iPhone Carriers

AT&T is changing its smartphone data plans on Sunday January 22. The announcement modified pricing and data tiers across the board, with new plans offered for not only the iPhone but tablets including the iPad as well. Current plans at 200MB for $15 per month, 2GB for $25 and 4GB for $45 with tethering are set to become a thing of the past for new subscribers.

The goal of the new plans is said to be preventing overages on users' data plans, but with fierce competition from other mobile service providers, AT&T is looking to stay competitive amid the relentless growth of mobile data consumption. Price hikes will come with additional data allowances in the new tiered plans.

AT&T is expanding its network by purchasing a slice of the 700MHz spectrum from Qualcomm. This is after the company dropped its bid to acquire T-Mobile due to opposition from the FCC and US Justice Department. Instead, AT&T and T-Mobile are entering a roaming agreement that has been billed as helpful to both companies.

The FCC has approved the latest deal, with Qualcomm selling the frequencies it was formerly using for its Flo TV service. The $1.9 billion agreement hands AT&T additional 700MHz spectrum to expand its 4G LTE network. Although the deal was announced last year, the FCC decided to review both the Qualcomm purchase and T-Mobile acquisition together and ruled on the proposal last week.

Apple was named with T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, HTC, Samsung and Motorola in a class action lawsuit on Monday. Sianni & Straite of Wilmington of Delaware and two other law firms from New Jersey (Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank) filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the District of Delaware. The lawsuit alleges Apple and other companies committed an "unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.”

The class action lawsuit is in response to the Carrier IQ software installed in various cell phones that logs the keystrokes, texts and geographic data of its users. Apple admitted using the diagnostics tool in the past, but said they never recorded "personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.” Apple also promised to remove the software from all their devices in a future firmware update.

Sprint is no longer the only carrier to offer the iPhone 4S with unlimited data in the US. Regional carrier C Spire Wireless is poised to start selling the Apple smartphone on its network starting November 11. Subsidized prices for the device will be the same as the three major carriers, however data and voice plans are less expensive.

Once catch, the two lower unlimited data plan tiers ($50 and $70 per month) don't include streaming data, as one would use for video and music. This means that for true unlimited data usage users will have to opt for a $90 or $100 per month data and voice package. For those who aren't familiar, C Spire was formerly known as Cellular South, and covers Mississippi along with some of Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.

Rumors of a Sprint iPhone have been flying around lately, but now the Wall Street Journal reports that the company has literally bet its future on the device. Apple's terms require Sprint to purchase at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years at a cost of $20 billion. The company has been struggling for years and its stock has lost 80 percent of its value since the first iPhone was sold.

Sprint will be losing money on the proposition until at least 2014. The wireless carrier doesn't have much to lose considering it has been losing subscribers since its 2005 merger with Nextel. Sprint has half of the subscribers that Verizon and AT&T have and roughly 40 percent of these customers are pay-as-you-go.