TextNow’s creator Enflick, however, plans to set itself apart from the messaging pack by becoming a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), the company told GigaOM. TextNow isn’t going to be your typical virtual operator reselling a carrier’s voice and data bundles, Enflick CEO and co-founder Derek Ting said. Instead, it hopes to become the country’s first entirely all-IP mobile carrier — think Vonage, but on a mobile handset.

In the next few days Enflick plans to kick off its new business with a TextNow Wi-Fi hotspot that connects to Sprint’s 3G network. But it will start looking more like a full-fledged mobile operator later this summer when it starts selling an Android smartphone, a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S II. This phone won’t ship with any of its normal cellular voice and SMS features enabled. Instead, Ting said the device will connect solely to mobile data networks, and all calls and texts will be routed through the TextNow’s back end VoIP and messaging system.

A model tailor-made for an MVNO

Enflick has been edging toward the carrier model since its inception, Ting said. Like its messaging competitors textPlus and TextMe, TextNow issues all of its customers ten-digit phone numbers, which they can use to reach the world beyond its network. Consequently most of TextNow’s customers use the service to add SMS and voice capabilities to devices never intended to make voice calls or receive text messages.

“The common use case for us is people downloading our app on a tablet or an iPod Touch,” Ting said. Some customers use TextNow to compliment their existing text and voice services on a smartphone, but their use is minimal, Ting said. It’s heaviest users tend to be a younger demographic that either can’t afford or don’t want to pay a monthly mobile phone bill.

Its first device, Ting said, is a Novatel MiFi targeted at those users — they already have their device and service, but they want to be able to communicate in places where they don’t have access to Wi-Fi. Enflick is selling the MiFi for $40, and launching a baseline plan for $15 a month. It includes 500 MB of data, unlimited messaging and 200 voice minutes, which carry over into the next billing cycle in unused. Enflick also plans to offer 1 GB and 2 GB plans – which come with bigger buckets of minutes — for $25 and $40 respectively.

The smartphone, however, will allow Enflick to go after a new set of customers. There are a lot of people who stand to benefit from inexpensive IP communications, but don’t have the comfort level or patience to experiment with OTT apps, Ting said. By selling its own smartphone, Enflick can offer a no-hassle pre-configured service.

“We send them a phone that just works,” Ting said. “It’s an affordable device and the service is low cost, and they don’t have worry about doing anything to get set up. They can switch their brains off.”

The refurbished Galaxy S II will cost $120 and will connect to both Sprint’s 3G and Clearwire’s WiMAX networks. Enflick will offer the same data plans for the smartphone as it does for the MiFi. Ting added that it is in the process of testing an LTE smartphone that will connect to Sprint’s newest 4G network.

Is the U.S. ready for an all-IP carrier?

Both TextMe and textPlus have plans to add wide-area connectivity to their services, but they’re doing so with partners like Open Garden and FreedomPop. Enflick, however, decided to become its own carrier because to gain greater control over devices and service plans.

“For instance, one of the reasons we went the refurbished route isn’t just because of cost,” Ting said. “We’re huge believers that there is too much electronic waste out there. We’re looking at many phones that are only a generation old that we can give a second life.”

Enflick also may soon have company in its all-IP niche. Mobile broadband MVNO FreedomPop has announced intentions to launch its own VoIP service. It’s taking the opposite route to the same destination: evolving from a data MVNO into a mobile VoIP provider.

Both companies will have to contend with the limitations of today’s mobile broadband networks. Say what you will about the carrier voice plans and policies, but calls over the cellular network are for the most part reliable – at least more reliable than VoIP. Except for the newest HSPA and LTE systems, mobile networks still lack the speeds and resiliency necessary to produce a consistent VoIP experience.

Ting said Enflick is trying to compensate for those limitations by using high-compression codecs that are more tolerant to the inevitable packet loss on mobile networks, but Ting added that he believes TextNow’s customers also have lower expectations for a voice service than your typical mobile subscriber. TextNow users – as the app’s name implies — are primarily messaging not talking. They tend to use voice sparingly, Ting said, and only as a fallback to SMS.

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I have no access to the original post, but based on the numerous reports circulating the web, developer Joseph Brown identified several lines of code in the iPhone that he claimed introduced artificial barriers to the device’s performance — the network equivalent of putting a restrictor plate on a race car. I’m no coder, but AnandTech’s Brian Klug is, and he has posted an in-depth piece thoroughly debunking Brown’s conclusions.

AT&T’s HSPA+ network (in dark blue)

It’s pretty technical stuff, but what it boils down to is this: Brown was just plain wrong in his interpretations of the code’s purpose. Brown interpreted the word “throttle” in the code to mean downgrading network connection speeds, but as Klug points out throttle in this case refers to “retry interval throttle,” which is the mechanism that prevents a phone from continuously searching for an LTE signal when there are none present.

The other bullet to come out of Brown’s smoking gun is a reference to the “Category 10” speed restrictions in the AT&T iPhone’s code. In industry parlance Category 10 is an iteration of HSPA device technology — in general, the higher the category, the more performance you can get of a handset. Category 10 can support a maximum theoretical downlink speed of 14 Mbps. Brown argued that AT&T’s networks could support much faster speeds, so by limiting devices to category 10 connections it was — by default — throttling speeds.

First off, AT&T’s 3G network historically has only supported category 10 speeds. AT&T simply has older gear than operators who came later to HSPA like T-Mobile, making its upgrade path to 21 Mbps HSPA+ more difficult. AT&T claims that it did make the jump to 21 Mbps as well, though the upgrade doesn’t appear to have stuck. According to AT&T network watchers I know and trust, AT&T hasn’t supported a connection higher than category 10 in years. The point is AT&T’s HSPA+ network can’t maintain a connection faster than 14 Mbps, no matter what code is in the phone. The network just isn’t capable.

To top it all off, though, Klug found that the code Brown was referencing actually applied to the iPhone 4S, which was never really a full-fledged HSPA+ device in the first place. The 4S came with a category 10 chip. Even if AT&T had the most bleeding-edge 3G networks in the industry, the iPhone 4S would never be able to connect to them faster than 14 Mbps.

There is nothing sinister going on here. As Klug points out, these are just different carrier-specific device configurations that all phone makers use. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying AT&T would never throttle speeds — in fact, it readily admits to doing so in some cases — but there are far easier and more elegant ways of doing so than by locking down a phone’s code.

As I’ve pointed out before, all of the major carriers have finely tuned traffic-shaping machines called policy servers in their network core. Not only could they throttle back speeds to a particular class of devices like the iPhone, they could restrict bandwidth to particular customers, particular apps and even at particular locations and times in the network. They could prioritize certain customers or certain applications packets over others.

If AT&T wanted to throttle, it would do it from its network operations center, not in Apple’s code.

Code screen shot courtesy of iTweakiOS via Apple Insider

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Today Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks sit side by side, but they hardly work together. When you’re in the presence of an authorized hotspot your device will log in, leaving the cellular connection behind. As you wander away from the access point, your Wi-Fi connection gets weaker to the point of uselessness until your device finally disconnects and forces its way back onto the cellular grid. It’s hardly an ideal or seamless experience.

These new traffic steering technologies, however, make what were once two distinct networks act as one, selecting the optimal connection at any given moment. So if you suddenly wander into a congested hotspot, the network knows to keep you connected to your 3G cell, instead of forcing you onto a useless Wi-Fi link. As the congestion levels change on those two networks, the user’s device is shifted between them in real time.

This kind of traffic steering will be a key component of heterogeneous networks, or HetNets, which will make use of different radio technologies to create multi-layered and tremendously high-capacity mobile networks. But according to Petri Hautakangas, Nokia Siemens North American head of technology, it’s just a first step. Networks and devices will eventually be able to balance traffic between networks, as well as ship data simultaneously across multiple radio connections, he said.

For Ericsson, the news also represents the full integration of BelAir Networks’ Wi-Fi hotspot technology into its cellular architecture after acquiring the Canadian vendor last year. Nokia Siemens doesn’t make its own Wi-Fi gear but it partners with Wi-Fi access point and hotspot makers like Ruckus Wireless.

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Its $60 and $70 prepaid plans still aren’t exactly cheap, but you get a lot more data value out of them. The $60 plan now includes 2 GB of data (up from 500 MB), while the $70 plan includes 4 GB (up from 2 GB). Both includes unlimited talk and text, but as with the previous plans prepaid customers don’t get access to the LTE network. If you want a 4G connection, you’ll have to sign a contract.

I’ve noted before that Verizon is getting a lot more aggressive in the prepaid space – a market it has historically ignored. But Verizon has always been all over the premium smartphone subscriber, and increasingly those customers are moving away from contract plans to prepaid services. In the first quarter, nearly one-third of all smartphones activated landed on a prepaid plan, according to The NPD Group.

While the bigger data buckets are only available to current prepaid customers, Verizon said it will extend them to new customers on June 6.

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The problem is there are a lot of people who don’t realize their phones will link to their home networks — they either can’t figure out how to configure their devices’ Wi-Fi settings or they’ve disabled their Wi-Fi from the get go. Devicescape on Thursday said it has developed a new bit of software that attempts to lure those customers onto their own home networks.

Called Personal Curator, the smartphone client utilizes Devicescape’s radio management and network detection technologies, along with a machine-learning algorithm, to identify when a user is at home and a wireless network is available. If the smartphone’s Wi-Fi radio is disabled, Personal Curator will activate it and prompt the user to connect, walking them through the device configuration process.

Devicescape claims that as many as 30 percent of smartphones never connect to an available home Wi-Fi network, which would mean an enormous quantity of traffic that could easily be shunted onto a cheap broadband connection is instead heading toward the cell towers. That number seems high, but it’s not entirely out of the question. I’ve configured the Wi-Fi settings of many a friend or relative who never bothered to do it themselves.

Devicescape is selling Personal Curator to carriers, who would pre-install it on the smartphones they sell and have the biggest vested interest in coaxing customers on to as many Wi-Fi networks as possible. Devicescape estimates operators would save $631 in lifetime network data delivery costs for each subscriber that it can lure onto a home network.

Frankly, that figure is a bit absurd. It assumes that customers who don’t use their home Wi-Fi today will wander the world blithely unaware of Wi-Fi for the rest of their lives. It also assumes all smartphone users are created equal (More technically savvy users who consume more data tend to be more aware of their device’s networking capabilities).

Still, for Devicescape’s core customers, Personal Curator could be a very attractive service. The company’s whole business model is designed around the idea of providing cheap ubiquitous Wi-Fi to carriers. Through crowdsourcing, it has identified and mapped 12 million open access points around the world, and its client software automatically links to those nodes whenever they’re available.

It counts among its customers MetroPCS (now part of T-Mobile USA and mobile virtual network operators like Republic Wireless, which offer subscribers cheap unlimited data plans. Any packet those operators ship over the unlicensed airwaves is a direct cost savings. And once connected to home Wi-Fi, smartphone owners would likely use the heck out of it. A recent Sandvine report shows that 20 percent of all traffic traversing home broadband connections comes from a phone or tablet.

Devicescape has grown considerably in the last year. It now sells its products to eight carriers in North America and Europe (including U.S. Cellular and Bouygues Telecom). It has also struck deals with Intel and Microsoft to embed its software directly into the former’s Ultrabook and tablet connection manager and the latter’s WP8 software. Devicescape revealed today that it has now managing 1.5 billion Wi-Fi connections monthly, a 50 percent increase in 12 months.

Based in San Bruno, Calif., Devicescape hopes to draw more attention to itself next week at North America’s biggest mobile trade show, CTIA Wireless. It’s releasing an Android app called Magnifi CTIA that will let anyone connected to thousands of Las Vegas access points in its curated virtual network for the duration of the show.

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According to Connectify, Dispatch — which went live in December — has some inherent limitations. While it was able to aggregate multiple wireline and wireless connections into a single fat pipe, allowing your Windows-based PC to take advantage of every available internet link, Dispatch could only ship certain types of content over one of those connections at any given time, Connectify President Bhana Grover said in an email.

“This worked fantastically with multi-threaded applications like web browsing and Bittorrent,” Grover said. “But the feedback we got from our backers and customers was that they wanted a more robust connection aggregation technology: one that could speed up video streaming, uploads, and VPNs… and was Mac-compatible, too.”

Switchboard basically works like a virtual private network (VPN). All of your internet connections — whether Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G — link to Connectify’s servers in the cloud. Those servers then go about dismantling content or files into their component packets and routing them over those different connections. Over Dispatch, a Netflix movie would stream over the highest-bandwidth connection available to the PC. If you were on public hotspot or cellular network that connection might be fairly slow. With Switchboard that single Netflix stream is split between multiple connections, resulting in faster buffering and better resolution.

Connectify has developed a prototype for Switchboard on both the PC and Mac, but it wants to raise $100,000 in funds on Kickstarter over the next month to complete its user interface, develop customer management software and deploy its first cloud-based servers. As with Dispatch, Connectify plans to sell Switchboard on a subscription basis, but due to its software-as-a-service element Switchboard is setting capacity limits as well. That means the more data you consume via Switchboard, the more you pay. Backers of the project, however, will get early discounted access to the service this fall.

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But starting Wednesday FreedomPop is selling a new hotspot modem that connects to Sprint’s nationwide CDMA EV-DO network. The modem will likely clock sub-megabit 3G speeds when on Sprint’s network, but it will connect to any Clearwire tower when available. That allows FreedomPop to give its current customers nationwide coverage as well as market the service to customers outside of Clearwire’s 80-city footprint.

As we’ve reported, FreedomPop eventually plans to tap into Sprint’s new LTE network, allowing it to wean itself off Clearwire’s WiMAX systems (it will keep its home broadband service with Clearwire though). According to CEO Stephen Stokols, FreedomPop will start selling an LTE-CDMA hotspot in about six months. He added that the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) wants to wait until Sprint builds up its LTE footprint before making the leap. Right now Sprint has 88 cities and towns under its LTE umbrella, but plans to make a big expansion push this summer.

FreedomPop is only selling a hotspot, the Overdrive Pro, on the new network. It’s signature device, a sleeve modem designed to fit around the iPhone 4 and 4S is still AWOL, caught up in the Federal Communications Commission’s testing process. Stokols said he still holds out hope that the device will clear those tests soon. That’s probably of little consolation to the customers who pre-ordered the device last May, but Stokols said he’s hoping that a belated approval will clear the path for an iPhone 5 sleeve later this year.

Even without the Sleeve, FreedomPop has been growing rapidly as consumers latch onto its free 500 MB of monthly data and its bandwidth sharing and earning features, as well as its hotspots and iPod Touch sleeve, Stokols said. He wouldn’t reveal exact subscriber numbers saying only the virtual carrier has “hundreds of thousands” of customers. FreedomPop also plans to launch a voice service in the next few months via a partnership with VoIP and IP messaging provider textPlus.

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Overall, Verizon brought in $29.4 billion in revenues for the quarter, and posted a 15 percent year-over-year increase in profits.

Verizon’s LTE network now covers 491 markets and 287 million people, which is roughly 95 percent of its current 3G footprint. CFO Fran Shammo said it plans to match 4G coverage to its 3G coverage by the end of this quarter, and he reiterated Verizon’s plans to start building its second 4G network this year over recently acquired Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) airwaves. Shammo said Verizon would start offering its first LTE-only devices – with no CDMA fallback – next year, which should coincide with the launch of its voice-over-LTE service.

Verizon saw 5.9 million LTE device activations in the first quarter, bringing its total 4G retail connections to 26.3 million, about 28 percent of its total contract subscribers. Shammo said roughly half of Verizon’s 4 million iPhone activations were for the LTE-capable iPhone 5.

As more customers upgrade to LTE devices, more of Verizon’s data load moves over to its high-capacity networks: 54 percent of its data traffic is now on LTE, compared to 50 percent in the fourth quarter.

The mix of Verizon’s mobile subscribers is also getting interesting. It’s been moving a big chunk of its customer base over to its new shared data plans since it implemented the tiers last year. About 30 percent of Verizon’s accounts are on a Share Everything plan, and the carrier is averaging 2.67 devices per account. But Verizon also acquired 43,000 net new prepaid subscribers. That’s not a huge number in the world of prepaid, but Verizon has been focusing a lot more attention on the budget segment lately, particularly as its 3G network starts to empty.

Shammo said that while Verizon isn’t getting overly aggressive in prepaid, it’s by no means ignoring it. “We will look for niches in which we can make an impact,” he said.

On the wireline side, Verizon continued to recalibrate its business toward FiOS. Its fiber service now accounts for 69 percent of all consumer revenue. Verizon added 188,000 FiOS internet subscribers and 169,000 TV subscribers. Meanwhile, Verizon shed another 89,000 DSL subscribers.

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T-Mobile MVNO Solavei said on Wednesday it will fully support all of the HSPA+ radios in the new version of the iPhone 5. That means anywhere T-Mobile offers 3G service, Solavei will too. Previously all iPhones’ 3G capabilities were restricted to areas where T-Mobile had completed its ongoing network overhaul, which to date is about 50 cities. Solavei – which has adopted a multi-level marketing approach (think Amway) to distributing its service – is selling the unlocked iPhone 5 directly to customers for the steep price of $700 through its retail partner GSMNation. But unlocked versions of the device will work just fine with Solavei’s SIM cards.

Solavei, however, won’t get access to T-Mo’s latest and greatest 4G network though. The MVNO confirmed that none of its customers will be able to tap T-Mobile’s LTE network, no matter what phone they own. T-Mobile has only launched LTE in seven cities, and it appears to be keeping its new 4G service for itself for the time being. I would expect that change eventually though. Sprint, for instance, is already opening its new LTE network to its numerous MVNO partners.

T-Mobile’s 3G network, though, is nothing to scoff at. T-Mo the only U.S. carrier to offer dual-carrier HSPA+, which is now accessible by the iPhone 5 and many other devices supporting its Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band. T-Mobile also has several other MVNO partners, such as Tracfone’s Straight Talk Wireless, that can theoretically support the iPhone 5. Solavei is the only one we know of that is selling a nano-SIM card that fits into to device, but many consumers are getting around that problem by cutting larger SIM cards down to size.

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Bottom line: if you have a North American GSM version of the iPhone 5 — whether you bought it from AT&T or Apple or got it in from Canada – it can connect to T-Mobile’s new LTE network. It just has to be unlocked. So for AT&T customers looking to switch sides, that means you have to finish your contract, and ask your carrier to unlock the device.

The device will also work on T-Mobile’s 3G HSPA+ network (which T-Mobile calls 4G), just not in every city today. T-Mobile is in the process of a big network overhaul that will align all of its networks with the radios in the iPhone and most other AT&T devices. It’s completed the upgrade in about 50 cities covering 142 million people, but other cities are getting converted quickly.

The source of the confusion is over frequencies, which is why we’ve been seeing all of these references to the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band. T-Mobile runs two technologies in the AWS band, it’s LTE network and a portion of its HSPA+ network. The iPhone 5 will support LTE in the AWS band, but it won’t support HSPA+ over AWS. The iPhone 5, and all previous versions of the iPhone, will work on its new upgraded HSPA+ systems in the PCS band.

Apple will release a new version of the iPhone 5 next month that will make all of the band differences completely moot. The updated version will support HSPA+ on both AWS and PCS band. It will even be able to access T-Mobile’s dual-carrier 42 Mbps HSPA+ network, which current and older versions of the iPhone cannot.

All of this is probably still extremely confusing so I’ve broken it down into a Q&A, which hopefully will answer any lingering questions.

How do I know if my iPhone will work on T-Mobile’s networks?

For the iPhone 5, check your model number. It must be the A1428, sold by AT&T, the Canadian operators or Apple. Older iPhone models will also work on T-Mobile’s 2G and 3G networks. All of these devices must be unlocked, though, or they’ll be blocked.

How can I be sure I’ll have access to T-Mobile’s LTE and HSPA+ networks?

For LTE, it’s simple. T-Mobile launched LTE in seven markets this week: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Washington, D.C. New York City is scheduled to come online this summer along with a bunch of other yet unnamed cities.

For HSPA+, it’s a bit more difficult to tell since T-Mobile doesn’t have any kind of map that tracks which markets have HSPA+ running on the PCS band. They make regular updates on their blog and to the media. PCMag has the most the recent list of T-Mo’s 49 iPhone-optimized cities.

As a general rule of thumb, though, if T-Mobile has LTE in your city, then HSPA+ will be in all the right places, too. And if you get a new version of the iPhone 5 next month, it will work on all of T-Mobile’s network.

When will I be able to bring my old iPhone over to T-Mobile? 

You can do it right now if you like. T-Mobile already has millions of iPhones on its network, running over its 2G and 3G services. In order to access LTE though, you’ll have to wait until Apple updates iOS, authorizing the iPhone 5 to use T-Mobile’s network. Apple hasn’t given a date for when this will happen, saying it will come as an over-the-air update.

Will I be able to access dual-carrier HSPA+?

On a current iPhone, the fastest 3G network you’ll have access to is its 21 Mbps single-carrier system, since all of T-Mo’s dual-carriers are in the AWS band. T-Mobile will eventually launch dual-carrier in the PCS band, but that will take some time. It has to close its acquisition of MetroPCS and convert a lot of old GSM networks to 3G first. If you’re set on accessing the dual-carrier network in the near future, then you’ll need to get one of new versions of the iPhone 5.

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