Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam today stated the company is watching T-Mobile's no contract pricing with great interest, and that Verizon will offer no contract wireless if consumers start clamoring for it. T-Mobile is offering users less expensive data plans but no phone subsidies -- users for example paying $100 down for the iPhone 5 and an additional $20 per month for 24 months. "I'm happy when I see something different tried," McAdam stated.

Well not that happy -- Verizon certainly prefers having users locked down under contract and facing steep ETFs if they try to switch to a competitor. Still, like all carriers the subsidies paid to companies like Apple can be a significant drain on earnings.

The only way Verizon follows T-Mobile's lead is if consumers force them to, but with many users currently under said contracts, it will be a little while before we see whether users are ready to give up the $200 subsidized phone approach en masse.

Leap Wireless is sitting on an unsold pile of iPhones after announcing they'd be selling the devices at full unsubsidized price. T-Mobile's installment plans may lure significantly more users, but the future of the subsidy at the moment is anything but clear.

According to a new survey by the Fiber to the Home Council, running a fiber to the home network isn't just great for consumers and businesses looking for more bandwidth, but it can save a medium or small scale telco up to 20% in savings annually. "On average, respondents estimated those savings to be 20.4 percent, largely because of a decrease in ongoing repair and maintenance," says the group.

According to the Council (which is comprised of companies selling fiber gear), the number of homes that can access FTTH networks has jumped 17.6 percent over the last year to 22.7 million. Granted most small to mid-sized telcos aren't installing fiber -- not because they don't realize potential cost savings, but because they either don't have the funds to do so, or there's such pathetic competition across their footprint there's simply nothing driving them to.

As expected, T-Mobile over the weekend launched the company's new contract-free pricing plans that are part of the company's aggressive new "uncarrier" disruption strategy. T-Mobile's getting rid of contracts entirely, and their new base pricing offers users an new unlimited talk, text, and 500MB of data for $50 a month. An additional $20 nets users unlimited data, or users who want to use their phone as a mobile hotspot or modem can add $10 for every extra 2 GB of data. The company is expected to formally announce the new plans on Tuesday. As part of T-Mobile's strategy, they're also getting rid of phone subsidies, letting users either pay full price for a device, or pay in installment plans tacked onto their monthly bill.

AT&T appears poised to begin offering new U-Verse speed tiers that should offer a belated speed increase for bandwidth-hungry users. Earlier this year AT&T promised users they'd eventually see 75-100 Mbps using line bonding, though the company was somewhat murky on deployment time -- or upstream speeds.

Last July AT&T followed Verizon and offered shared data plans for residential users, featuring caps as up to 20 GB and overages of $15 per gigabyte. Now the company is offering something a little more heavy duty for their business users: shared data plans with allotments of 30 GB, 40 GB and 50 GB. The data isn't coming cheap of course, those tiers will cost you $300, $400 and $500 a month, respectively. As with their shared residential plans, overages clock in at $15 per gigabyte, and users need to pay $30 for each additional smartphone added to the plan.

Upstart MVNO FreedomPop this week announced that the company has started letting users roll over un-used data from month to month, something traditionally avoided like the plague by industry players. There are, as always, caveats. You'll need to pay $3.50 a month for the honor of storing up to 500 MB each month -- up to a maximum of 20 GB to be stored in a vault for a later date. It's a unique way for the cost conscious to save up their bits for a trip or a rainy day. "30% of FreedomPop’s users have opted into this value-added service within the first 24 hours it’s been live," the company claims in an e-mail.

Over the last few weeks both AT&T and Verizon have been raising rates substantially for their lower-grade DSL services, in some cases as much as 25% for low speed (as low as 768 kbps) connections that cost the carriers very, very little to provide. Those price hikes are part of a concerted effort to push those users (who the companies don't want to upgrade) preferably over to more expensive wireless services, or to new cable operator partners -- who'll then sell them bundled wireless anyway.

On the heels of Verizon DSL rate hikes of up to $5, AT&T is informing many DSL users they can also look forward to more expensive DSL service. Like Verizon, AT&T's notice to customers insists that AT&T "values your business," but the hike is necessary to keep DSL quality levels high.

New Frontier customers can now order DSL services for $20 a month -- with a catch. According to a company statement, users can get that price locked in for three years with no contract or installation fees -- if users sign up for a traditional copper landline phone account that's surely to add $30 to $40 in over-priced voice services (and fees) on top of that original price tag. Such "price lock" promises traditionally aren't worth it, as you can usually get a lower rate through negotiations over time. The deal fine print (pdf) notes the speed you get is 6 Mbps, but they fail to note the upstream speed. Users can double that speed for $10 more -- though you have to be in an area where Frontier has upgraded to offer those speeds.

Quite unsurprisingly, the GSMA's new Mobile Economy 2013 report argues that worldwide mobile operator data revenue will exceed that of voice by 2017. In the United States and the UK that timeline is quicker, with data revenues exceeding voice by 2014. That obvious trajectory is of course reflected in AT&T and Verizon's shift to family data plans, where they charge more for data (with $15 per gigabyte overage fees) but offer unlimited voice and SMS services -- since SMS and voice have truly become just data. That said, SMS has held on quite stubbornly in the States (compared to Asia), where carriers are expected to continue making a killing on SMS well into 2015.

Cablevision has joined DirecTV and Verizon in charging a new "sports surcharge" that places the costs of offering regional sports networks into a below-the-line fee. The new $2.98 a month fee will begin showing up on subscriber bills beginning in April.

Back in January, former FCC boss turned cable's top lobbyist Michael Powell finally acknowledged that caps on fixed-line broadband networks weren't actually about congestion -- after the cable industry spent much of the last decade arguing caps were all about congestion. Powell did continue perpetuating the myth that caps and overages were about fairness, when most people at this point realize it's simply about driving up the price of data a. because a lack of competition allows it and b. to offset inevitable TV revenue losses to Internet video.

Here in the States the start of the new year has seen an absolute flood of rate hikes for TV and Internet services from the likes of AT&T U-Verse, Comcast, and Charter Communications. Not to be outdone, users in our Time Warner Cable forum say the cable operator is also sending notices to users alerting them to new price hikes for numerous services.

I've been writing about the dysfunction of the FCC's E-Rate program for a very long time. The system, which you pay into via Universal Service Fund (USF) fees, is designed to deliver broadband and technology services to the nation's schools and libraries.

A new wireless code of conduct being crafted by Canadian regulators intends to take aim at surprise bills caused by data roaming charges (aka "bill shock"). The early proposals would mirror European consumer rules by allowing consumers to set a monthly limit on how much their willing to spend, making it less likely they'll get hammered with unlikely charges.

Comcast is planning to take a page out of the prepaid wireless carrier playbook and offer consumers a prepaid fixed line broadband service. According to a report over at Light Reading, Comcast has been trialing a 3 Mbps downstream, 768 kbps upstream no-contract service in Philadlphia since late 2012, though it's unclear if the product will see a nationwide launch.

On the heels of new rate hikes, AT&T is informing U-Verse users that they'll also be seeing several new fees on their broadband and TV bills. Several users have told me they received no advance notice of these fees whatsoever -- they simply appeared on user bills (AT&T tells me users were notified of the price hikes in November and December).

A Comcast insider has provided me with documentation stating Comcast is going to start charging XFINITY Voice users for device backup batteries. The documentation suggests that the new policy will go into effect starting February 26.

A very reliable source inside Comcast tells me that the new speeds being seen by many of our users in the Northeast should be appearing for the rest of you in March. Last summer an anonymous tipster sent a leaked screenshot of what would ultimately be Comcast's new speed offerings.

By and large the cable and broadcast industry likes to believe that cord cutters are either akin to mythical unicorns, or they're an irrelevant and borderline subhuman niche market not worth serving. Occasionally there's an exemption to that rule, like former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, but by and large there remains a willful ignorance on the topic in the hopes that if we pretend these users aren't real, they'll just go away.