TiVo's deals with cable operators and their recent DVR patent wins haven't done much to keep TiVo customers around. The company just suffered their worst quarter ever, losing 314,000 customers in three months. TiVo's market share (2.76 million) is now less than 8% of the estimated total 38 million US DVR households. TiVo would probably be helped greatly if Comcast would ever get around to their national TiVo deployment, but three years after the deal's announcement, TiVo for most Comcast customers is a nowhere to be found.

Telecompetitor directs our attention to a study by ABI Research that indicates that femtocell shipments this year have been well, less than impressive. The technology, which creates essentially a micro-cell tower in the home, helps with coverage issues by allowing users to make calls over their home broadband connection.

You might remember Ohio-based Buckeye Cablesystems for when they came down hard on the heads of cable modem upcappers back in 2002, going so far as to bring in the FBI to investigate users who were trying to squeeze extra bandwidth out of the cable system. It's now 2009, and Buckeye has found a much better solution for bandwidth-hungry customers -- they've started a fiber to the home trial in Toledo, but they're installing it without having to dig up any existing infrastructure thanks to a new technology by Kabel-X.

Being the first carrier to launch a phone with the Android OS got T-Mobile lots of attention, though it also drew attention to the fact the carrier's 3G HSDPA network footprint was a little lacking. T-Mobile faced delays in getting the network up and running, and in 2008 blamed Uncle Sam for being slow to vacate the 1700MHz spectrum they purchased from the old fellow. They've since been playing catch up, and are doing a rather good job of it. Glenn Fleishman offers a good refresher on the company's plan to move quickly to HSPA 7.2, and ultimately to 21 Mbps service. HSPA+ should see deployment in 2010 on a "fairly broad-scale" basis, T-Mobile tells Fleishman.

Verizon's "iPhone killer," the Motorola Droid, went on sale last Friday, and Motorola says they sold about 100,000 of the devices according to Bloomberg. Verizon meanwhile had about 200,000 in stock and burned through most of that, according to the company. Those numbers don't come close to iPhone sales, "but anybody that was expecting that had their expectations too high,” says one analyst, who recommends buying Motorola stock. Another analyst, who advises selling Moto shares, tells Bloomberg they have a "nagging suspicion that Android is being overestimated by technology enthusiasts."

Did you buy a Droid?

AT&T is of course starting to deploy faster HSPA 7.2 upgrades, which nudge AT&T's downstream 3G network speed closer to 7.2 Mbps . Not that you'll actually see those kinds of speeds in the real world, but it's a decent improvement.

If you've been around the broadband industry as a user or employee for any length of time, you might be familiar with Ryan Harris -- pen name DerEngel. Harris has published a book (which we sort of reviewed) on hacking cable modems, and is the head of a cable mod organization known as the TCNiSO modding community.

As expected Verizon Wireless today dropped the details of their Motorola Droid launch. The new phone will arrive on November 6 in Verizon stores and online, and will cost $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate (the rebate comes in the form of a debit card).

Remember those SMC combination cable modem and Wi-Fi routers used by Time Warner Cable that a blogger highlighted could be easily hackable? Well, they're still hackable. According to Wired News, despite Time Warner Cable's assurances that a resolution had already been deployed, the devices still appear to be at least partially vulnerable. A quick nmap port scan of a random Time Warner subnet by blogger David Chen found hundreds of marginally-secured devices that were still vulnerable. SMC says they have created a patch, but Chen insists the patch doesn't fix the problem entirely. Best bet? Ditch the hybrid SMC device, get a regular modem from Time Warner Cable, and go buy a real router.

While some cable operators are now running fiber to the home service, they're usually only doing it in higher-end developments where they get an easy return on their investment. One such carrier is Metrocast (see our user reviews) who've decided to deploy Motorola's fiber/coax hybrid RF over Glass (RFoG) technology -- a solution that lets cable operators use their traditional coax hardware over fiber. According to a Motorola press release, Metrocast will be deploying the technology "in select Virginia properties in specific rebuild areas." According to the Metrocast website, unless you live in one of these higher scale developments, the fastest broadband service they currently offer is 10 Mbps downstream.

Rumors now suggest that Verizon's new Android-based Droid phone could be officially announced on October 28, and launched on November 9. Many people are getting postcards inviting them to Motorola and Verizon's October 28 press event. Droid is Verizon's attempt to take on AT&T and the iPhone, and early impressions of the device seem very positive -- though given Verizon's history with closed networks and crippled devices, you have to wonder where the catch will be. The Droid launch is so important to both companies, Verizon and Google have even started pretending they don't hate each other.

Google's taking their invasion of the wireless space one step further with plans to actually build their own phone, according to The Street. Unlike the existing Android-based phones made by other manufacturers and then sold and often subsidized by carriers, Google is planning to build an unlocked phone they'll then offer directly via retail channels. The move would help hoist a more European approach upon the U.S. Wireless market, enabling consumers to choose their device first -- then go about shopping for a carrier. It also of course could alienate hardware partners and further anger the telcos, who already see Google as a huge threat to their revenues.

With the FCC poised to extend network neutrality principles to wireless services, and carriers like AT&T now allowing Skype over 3G, mobile VoIP is finally gaining traction. It will be a slow climb, suggests Gartner Research. According to Gartner, 50% of mobile voice will be VoIP end to end by 2019, and 30% of mobile voice traffic will originate via content websites that have embedded the functionality into their services.

As noted earlier this week, T-Mobile Sidekick users were not only treated to a week-plus long outage, it appeared that they'd lost all of their data as well. Microsoft, who took over the Sidekick system when they acquired Danger Inc. early last year, has now announced that users will in fact be getting their data back. "We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage," says the company. "We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan."

Expanding on and confirming our post from last week confirming Comcast's new Homepoint wireless VoIP handset, Comcast reach out to us today with a little more detail on the service. According to the nation's largest cable company, the service is only going to initially available in Denver Colorado and Fort Myers, Florida -- but Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas tells us "other markets will be forthcoming." As we noted last week the service costs $5 per month, replacing the $3 per month VoIP hardware rental fee. Comcast tells us they're offering users a HD Triple Play customers with HomePoint for $114.99 with a free handset. The company also says existing video and broadband customers are getting a $24.99/mo for 6 month CDV offer with HomePoint.

Insiders tell the Boy Genius Report the company is gearing up for something called "Project Dark." What is it? According to the sources, it's a rapid expansion of the company's HSDPA network with speeds up to 21 Mbps (those speeds are already live in Philly), that's going to accompany the launch of the BlackBerry 9700 and a handful of Android-based devices. More interesting perhaps? T-Mobile's cooking up a new $50 unlimited voice, SMS/MMS and data for $50 a month aimed primarily at leeching customers from the growing number of no-contract operators. Of course unlimited never really means unlimited in T-Mobile parlance (they use a 10 GB cap), but if true, that would be a price that's hard to beat.

Dell's been busy building an Android-powered phone for AT&T, according to a report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (also see CNET report). The news comes just as Verizon and Google announced they'll also be bringing several Andoid-based handsets to market. AT&T's involvement with Dell marks the fourth major carrier to be involved in bringing the Google OS driven handsets to market. According to Google, nine Android devices have been announced across 32 wireless carriers in 26 countries. According to the Journal, Dell is also in talks with T-Mobile about offering the device.

Though it isn't really advertised, the Amazon Kindle uses Sprint's CDMA/EVDO network to download content to the unit. That's great for readers who are traveling in the States, but not so hot for frequent international travelers in countries that use the more common GSM standard. To that end, Amazon this week announced that the new GSM/HSDPA-powered Kindle will start shipping October 18 for $280. The existing EVDO-powered version is getting a simultaneous price drop from $300 to $260. The move kind of pushes Sprint out of the Kindle equation, assuming people are willing to pay $20 more so they can use the Kindle outside of the United States.

Samsung and Russian WiMax operator Yota announced this week that they're testing the next incarnation of WiMax. The new equipment is based on the IEEE's 802.16m standard, announced this week, which is theoretically supposed to offer speeds four times faster than the current 802.16e standard.

Comcast has stopped by our forums to note that the carrier has partnered with the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to, for the first time, deploy a DNS Root Server on the Comcast network. "This benefits our customers by supplying faster resolution to the DNS Root, but also benefits the Internet community generally, by adding redundancy to the DNS F-Root servers that ISC manages and has deployed all around the world," says a Comcast representative in our forums. Comcast's been beefing up their DNS servers, services and tools lately, in part because they want to improve service quality, but also because they probably want to bring some of the DNS redirection ad money lost to Open DNS back in house.