AT&T's customer-satisfaction rating places the wireless giant in dead last among major carriers, and at its lowest point since shortly before the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, according to a survey.

In terms of making customers happy, Verizon and Sprint tied for the top spot among the most popular U.S. carriers, according to the report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

T-Mobile, which AT&T is in the process of buying, came in third, falling to a five-year low in the ACSI's survey.

Verizon has been the nation's leader in customer satisfaction for the last six years, but a dip of 1% in its ACSI score left it even with Sprint for the first time.

Sprint has been on an upward trend, "rising 3% following consecutive double-digit gains," the indexing group said.

"In just three years, Sprint has emerged from 15 points below even the second worst in the category to claim a share of the industry lead," the ACSI said.

AT&T's survey score fell 4% this year, "its worst score since 2006 -- the year before the launch of the iPhone," the ACSI said.

With AT&T buying T-Mobile -- a move that rival Sprint, some Times readers and a number of U.S. senators aren't keen on -- it's unclear how the combined companies would do in terms of customer satisfaction, said Claes Fornell, who founded the ACSI survey and is a professor at the University of Michigan.

"It is common to find a reduction in customer satisfaction after mergers, but it is rare for customer satisfaction to drop ahead of a merger," Fornell said in a statement. "Assuming the deal is approved, it remains to be seen if a much larger AT&T can regain the strength of its customer relationships."

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Photo: The AT&T logo is seen in a RadioShack store in Gloucester, Mass., on Oct. 19, 2009. Credit: Lisa Poole/ Associated Press

President Obama, who has been called the texter-in-chief, will soon have the ability to send any cellphone in the U.S. a text-message warning of impending danger, from a tornado to a terrorist, under a new emergency alert system called PLAN.

The new system, which was announced Monday, is an expansion of the Federal Communications Commission's emergency alert system, which is currently broadcast over radio and television.

PLAN, which is short for Personal Localized Alerting Network, will first be rolled out in New York City by the end of 2011, with the rest of the U.S. to follow in about the middle of next year, the FCC said in a statement.

The text-message warnings will be able to be sent out to phones and other mobile devices based on their geographic location, across different mobile carriers, officials said.

PLAN is being rolled out by the FCC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the cooperation of cellular service providers, according to a FEMA statement.

FEMA said the system "ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested user areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services. PLAN enables government officials to target emergency alerts to specific geographic areas through cell towers (e.g. lower Manhattan), which pushes the information to dedicated receives in PLAN-enabled mobile devices."

But the president won't be the only one able to issue a text message through PLAN.

Local, state and national government officials will be all able to send public-safety alerts through PLAN, which will be run by FEMA and the FCC, officials said.

Wireless carriers take part in the system voluntarily, but all who do opt in (including major carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon) have to have PLAN technology set up and ready to go by April 2012, FEMA said.

Consumers do not need to sign up for the service; their carrier will automatically sign them up, and they won't be charged for receiving any PLAN text alerts, the agencies said.

Only three types of alerts will be sent out on PLAN: messages issued by the president, alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life, and Amber alerts. 

PLAN alerts will also be given a unique attention signal and vibration, "which is particularly helpful to people with hearing or vision-related disabilities," FEMA said.

Consumers will have the option, through their wireless carrier, to block all PLAN alerts except for those issued by the president.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Barack Obama, then a senator and presidential candidate, types on his BlackBerry on a plane in July 2008. Credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

Sprint Nextel is looking to beat AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to market with a service coming this year that will enable people to buy goods with their smartphones.

Kevin McGinnis, Sprint's vice president of product platforms, told Bloomberg that the telecom company was working with payment networks and smartphone manufacturers on the near-field communication features.

Customers would use the feature by tapping their phones on or waving their phones in front of scanners in retail stores, McGinnis told Bloomberg.

Sprint, the third-largest mobile carrier in the U.S., is hoping to make its service available before the near-field communications joint venture among AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, known as Isis, hits the market. Isis was announced last November and is expected to launch in 2012, Bloomberg said.

"We intend to make this an open solution where consumers can use their phone in a variety of physical locations," Sprint's McGinnis told Bloomberg. "Because we're allowing other brands and other institutions to participate, they can also tell their consumers that this is available on Sprint."

Isis plans to take a percentage of each purchase made through the service, but Sprint isn't looking to do the same, he told Bloomberg.

Rather, Sprint may take a share of purchases made with digital coupons available through its service, or it may take revenue from targeted advertisements that interact with a consumer's phone, McGinnis said. Purchases made through Sprint would show up on credit card statements, not phone bills, Bloomberg said.

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Photo: A Sprint BlackBerry phone at a Sprint store in Woodmere Village, Ohio. Credit: Tony Dejak / Associated Press

Sprint Nextel Corp. formally announced its opposition to AT&T Inc.'s proposed $39-billion purchase of T-Mobile USA Inc., urging regulators to block the huge telecommunications deal.

If the deal goes through, Sprint, the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier, would find itself a distant third, behind Verizon Wireless and a much larger AT&T.

Sprint had been a rumored suitor for T-Mobile. With the AT&T deal, however, analysts speculate that Sprint would be ripe for takeover or be forced to acquire smaller wireless providers to try to remain competitive.

But AT&T's purchase must be approved by federal regulators for it to go through. And Sprint said Monday that should not happen.

"Sprint urges the United States government to block this anti-competitive acquisition," said Vonya McCann, the company's senior vice president for government affairs. "This transaction will harm consumers and harm competition at a time when this country can least afford it."

Regulators are expected to give the deal tough scrutiny. And key lawmakers have promised hearings; some of them, along with consumer advocates, have raised concerns that the deal could raise prices for wireless subscribers and reduce competition.

Sprint argued that it can compete "in a truly dynamic marketplace" but that AT&T's purchase would reverse years of actions by the federal government and the courts to make the U.S. telecommunications market more competitive.

Raising the specter of a return to AT&T's one-time dominance of the traditional land-line phone business, McCann said, "Sprint will fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly."

[Updated at 1:03 p.m.: AT&T responded that if it buys T-Mobile, the wireless market will remain competitive and the company will improve its quality of service and its customers' ability to get next-generation service, "spurring innovation and economic growth."

"The U.S. wireless market is intensely competitive, with five or more competitors in 18 of the top 20 markets," AT&T said.]

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 Photo: A Kyocera Corp. Echo smart phone that uses Sprint's service. Credit: Bloomberg

Sprint is getting in on the 3-D craze with the HTC EVO 3D, a smartphone equipped with a camera for shooting 3-D videos and photos and with a glasses-free 3-D screen.

The yet-to-be-released phone, announced Tuesday, is part of a batch of 3-D capable consumer electronics hitting store shelves soon -- including the Nintendo 3DS (launching Sunday for $249.99) and AT&T's LG Thrill 4G.

Using the 4G network, the EVO 3D will have a speedier Web browser and run the latest version of Google's Android. The phone will have 4 gigabytes of internal storage, a 4.3-inch screen and dual 5-megapixel cameras for shooting videos and photos.

"As 3-D has become more sought-after in both movie theaters and family rooms, the ability to enjoy 3-D on a wireless phone -- 3-D glasses-free -- will change the way customers interact with their devices," a Sprint statement released Tuesday said, predicting that people will embrace 3-D video and photos as a way to relive vacations.

Along with the phone, Sprint also announced a 7-inch tablet called the HTC EVO View 4G with a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and the latest version of HTC sense. It will come with 32 gigabytes of internal storage and 1 gigabyte of memory.

Both devices will officially launch this summer. Prices are not yet available.

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Photo: The HTC EVO 3D from Sprint. Credit: Sprint.

Sprint is getting more Google.

On Monday, Sprint said it will start selling a 4G version of the Samsung and Google Nexus S smart phone this spring and that it is working to make every mobile number on its network able to work with Google Voice at no additional cost and with no downtime.

So, those who have a Sprint number will soon have a Google Voice number too, if they want to use the service.

But although Sprint and Google said the Nexus S 4G will arrive this spring, neither company has a launch date for the Google Voice integration.

"It's coming in the future, but we haven't set a specific release date for the integration as of yet," said Mark Elliott, a Sprint spokesman. "All we can say now is that it's coming in the future."

Google Voice allows users to select one phone number that will ring on all their phones -- work, home and cell -- at the same time, which would improve callers' chances of reaching Google Voice users wherever they are.

Currently, to use Google Voice, a user has to sign up and take a new number issued by Google. If the user wants his or her cellphone number to also be his or her Google Voice number, the user has to get their carrier to cooperate, which can often result in fees and being without mobile service while the swap is made.

Sprint's integration with Google Voice will automatically turn a Sprint mobile number into a Google Voice number, bypassing all the trouble of setting up Google Voice, Jacob Hesch, a Google software engineer, said in a blog post.

"This basically gives Sprint customers all the benefits of Google Voice without the need to change or port their number," Hesch said.

All Google Voice features will still be available to Sprint customers once the integration is completed, including the ability to answer calls within Gmail, record calls and receive transcriptions of voice messages, check voice mail online, and optionally to create personalized voicemail greetings based on who is calling, he said.

Other than being able to run on Sprint's 4G network, as opposed to T-Mobile's 3G network, the Nexus S 4G is pretty much the same phone as the current Nexus S.

Both Nexus S models, which are manufactured by Samsung, run on Google's Android 2.3 operating system, known as Gingerbread, the latest release of the smart phone OS.

The Nexus S 4G will go on sale this spring for $199.99, with a two-year contract -- the same price Best Buy sells the 3G version of the Nexus S with a two-year T-Mobile contract.

Like the 3G Nexus S, the 4G model will feature a 4-inch screen, a 1GHz processor, front and rear cameras, 16GB of memory and near-field communication technology.

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Video: How Google Voice will integrate with Sprint. Credit: Google

Photo: Samsung's Nexus S phone is shown off at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 15. Albert Gea / Reuters

Sprint and T-Mobile are lifting fees for calls and text messages made to Japan in response to the earthquakes and tsunami that have rocked the nation and sent it into a nuclear power plant crisis.

Sprint is waiving or crediting fees for wireless calls and text messages to and from Japan for its customers, retroactive to March 11 and continuing through April 10, the wireless carrier said.

T-Mobile said it is removing charges for international long distance calls and text messages made to Japan for its contract, non-prepaid customers from March 11 to March 31.

In addition, T-Mobile's postpaid customers can make free Wi-Fi calls to and from Japan during the same period, the company said.

AT&T and Verizon announced similar free calling and texting to Japan moves this week as well.

And, much like AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint are also lifting text-messaging fees for $10 donations made to the American Red Cross Japan disater relief efforts, which can be done my texting "REDCROSS" to "90999."

T-Mobile also said that any text message donation made to "giving campaigns" is free.

And Sprint said it is also lifting fees for text message donations made to other aid groups as well, including the Convoy of Hope Inc. (text "TSUNAMI" to "50555" to donate $10), the World Relief Corp. of the National Assn. of Evangelicals (text "WAVE" to "50555" to donate $10), and The Salvation Army (text "JAPAN" or "QUAKE" to "80888" to donate $10).

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: A Kyocera Echo dual-screen smartphone, running on the Sprint network, is shown in New York, on Feb. 7. 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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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

About 26% of Apple iPhone owners on AT&T are planning to switch to Verizon once it begins offering the highly coveted smart phone next month, according to a consumer survey from ChangeWave Research.

The majority of those iPhone owners -- about 41% -- will be making their switch in February, March or April, ChangeWave reported in its Survey of 4,050 mobile phone users released Thursday.

"The Verizon iPhone is causing a major transformational shift in the wireless industry, and for now the momentum clearly favors Verizon," said Paul Carton, vice president of research at ChangeWave, in the survey.

The survey was conducted in December before Verizon officially announced on Tuesday that it will start selling the iPhone starting Feb. 10, and asked users what they would do if Verizon announced an iPhone of its own.

AT&T isn't the only company that could lose subscribers to the Verizon iPhone, the survey said.

About 15% of T-Mobile users and about 10% of Sprint users said they're planning to head to Verizon to get an iPhone within the next 90 days, ChangeWave said.

Of those looking to dump AT&T for Verizon, 42% cited poor reception and coverage as their top reason for leaving, while 27% said dropped calls was their main motive, the survey said.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

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Photo: Dan Mead, left, chief executive of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, chief operating officer of Apple, announce on Tuesday that Verizon Wireless will carry Apple's iPhone. Credit: Mark Lennihan / Associated Press

Consumer Reports has declared AT&T to be the worst cellphone service provider in the country.

That brings AT&T, the exclusive service provider for the Apple iPhone, to dead last behind top-scorer U.S. Cellular as well as Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The company struggled in all 10 categories used to determine the rankings. Consumer Reports readers gave AT&T a score of 60, far behind the 69 they gave to second-to-last T-Mobile.

AT&T’s data and voice services and its customer service -- including staff knowledge and ability to resolve issues -- were all deemed lacking.

In response, AT&T had this to say:

"We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20% slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60%  slower on average nationwide.  And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent – the equivalent of just one call in a thousand –- of the industry leader."

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Photo: Terri Bennett Enterprises / MCT