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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to deliver the next-generation web experience
• How to manage the signaling storm in 2013
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network

From what few details Samsung has released about the tests, the feat sounds impressive, and its adaptive array transceiver technology could very well make it into the future networks we’ll one day call 5G. But for Samsung to call its technology 5G today is very disingenuous. Quite frankly a huge global vendor vendor and researcher like Samsung should know better than to play so fast and loose with media and technology perceptions. Samsung is grubbing for headlines, and it appears to have succeeded. A search of Google News for “Samsung” and “5G” yielded 97 separate stories.

The fact is, 5G only exists as barest concept today. Groups like METIS have just started investigating the technologies and network architectures that will comprise 5G networks a decade down the road. There is certainly no standards-based definition of 5G, and anyone who claims other is frankly making crap up.

Yet we’ve been witnessing a growing number of companies and tech media outlets start tossing the term 5G about, just as we saw the industry warp the definition of 4G years ago and are seeing carriers abuse the term LTE-Advanced today. Samsung certainly isn’t the first or worst offender. Broadcom attached the term 5G to its 802.11ac Wi-Fi gear — which isn’t even a mobile cellular technology – over a year ago. But Samsung and the rest of the industry aren’t doing anyone any favors by adding to the confusion.

That said, Samsung appears to have done something impressive in these tests. Packing 1 Gbps into a millimeter-wave transmission (A minor technical point: Samsung calls it millimeter, but the 28 GHz Ka-band frequencies it uses straddles the millimeter and microwave bands) is nothing new. Backhaul specialists for years have been cramming loads of capacity into broad swathes of high-frequency spectrum. The problem is those frequencies have been useless for mobile communications because they have no range. Shorter wavelengths can’t propagate at the power levels used for cellular transmission.

Samsung, however, seems to have solved that problem by using a boatload of antennas – 64 to be exact. It’s the same principle behind the MIMO antennas used in our Wi-Fi routers and LTE phones: if instead of a single high-powered transmission, you send several low-power transmissions that reinforce one another, your signal will propagate farther. Samsung claims that by using this technique it’s produced a link in the 28 GHz band that can travel 2 km and deliver a connection speed of just over 1 Gbps.

If Samsung and the mobile industry can commercialize this technology for cellular, it could open up whole new hunks of spectrum for wide area network use. There are plenty of obstacles to making such technology viable, not the least of which is shoving 64 antennas into a mobile phone, but it’s a start.

So kudos to Samsung for pushing the bounds of wireless technology, but shame on Samsung for conflating that accomplishment with its ridiculous pretensions to 5G. “Adaptive array transceiver” may not have the same ring on a press release as “5G”, but at least it’s honest.

Pinocchio image courtesy of Shutterstock user neven

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to deliver the next-generation web experience
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• How to manage the signaling storm in 2013

The short answer is no. The Sunday Times (paywall alert) may have billed its story as being about the potential sale of 27 million people’s details to the cops, but the reality is somewhat less alarming. As Ipsos Mori has been forced to explain in response to the exposé:

“In conducting this research we only receive anonymized data without any personally identifiable information… We do not have access to any names, personal address information, nor postcodes or phone numbers. We can see the volume of people who have visited a website domain, but we cannot see the detail of individual visits, nor what information is entered on that domain. We only ever report on aggregated groups of 50 or more customers. We will never release any data that in any way allows an individual to be identified.”

So what does this data tell us? According to the original article, it provides insights based on “gender, age, postcode, websites visited, time of day text is sent [and] location of customer when call is made”.

Reverse engineering

Now, as we discussed recently, it is easier than you might think to de-anonymize data due to the uniqueness of our personal movement patterns — as long as you have the will, the datasets and the pieces of identifying information that can be correlated with the anonymized individuals effectively described in those datasets. So those horrified reactions to the weekend’s revelations are not entirely groundless. They are over-the-top, though.

There is a significant difference between a register of communications (who contacted whom and when) and a pool of anonymized data where the most fine-grained nugget of information that might be reverse-engineered would tell you that Person X visited the Gmail domain while within a 100 meter radius of the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. To assume equivalence between the two ideas is to ignore the elements of intent, will, data-crunching capacity and, frankly, competence. In short, there are far easier ways for the police to track individuals through their handsets, such as just going to the carrier and demanding to do so.

(The Sunday Times said sources claimed “officers had been enthusiastic about the potential for tracking users of pay-as-you-go phones,” but – quality of sources notwithstanding — I suspect those officers may have been slightly overestimating their own data-crunching powers. They may have also overlooked the fact that the operators would have no idea of their pay-as-you-go users’ age or gender, making it near-impossible to tease out an individual from the anonymized mass. Either way, they backed off once the story broke.)

Not damning

And then there’s the matter of this data’s innocent utility. Of all the sources of “big data” that is both largely untapped and genuinely useful, mobile operators must be among the most potentially fruitful. In societies where everyone is carrying a phone, there can be no better way to establish the density and fluidity of traffic flows and footfall. This data is gold dust, not just for retailers, but also for town planners and councils. It shows us how our cities and roads really work, and it can help us make them more efficient and pleasant to live in or use.

I feel a bit sorry for EE in this particular case. After all, its rivals Telefonica (trading as O2) and Vodafone are also offering up their customer data for analytics purposes – Telefonica’s “Dynamic Insights” program is being carried out in partnership with market research firm GfK, while Voda launched its mobile analytics play just last Friday.

“Everyone is doing it” would be a lousy apology in itself, but I don’t think any of these carriers or their partners are doing anything wrong, as long as their datasets are suitably anonymized. If people could feasibly be personally identified from this data, the carriers and their market research partners would instantly find themselves on the wrong side of existing data protection legislation — the fines in the UK for this stuff are pretty paltry, but they would also quickly lose the trust of their customers, so there’s little motivation for the telcos and their partners to cross the line.

It’s great that people are concerned and watchful about their privacy, and long may they continue to be. However, this is a case where the potential benefits of the data are both great and realistically attainable, and where the downsides are so unfeasible as to be worth discounting, at least at this stage. It’s now up to the carriers to explain this to their customers in understandable and honest terms.

There will be great battles worth fighting in the war over our personal data and its exploitation. This ain’t one of them.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• 4G: State of the Union

The participating trucks are run by empanadas specialist Nuchas, Andy’s Italian Ices, mobile burger flipper Frites ‘N’ Meats and coffee wagon Mudtruck. Karma is also installing the hotspots — which connect users through Wi-Fi to Clearwire’s WiMAX network — at Mad. Sq. Eats, a seasonal outdoor market in Madison Square Park.

Once interested web surfers log into a hotspot (under the Your Karma SSID) using Facebook, they will receive 100 MB of free data access, which they can use not only at the hosting food truck but also at any other participating food truck or any other Karma hotspot. If you like the hosting food truck’s Facebook page, you receive an additional 25 MB.

The fascinating thing about Karma is that unlike other wireless ISPs, it doesn’t just sell you access to your own mobile hotspot. Karma gives you access to everyone else’s hotspots, too. Any Karma customer can link to any Karma hotspot — whether it is on a food truck or in your neighbor’s pocket — allowing you to use your megabytes wherever its ad hoc network of devices are present.

Karma doesn’t want to be another mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) selling devices and bulk megabytes. Instead it hopes to build a social mesh network that divorces access from the device. If Karma can achieve scale, customers will no longer be forced to tether their tablets or PCs to a single modem they have to lug around wherever they go, said Karma CEO and co-founder Robert Gaal. By working with food trucks, Gaal said, Karma can seed its social mesh network in more places, helping it achieve that scale.

“This all started because the Mudtruck was parked around the office from TechStars,” Gaal said in an email. “During our time in the program and after, we kept in touch with them. At one point, we figured that all those people in line for the truck with their eyes glued to their phones might need some Wi-Fi. The first tests we did worked really well, so we approached many more after.”

After using up your initial 100 MB of free data, you can buy an additional gigabyte for $14, and that data never expires. Since Karma is so small today, customers will need to get their own dedicated hotspots if they expect to get a connection in most places. But Karma offers incentives to share your connection with as many people as possible: for everyone who connects to your modem you get 100 MB of free data, and any data those guests consume isn’t subtracted from your data bucket.

Eventually it may be possible to be a Karma customer without ever owning a Karma modem. As more customers buy into the service, the likelihood of finding a Karma signal will increase, especially in areas where internet users converge like airports and coffee shops. Gaal said Karma will also build on the food truck project and began seeding hotspots in other heavily trafficked areas.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010-2015

It’s not my intention here to to attack my peers, but I think it’s necessary to point out we’re descending a slippery slope if we start tossing around the term 5G loosely. 5G doesn’t exist except as the barest concept. It hasn’t been defined by any standards body. The mobile industry only recently began addressing what constitutes 5G, assigning its biggest brains to investigate the technologies that might make up 5G networks in the future.

I understand the frustration of my fellow tech bloggers. Presented with a bunch of byzantine acronyms, how do you explain to the average reader the differences between an HSPA network and HSPA+ network, or between an LTE and an LTE-Advanced network, in a single sentence? When dealing in headlines of limited length and Twitter posts of 140 characters, it’s easy to fall into the comfortable trap of using terms like 4G and 5G to explain the differences in technologies (I’m guilty of falling into that same trap as well).

But I think we owe it to our readers to spell out those nuances. Otherwise we’re not truly explaining mobile technology. Instead, we’re just repeating the marketing messages of carriers and vendors that have every interest in exaggerating the capabilities of their networks.

To my knowledge, T-Mobile isn’t publicly labeling its forthcoming network as 5G, but the operator has a reputation for this kind of technology inflation. In 2010, T-Mobile relabeled its HSPA+ service as 4G out of the blue. I had some sympathy for T-Mobile at the time, because it was presented with a quandary: Sprint had long used the term 4G to describe its WiMAX network, but T-Mobile’s ostensible 3G network was routinely beating Sprint in raw speed tests.

Instead of trying to explain the differences to its customers – which admittedly would have been quite difficult — T-Mobile took the easy way out and simply claimed 4G as its own. Of course, that led AT&T to do the same for its even slower 14.4 Mbps HSPA+ network. Eventually, the standards body responsible for defining the various ‘G’s, the International Telecommunication Union, caved to industry pressure and retroactively defined 4G as pretty much whatever carriers wanted it be.

4G became a meaningless term, and we tech journalists reinforced its meaninglessness by swallowing the terminology carriers fed us. If carriers get their hooks into the acronym 5G, you can bet the exact same thing will happen. Once one carrier succumbs, others will race to redefine their perfectly serviceable 4G networks as 5G networks. An the next operator to gain the slightest technical edge will start bandying about the term 6G.

I’m not dissing T-Mobile’s technical accomplishments. As I’ve written before, T-Mobile’s new LTE network, by virtue of its newness, has definite advantages over other carriers’ networks. T-Mobile will be able to upgrade to new LTE-Advanced technologies faster and cheaper than its competitors. But T-Mobile certainly doesn’t have an LTE-Advanced network today, it won’t have one in the near future and it will be years before it can legitimately make the claim to owning one. LTE-Advanced is an incremental technology, and many of its key techniques aren’t even commercially available to carriers yet.

In my opinion, carriers are already abusing the term LTE-Advanced. They haven’t started compounding that abuse by advertising their current or forthcoming LTE networks as 5G, but it’s only a matter of time. Let’s not help them along by doing their marketing for them.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

In a presentation explaining his bold vision for the company, DISH’s CEO Charlie Ergen detailed plans to provide seamless mobile access to subscription TV content (based around DISH’s Sling and Hopper technology), and a plan to offer fixed wireless broadband to the estimated 40 million households that lack access to high bandwidth fiber or cable networks. Crucially, the latter would be accomplished using a combination of Clearwire’s 2.5GHz spectrum as well as satellite broadband.

That’s the theory, but in practice commentators have questioned whether the leverage inherent in DISH’s bid – for what is a considerably larger company – will constrain the ability of a merged Sprint/DISH to invest in the Sprint network and implement these plans. Further, many expect that Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, will outbid Ergen – despite his protestations to the contrary.  Ergen’s vision for DISH’s future is bold and exciting, but the question ultimately is whether Sprint is crucial to achieving it, and whether it can even work without Clearwire.

Sprint not a requirement for mobile delivery

With respect to the delivery of seamless mobile video, DISH already has most of the necessary technology available. After all, you can already use Sling on your mobile device today. The only real constraint is that the cost of wireless capacity makes it prohibitively expensive to watch mobile video on a metered 4G data plan. If DISH does indeed acquire Sprint, then it could potentially exempt Sling content from any data caps implemented for Sprint subscribers, thereby making seamless usage more feasible (and an attractive marketing point for potential new subscribers).

Nonetheless, there is nothing unique about Sprint’s network that makes it a necessary component to that strategy: DISH could just as easily shop its AWS-4 spectrum to T-Mobile for instance, which could  deliver a similar offering.

Wireless broadband crucial for success

Unlike DISH’s mobile video plans, which are responding to potential longer-term shifts in video consumption, DISH’s ambitions to deliver fixed broadband to the home appear to be far more critical to the near-term competitive position of its satellite TV business. Importantly, the entire plan appears to be predicated on the use of Clearwire’s spectrum for a national deployment. In particular, DISH is at a substantial disadvantage compared to cable and telco TV solutions, which offer integrated broadband and video-on-demand capabilities.

DISH has been attempting to acquire around 40MHz of spectrum from Clearwire since last summer, and it is hard to see where else it could hope to dig up that much spectrum for a fixed wireless broadband network, at a reasonable price – unless DISH uses its own AWS-4 spectrum. However doing so would limit Ergen’s leverage to strike a deal with a wireless operator. Alternatively, DISH could attempt to repurpose LightSquared’s spectrum, but that would be fraught with difficulties.

The greater flexibility DISH has in realizing its mobile video plans vs its fixed broadband ones suggests it may be far more important for it to acquire some of Clearwire’s spectrum than to buy all of Sprint right now. After all, if Deutsche Telekom is willing to strike a deal with DISH after completing its merger with MetroPCS, then Ergen could deploy the 2.5GHz Clearwire spectrum on T-Mobile’s network.

So the question is, might SoftBank agree to sell part of Clearwire’s spectrum to DISH, in exchange for DISH agreeing to withdraw its bid for Sprint? That would certainly be logical, but with two billionaires’ egos at stake, it’s never a given that the most rational outcome will prevail.

Tim Farrar is president of Telecom, Media and Finance Associates, a consulting and research firm in Menlo Park, Calif., which specializes in technical and financial analysis across the satellite and telecom sectors.He blogs on wireless and satellite issues at tmfassociates.com; follow him on Twitter @TMFAssociates.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Sprint’s tightrope walk: finding a balance for its network modernization plan
• U.S. Wireless Data Market: Q4 and Year-End 2008
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network

Here are the new markets receiving LTE services: Albemarle, N.C.; Bloomington, Ind.; Charlotte, N.C.; Contra Costa County, Calif.; Denison, Texas; Greeneville, Tenn.; Joplin, Mo.; Kerrville, Texas; Lafayette, Ind.; Lincolnton, N.C.; Los Angeles; Mankato/North Mankato, Minn.; Memphis, Tenn.; Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Newport News, Va.; Palm Bay, Fla.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; Rochelle, Ill.; Salisbury, N.C.; Shelby, N.C.; Tullahoma, Tenn.; West Palm Beach, Fla.

Sprint now has LTE service in 88 markets (you can see the complete list here), and while many of them are on the small side, the operator is readying some major cities for launch. The operator called out New York City, San Francisco and Washington in Thursday’s announcement, saying customers are already starting to get LTE signals in those cities. In the coming months, Sprint said, it will officially unveil networks in additional 120 cities and towns in coming months.

Sprint is trying to catch up to Verizon Wireless and AT&T, both of which got more than a year’s head start on the No. 3 U.S. operator. Verizon is pretty much finished with its primary LTE network — in its earnings call today that it revealed it has built 4G in 95 percent of its 3G footprint — and it is set to break ground on its second network this year.

Recently AT&T has been turning on new LTE markets in small increments. For instance, on Thursday it said the 4G service has expanded to Cheyenne, Wyo.; Cushing, Okla.; and Florence, S.C. But it plans to make a big push this summer as well, launching in 77 new markets. By the end of the year it plans to have 250 million people under its LTE umbrella, which would put it about 50 million shy of Verizon’s footprint.

Meanwhile T-Mobile’s LTE build is just starting. Its first seven 4G cities went live in March.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• Mobile 2012 and beyond

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Mobile 2012 and beyond