At T Corp

Capping a day of dueling announcements from rival cellphone service providers, AT&T said Tuesday that it would allow users of Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone to make Internet telephone calls over its wireless network. Hours earlier, Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest mobile carrier, said it was teaming up with Internet search giant Google Inc. to release a family of cellular devices powered by Google's Android software, whose capacity to run a vast array of "apps" is widely thought to represent a threat to the iPhone.

AT&T Inc. is urging the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Google Inc.'s Google Voice service on grounds it may be violating federal telecommunications laws. The phone giant based its request on news reports that said Google Voice restricts users from placing calls to certain areas with carriers that charge high access fees. Under federal law, other telephone service providers don't have that option. "By blocking these calls, Google is able to reduce its access expenses," AT&T said in a letter it sent Friday to the FCC. The complaint was the latest in a fight that's been intensifying between the companies.

Shares of AT&T Inc. had their steepest drop in nearly five years after Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said Tuesday that slowing economic growth had led to "softness" in the company's home phone and Internet businesses. The shares fell 4.6%, helping to spark a broader decline in U.S. stocks, after Stephenson said AT&T was disconnecting more home-phone and high-speed Internet customers for failing to pay their bills.

The president of AT&T California is urging employees to support Proposition 93, the term limits measure on Tuesday's ballot championed by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, whose 2006 law allowing the telecommunications company into the lucrative cable TV market could be worth billions of dollars. In a letter e-mailed to 40,000 employees this week, President Ken McNeely wrote: "I believe that Prop.

Starbucks Corp. and AT&T Inc. will start offering a mix of free and paid wireless Internet service in most of the international coffee retailer's U.S. shops, beginning this spring. The move announced Monday ends a six-year partnership with T-Mobile, which did not include free Wi-Fi and charged higher fees than AT&T will. Starbucks said it would give customers who use a Starbucks card two hours of free wireless access per day. More time than that will cost $3.99 for a two-hour session.

The highest bidder in the multibillion-dollar sale of prime airwaves disclosed its plans for the wireless spectrum Friday, and the most prominent loser explained why it was still a big winner. A day after rules prohibiting participants in the federal government's online auction from discussing their strategies lifted, Verizon Wireless said it would use the new capacity to roll out faster wireless Internet service by 2010. Verizon outbid Google Inc., paying $4.

On Sept. 1, AT&T Inc. will cut the number of free 411 calls offered to customers each month to one from three. At first glance, that seems like a fairly small thing. But it reflects a bigger trend -- a systematic stripping away of phone services that once were provided free or for a nominal charge, and a steady increasing of fees for other services. A couple of years ago, state regulators granted phone companies the freedom to price services pretty much as they pleased.

Telecommunications giant AT&T Inc. said Friday that it had agreed to market and sell DirecTV's service beginning early next year, a move that could give the nation's largest satellite provider a considerable leg up over its struggling rival, Dish Network. Under the agreement, AT&T will begin offering DirecTV as part of its Advanced TV service after Jan. 31, when AT&T's current agreement with Dish Network expires.

AT&T Inc. customers who obsessively play World of Warcraft while downloading dozens of movies: Your days of online impunity may be numbered. AT&T has joined the ranks of telecommunications companies that are exploring the idea of limiting the amount of bandwidth that subscribers can use each month. The company began this month to apply such limits, testing the policy first in Reno. Subscribers to AT&T's slowest Internet service there will be limited to downloading 20 gigabytes of data per month.

AT&T Inc. didn't conspire to fix the rate for long-distance surcharges paid by customers, a Kansas jury said Wednesday, rejecting a $400-million claim against the largest U.S. telephone company. The federal jury in Kansas City, Kan., also ordered AT&T to pay $16.9 million to California residential customers who accused the company of breach of contract in the same trial.