference and kick-start the ecosystem and environment of 4G."

The network will be switched on in major markets such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Washington and Boston.  Because the network is still being built, it will only reach about one-third of the U.S., and the company urged potential buyers to check its website Sunday to see if their home or office areas will get a 4G signal.

Malone did not offer any details about upcoming 4G-capable smartphones, nor did he comment specifically on whether Verizon would add a version of Apple's popular iPhone.

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-- David Sarno

Photo: Jim Harper, a senior technician at a Verizon switch in the Los Angeles area, walks past a white LTE cabinet which holds the new 4G servers. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times