Verizon Wireless

The Motorola Droid Razr is buy one, get one free through Verizon Wireless starting Friday. The limited-time promotion is the latest move from Verizon, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the Razr, in a bid to do just about all it can to get the thinnest 4G phone on the market off store shelves and into the hands of consumers. After launching in November at a price of $299.99 on a two-year data plan, Verizon and Motorola cut the Razr down to $199.99 (and down to 16-gigabytes of included storage from 32 gigabytes)

MUSIC Glenn Danzig is one of the most iconic names in punk and goth music, and he finally brings all of his ensembles (including Samhain, Danzig and, yes, a reunion with his legendary Misfits) into one workhorse night. You'll never see so many mono-bang haircuts in one place again. Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 7:15 p.m. Sat. $13.13-$69.50. livenation.com.

Pop quiz: Name the telecom company whose wireless service is rated dead last for customer satisfaction and has been dubbed "worst carrier" by Consumer Reports. If you guessed AT&T, go to the head of the class. So does anyone think things will improve if AT&T Inc. wins federal approval to acquire rival T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, giving it more wireless customers than any other service provider? "What improves customer satisfaction is when carriers compete with each other," said Parul Desai, telecom policy counsel with Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports.

AT&T Inc. posted first-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates on lower smartphone upgrade costs and an increase in wireless data sales related to Apple Inc.'s iPad. Net income rose 5.2% to $3.58 billion, or 60 cents a share, from $3.41 billion, or 57 cents, a year earlier, Dallas-based AT&T said Tuesday. Analysts projected 57 cents, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 1.8% to $31.8 billion, in line with estimates. AT&T activated 4.3 million iPhones and sold 240,000 tablets, with about 180,000 of the tablets on data plan contracts.

WASHINGTON - Verizon Wireless plans to sell billions of dollars' worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum primarily from large cable companies. Verizon, which paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band, said it no longer would need that spectrum to deploy its fourth-generation LTE network if the cable deals are approved. Among the spectrum Verizon plans to sell are swaths covering Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.

Verizon Wireless, under fire from consumers and federal regulators, scrapped plans to charge a $2 "convenience fee" for those who pay their phone bills online or by phone with their credit or debit cards. The decision to cancel the fee was made "in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions," Verizon said in a statement. "At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers," said Dan Mead, Verizon Wireless' president and chief executive.

Verizon Wireless agreed to pay the government $25 million to settle complaints that it inappropriately charged customers more than $50 million in so-called mystery fees, often for inadvertently accessing the Internet without a data plan, federal regulators said Thursday. As part of a consent decree, Verizon agreed to refund those charges to about 15 million customers ? a move the company announced about a month ago. The carrier, which did not admit liability, also will take steps to avoid similar problems in the future.

Mobile phone company Verizon Wireless Inc. will start selling a walkie-talkie service Monday called "Push to Talk," a phrase to which Nextel Communications Inc. claims it has exclusive rights. The nationwide service will be available through Motorola Inc.'s V60p phone, said a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, based in Bedminster, N.J. The move marks the first challenge in a decade to Nextel's Direct Connect service, which allows users to connect by pressing a button instead of dialing a number.

Targeting a top gripe by cellphone users and breaking ranks with its industry, Verizon Wireless plans to prorate the fee it charges subscribers who break a contract so they only pay an amount proportional to the time left on their agreements. The change in the early termination fee will be implemented this fall for new customers and Verizon Wireless subscribers who sign a new contract, the company said Wednesday. The company, owned jointly by New York-based Verizon Communications Inc.

Verizon Wireless Inc., the biggest U.S. mobile-phone company, confirmed Wednesday that it had agreed to offer each of its current and former customers benefits worth as much as $45 in a sweetened bid to settle a lawsuit alleging improper billing and disclosure. San Diego Superior Court Judge William Pate gave preliminary approval in November to the revised class-action settlement after questioning a 2002 accord, worth as much as $30 to each customer.

For Verizon Communication, the iPhone is the gift that keeps giving. Monthly bills for all those iPhone 4S smartphones that found new homes over the holidays are to be thanked for a boost in first-quarter revenue. The impact of the iPhone generated the fastest revenue growth in three years for Verizon Wireless, the country's biggest wireless carrier. The average monthly bill was up 3.6% from a year ago to $55.43. Selling the iPhone is a mixed blessing for carriers. Initially, they bear the cost of the phone, subsidizing them by hundreds of dollars.

WASHINGTON - Verizon Wireless plans to sell billions of dollars' worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum primarily from large cable companies. Verizon, which paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band, said it no longer would need that spectrum to deploy its fourth-generation LTE network if the cable deals are approved. Among the spectrum Verizon plans to sell are swaths covering Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.

WASHINGTON -- Verizon Wireless said it would sell billions of dollars worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum that come mainly from large cable companies. Verizon paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band that the company said it no longer would need if the other deals are approved. The wireless giant's announcement Wednesday was designed to reduce criticism from competitors and public interest groups about its purchase of spectrum from a consortium of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks, as well as other acquisitions of spectrum from Cox Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc. “Since wireless operators, large and small, have expressed concern about the availability of high-quality spectrum, we believe our 700 megahertz licenses will be attractive to a wide range of buyers,” said Molly Feldman, vice president of business development at Verizon Wireless.  The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice are reviewing Verizon's new spectrum purchases.

Sprint is the latest wireless service provider to report an earnings hit from subsidizing the iPhone. The company had hoped to give the likes of AT&T and Verizon a run for the iPhone money when it cut a $15.5-billion deal with Apple to carry the white-hot handset. From October to December, Sprint activated about 1.8 million iPhones , compared with 7.6 million at AT&T and 4.3 million at Verizon Wireless. But Sprint estimates that the phone launch widened its quarterly loss by $630 million, or $350 per phone activated.

The Motorola Droid Razr is buy one, get one free through Verizon Wireless starting Friday. The limited-time promotion is the latest move from Verizon, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the Razr, in a bid to do just about all it can to get the thinnest 4G phone on the market off store shelves and into the hands of consumers. After launching in November at a price of $299.99 on a two-year data plan, Verizon and Motorola cut the Razr down to $199.99 (and down to 16-gigabytes of included storage from 32 gigabytes)

Verizon Wireless, under fire from consumers and federal regulators, scrapped plans to charge a $2 "convenience fee" for those who pay their phone bills online or by phone with their credit or debit cards. The decision to cancel the fee was made "in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions," Verizon said in a statement. "At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers," said Dan Mead, Verizon Wireless' president and chief executive.

Verizon Communications' (ticker symbol: VZ) Verizon Wireless Inc., the No. 1 U.S. mobile phone business, filed Thursday to go public in what would be one of the biggest initial stock sales ever. The Bedminster, N.J.-based wireless unit, which has more than 25 million customers, gave a preliminary assessment in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the initial public offering could raise $5 billion, making it the third-biggest IPO in U.S. history.

A joint venture including the nation's two largest cable companies took the biggest step yet to pull the industry out of its once ambitious plans to build a wireless network and compete with mobile carriers for cellphone customers. The venture, which consists mainly of Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., said Friday that it agreed to sell all of its licenses for broadband airwaves to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 billion. The deal, which must be approved by federal regulators, will better position Verizon to compete with rival AT&T, which is trying to salvage its $39-billion bid to buy T-Mobile USA. The Justice Department has filed an antitrust suit to block the AT&T deal.

Verizon Wireless is about to make paying your monthly cellphone bill more expensive. Starting Jan. 15, the nation's largest mobile carrier will charge customers $2 each time they pay their bills with a credit or debit card. The fee applies to "single payments," when a customer is paying for an individual month, but will not apply to users who set up automated monthly billing. The carrier, which has more than 90 million retail cellular subscribers, said it was adding the fee to help cover the costs of the many credit card transactions it processes.

For the third time this month, Verizon Wireless customers around the nation reported that they were hit with widespread outages of the company's newer, faster 4G service, as well as spotty performance of the older 3G service. "If I am lucky enough to get 3G, it lasts for about 5 minutes and then I lose data completely," wrote a customer named DaphneP on Verizon Wireless' website. "I haven't seen 4G yet today. GRRRR....super frustrating. " Complaints about both the 3G and 4G networks flooded in Wednesday from customers in more than a dozen states, including Arizona, Texas, Maryland, Washington, Illinois and North Carolina.