I received the following message from Clickatell, the SMS gateway provider I use to programmatically send text messages to cell phones:

Please be advised that US carrier Verizon Wireless has announced that they will be charging an additional 3c per SMS for all application originated mobile terminated messaging beginning November 1, 2008. This increase will apply to standard rate and premium programs only through the Verizon Wireless network. Transaction fees will not apply to Free-2-End-User, Mobile Giving or Non-Profit organizational programs, according to Verizon. In addition, it has been reported that Verizon Wireless customers are no longer receiving a delivery confirmation notice after sending SMS messages – a long-time standard SMS service feature popular with subscribers and available on other carrier networks.

As your trusted partner and the voice of over 8,000 Clickatell customers to the wireless carrier industry; we believe these sudden and significant pricing and service changes made by Verizon are detrimental to the mobile industry as a whole. In response, we are working with several partners and industry leaders to strongly voice our concerns about the impact these abrupt changes from Verizon will have on the entire messaging industry. Additionally, we are working to obtain more information on specific policy details and timelines.

Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless has provided little in the way of an explanation as to the reasons behind these announcements and abrupt changes. At this time, your Clickatell account representative and our support centre will not have much more information to share about the reasons behind these changes. However, please be assured that we value your business and know that we are doing everything reasonable and within our power to influence Verizons’ decision as we understand the impact this may have to you, our customer.

For perspective, this represents a 50% price hike to service Verizon Wireless customers. (thankfully I’m no longer one of them). They’re betting that people like me will decide to pay, but I’m not so sure.

AT&T’s current (reasonable) voice and smartphone data plans offer 900 minutes for $60 and unlimited data for an additional $20, but previous reports about the iPhone suggested that consumers should expect to pay $60/month for service, so we’re left to wonder what’s up.

Meanwhile, I’ve been asking AT&T users about their signal coverage. I’m on Verizon now and enjoyed pretty solid coverage throughout DC, even underground. Folks on AT&T, however, had spottier coverage, even above ground. And on the train home I found myself next to a passenger trying to conduct business on AT&T, but who was getting disconnected regularly. All the while, my phone showed plenty of signal.

And yet, USA Today says AT&T is “girding” for for launch, including investing in their network, so again we’re left to wonder.

update: the rate plans are out. $60 will get you 450 voice minutes and unlimited data, but all plans are limited to 200 SMS messages. Add $20 to double the talk time, and toss in another $10 for 2000 text messages or $20 for unlimited.

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Vonage has been saying Verizon’s patent claims are overly broad for some time, but now people have dug up some prior art.

One of the patents Verizon is complaining about is #6,104,711, what they call an “enhanced internet domain name server.”

In short, it’s all about linking phone numbers to IP numbers, and Jeff Pulver says he was doing that in 1995 with Free World Dialup, an early, noncommercial VoIP service.

Even better, Pulver published his work. The Internet Telephone Toolkit came out in January 1996, and a presentation that drew additional attention:

In November 1996, I gave a presentation to the VoIP Forum in Dallas. The meeting included participation from Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and Vocaltec for the purpose of making [features of my work] the basis for a VoIP open standard. How do these companies feel about the Verizon’s assertion it owns the idea of name translation? How did Verizon accomplish this when the notion of name translation in H.323 traces back to the original ITU working group in 1993?

GigaOM » Doubts raised over Verizon VoIP patents

Tier 1 Research analyst Daniel Berninger agrees, noting the founding work done by Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, Vocaltec Communications, and other members of the VoIP forum is disclosed in Verizon’s later patent claims.

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Vonage will be in court again tomorrow defending itself against Verizon’s claims of patent infringement. The innovative VoIP company had lost the trial and was ordered to pay $58 Million in damages in early March, when a jury found them to have violated thee of seven related patents held by Verizon. Vonage appealed of course, but it’s uncertain if the company, which has yet to turn a profit, has the stamina for a drawn out battle. The company’s annual 10-K filing painted a stark picture of the challenges Vonage faces (NPR coverage).

The best news for Vonage so far came on April 6, when an appeals court temporarily lifted the injunction that would have forced them to cease operations. And tomorrow the company will face an appeals court in a case that could make or break the company.

I’m among those that’s been saying patent law is broken, and cases like this are a perfect illustration of how laws that were meant to encourage innovation are instead used to protect the establishment. (Take a look at Article I Section 8, where it speaks of promoting “the progress of science and useful arts.”)

The Software Freedom Law Center’s Eben Moglen says Verizon filed for the patents in 1997 specifically so that it could use them as ammunition against the then developing but not commercialized VoIP technology.

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After vacillating for a while (and waiting for it to become available), I finally purchased one of the Verizon / Novatel V640 Express Card EVDO adapters that everybody’s talking about for my MacBook Pro.

GearLog promised it would be easy — simply install drivers, plug in card — but they were wrong. Truth was that I didn’t even have to install the drivers. Mac OS X asked me if I wanted to “activate” the card when I plugged it in, then automatically went about configuring everything. Everything was done in short order, and moments after clicking connect I was online with wireless PPP and pinging the world. I don’t know how much of this can be credited to any configuration the folks at Booster Antenna (from whom I bought the card and service) may have done and how much is do to good plug-n-play in OS X. I can, however, say the price and service were excellent.

The 1xRTT speeds I’ve seen so far are fast enough to listen to 128K MP3 streams (though not without occasional hiccups), and the Speedtest reports consistently 125K or better downloads, with uploads that were never far behind and sometimes faster. In most of my use it actually feels faster than the numbers suggest, though scrolling in Google maps is noticeably slower than I’m used to (as are any other similarly graphic-heavy activities). I’ve not even tried surfing the likes of YouTube.

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Sometime ago I started work on figuring out how to get dial up networking (DUN) access via my Treo 650. Now I’m getting serious about mobile internet access and looking at this again.

The plan is that you should be able to make a Bluetooth connection between your laptop and the phone and then get piped onto the internet from the phone. Trevor Harmon wrote it up and has been following the issue as it relates to Mac OS X and Sprint Wireless service.

The problem is that Verizon has locked down the phone to make this difficult.

This MAKE blog post promises a how-to about getting “legal” DUN on the Treo 650 (what’s with the pix of oscilloscope traces and solar stoves?), but everything that follows is couched with warningss that we may toast our phones and draw the ire of our service provider.

With that said, Everything Treo has a forum post on using a Treo as external modem on Verizon that had some very specific instructions (copied below). TreoCentral has a similar Verizon 650 DUN Hack thread. And all of these point back to Shadowmite, who made the original hack. So, finally, this thread at shadowmite.com is definitely worth a look.

Does it work? I don’t know. I haven’t dared try yet.

Part A: Treo hack
1. Download Shadowmite’s hacked BtManager.prc to my Mac.
1(b)- because of funny settings from the web server, rename downloaded file from BtManager.verizon.prc.txt to BtManager.verizon.prc.
2. Soft reset the Treo 650, for a clean start.
3. Disable any programs that use the network connection, e.g. Chattermail.
4. Drag-and-drop BtManager.verizon.prc onto Bluetooth File Exchange.
4(b) send file to the Treo.
4(c) accept the file and agree to replace the existing app.
5. Open the new Bluetooth application on the Treo
5(b) Turn on Bluetooth DUN, accept the warnings.

Part B: Mac Setup
1. Open Bluetooth preference pane.
1(b) in Devices pane, delete the existing connection to the Treo.
2.Click ‘Set up new device…’
2(b) Choose ‘mobile phone’
2(c) Select the Treo
2(d) Enter the pairing password
2(e) Select Access The Internet service.
2(f) Enter the network settings:

Username: 2015551212@vzw3g.com, where the digits are my cellular number
Password: vzw
Phone Number: #777
Modem Script: 1_VZW_Generic_1X_ON_230400 (you can find that here)

3. Set up network port: Click on ‘Sharing’ tab
[ this step may not be necesssary for other people ]
3(b) Click ‘Add Serial Port Service’
3(c) Rename to ‘BluetoothDUN’ or the like
3(d) Set Type: Modem, and turn on ‘Show in Network Preferences’

4. Network Preferences
4(a) Open Network preference pane
4(b) Click to configure BluetoothDUN
4(c) Under PPP, click PPP Options…
4(d) Turn ON PPP echo packets, and OFF TCP/IP header compression

Part C: Attempt to Dial
1. Open Internet Connect
1(b) Select BluetoothDUN
1(c) Click ‘Connect’

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The much anticipated Novatel V640 Express Card EVDO adapter is out. Verizon is pimping them for $180 with 2 year contract and GearLog says it’s “almost too easy” to use these goodies with the MacBook Pros.

Then GearLog reader Brad commented: “If you had to install a driver, I wouldn’t say it was the true Mac experience. I have Sprint EVDO with a Merlin S620 card. With OS X 10.4.7 it works out of th box (no driver install).”

Pedantic fussing about the “true Mac experience” aside, I’ll admit real concern about installing an software from Verizon. Service providers are notoriously careless about what they do to users’ machines, and though Verizon isn’t AOL, the notion of a big faceless company putting its hooks into the tools I use and depend on is reasonably scary.

On top of that, Brad warns “Verizon is infamous for cancelling EVDO customers who use significantly more bandwidth than the rest.” I don’t know what “significantly more bandwidth” is, but he recommends EVDOforums.com as a place to take the temperature of Verizon customers.

Photo above by Michael Stephens, and I have no idea if he’s getting mobile internet from his sweet desk/seat on Acela. I am, however, enamored of the notion of such an office on the move.

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