Sprint's stock has seen an uptick this week thanks to analysts who believe the carrier has turned a corner in terms of its atrocious customer service -- a lot of which resulted from Sprint's dysfunctional acquisition of Nextel. But continued rumors of a Sprint acquisition by Deutsche Telekom are also helping the company. Citigroup this week raised their rating on Sprint stock, and Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins says the likelihood that T-Mobile and Sprint will merge "has risen to around 55 percent." Sprint needs people eager to fund their Clearwire network, and T-Mobile needs to improve on its fourth-place showing. Analysts don't seem particularly worried about how fusing the T-Mobile and Sprint networks, which operate on entirely different standards, could be a potential nightmare.

Clearwire's Mobile WiMax service went offline for about five hours last night according to Multichannel News. The outage impacted Clearwire customers (and Comcast and Time Warner Cable resold customers) in Seattle, Chicago, Texas, Oregon, Las Vegas and Boise, Idaho.

In last year's 700 MHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses.

IDG News Service notes that security researcher "Moxie Marlinspike" has launched a new cloud-based computing service that will test your WPA-secured Wi-Fi network for chinks in its armor. Creatively dubbed WPA Cracker, the service speeds up the process of testing a WPA-PSK protected wireless networks against dictionary attacks. Whereas such a test could take five days or more on a dual-core PC, WPA Cracker gives customers access to a 400CPU cluster and a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. Those willing to pay $34 get the system's full power, while those who pay $17 get half the power -- and of course half the speed. Our friend Glenn Fleishman has more detail, and speculates that the service is powered by Amazon servers.

Sprint got a nice little stock boost this week thanks to a report in Barron's weekly newspaper suggesting that the nation's third largest wireless carrier was finally turning things around. Sprint's been hemmoraging subscribers since their ill-fated acquisition of Nextel, and while customers have been telling us that things have been improving -- that didn't seem to help Sprint's earnings or subscriber totals last quarter. Some analysts still seem to be floating the rumor that Deutsche Telekom would like to buy Sprint and integrate T-Mobile and Sprint (despite the obvious network incompatibilities), though it's more likely that Deutsche Telekom will help fund the Clearwire build in exchange for T-Mobile spectrum access.

AT&T has announced a new application that will allow AT&T users to report network problems while using AT&T's wireless network. The AT&T "Mark The Spot" application was developed by AT&T earlier this year, and has been used by AT&T employees to test iPhone functionality on the AT&T network for month. It essentially skips AT&T support and lets you directly report network problems to the AT&T network folks -- be they dropped calls, flaky 3G coverage, or low quality voice signal. Even if reporting the problem doesn't actually result in it getting fixed -- the act of doing so might just make you feel better. AT&T insists they continue to work on the network, and that they've reduced 3G dropped calls by 12 percent over the past year.

Verizon has launched a new website (via GigaOM) offering a little more detail on next year's LTE wireless broadband launch. According to big red, they'll be offering speeds of between 5 Mbps and 13 Mbps downstream, and between 2 Mbps and 5 Mbps upstream. There's still no word on pricing or monthly consumption caps, but we do know that Verizon says they'll launch the speedier next-generation wireless broadband technology in thirty markets in 2010 -- with most of the national deployment completed by 2014.

Glenn Fleishman pens an interesting look at the road to gigabit Wi-Fi in a new piece this morning over at Ars Technica. Within a few years, notes Fleishman, crossing the 1 Gbps barrier at a Wi-Fi hotspot will become "routine," and Wi-Fi will replace Ethernet as the connectivity flavor du jour for most users. Assuming backhaul issues are sorted out, a new wave of multi-stream 802.11n devices is slated to deliver raw throughput of up to 600 Mbps, with three and four stream radios improving range, robustness, and throughput (albeit not always simultaneously). "The flexibility of three-stream devices should allow networks to be optimized for raw speed, speed-over-range, or range, without giving up much in the process," notes Fleishman.

After months of bad press for a wireless network many claim isn't up to snuff, AT&T was hit with more bad news after Consumer Reports ranked AT&T last in customer satisfaction. This was only the latest in a stream of last-place showings in other such ratings by JD Power And Associates and the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

A few weeks ago we noted how a parachutist in Connecticut got "eXtreme," and potentially microwaved his innards by parachuting off of a 1,339 foot wireless tower. In York, Pennsylvania, a prankster has since climbed a 400 foot tower to tie a bedsheet to the top. "The medical community is going to have to speak to that," says local Lieutenant Scott Laird. "But I know it can't be good for you." The police say the prankster is facing summary non-traffic citations for criminal mischief and trespassing, charges akin in seriousness to traffic tickets.

Last summer, Teresa Dixon Murray at the Cleveland Plain Dealer did a great job highlighting a phantom $1.99 fee Verizon Wireless was hitting consumers with -- even when phones were off, phone batteries were dead, Internet access was blocked, or the phones couldn't go online. Many of you at the time complained about the fee as well.

A few weeks ago, you might recall that Verizon decided they were going to raise their early termination fees for smartphone users from $175 to $350. You might also recall how this annoyed Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who wrote to both the FCC and Verizon to complain that the ETF hike was "anti-consumer and anti-competitive." As had been rumored, Klobuchar yesterday unveiled a bill taking aim at early termination fees.

Mike Dano over at Fierce Wireless does a nice job running down the specifics for each wireless carrier when it comes to tethering -- or using your phone as a modem. Specifically amusing is T-Mobile, who tells Dano they don't offer tethering and won't support it. This despite the fact that T-Mobile customers tether their handsets all the time, for no additional charge. You'd think this could be a competitive differentiator for T-Mobile worth highlighting, but apparently they're not too keen to talk about it:The first rule of T-Mobile tethering club is that you apparently don't talk about T-Mobile tethering club. Meanwhile, iPhone users continue to wait for tethering functionality, while Verizon promises tethering for Droid sometime next year for an extra $30 on top of your existing wireless data plan.

As expected, Time Warner Cable has launched their Clear-powered mobile WiMAX service in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, as well as in several North Carolina markets, including Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Greensboro. Dubbed "Roadrunner Mobile," the service offers speeds up to 6 Mbps for prices ranging from $39.95 a month to $79.95 a month, depending on you bundling options (you have to purchase at least one other service).

A few weeks ago you'll recall that AT&T sued Verizon Wireless for a new series of advertisements poking fun at AT&T's 3G network performance and coverage. Specifically, AT&T told us they believed the ads "mislead customers into believing that AT&T does not offer any wireless service in the vast majority of the country," despite the fact that the ads simply compared 3G coverage only (see example ad).

Blogger Christopher Soghoian is raising eyebrows this week with a recording of a Sprint executive at a conference exploring how Sprint has been using a new portal to give user GPS data to law enforcement agents "8 million times" over a thirteen month span. The disclosure of course immediately raised questions over what kind of legal process is being followed, and who's being tracked.

Straight off of AT&T and Verizon's multi-week network quality snark fest, Consumer Reports has issued their latest survey of wireless carriers and phones, and it probably won't make AT&T particularly happy. The survey itself is available to subscribers only, but we can tell you that the findings generally mirror other recent surveys of the wireless sector -- namely putting Verizon at the top in terms of customer satisfaction, while placing AT&T at the bottom.

Clearwire today announced that the Mobile WiMax company is now offering its new wireless broadband service in Honolulu and Maui. According to Clearwire, the launch covers about 800,000 of the 1.2 million people in the State and about 1,759 square miles over three islands: Oahu, Maui, and Lanai. The company also says they've brought the service to the Seattle area, that launch covering the areas between Tacoma to Bellingham (roughly 120 miles) and from the Puget Sound to Issaquah (17 miles). Clear service offers speeds between 3 and 6 Mbps (assuming your signal quality is good) with home and mobile pricing plans ranging from $35 to $75.

An FCC public notice (pdf) indicates that the agency is looking for a few good men, women or companies -- to act as database managers for the agency's white space broadband efforts. White space broadband allows for the unlicensed creation of inexpensive wireless broadband service by using the spectrum partially freed from the migration to digital television.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureau has recommended that Sprint stop running ads saying that the carrier has "America's most dependable 3G network." The recommendation comes after Verizon, fresh off of their lover's quarrel with AT&T, filed a complaint with the agency claiming that Sprint was using old data to support their claim. According to a NAD statement, Nielsen "drive test" data does confirm that Verizon's network has been more reliable of late: story continues..