Ah, how times have changed.

Now the two companies are spending big bucks to take potshots at one another. AT&T placed newspaper ads last week insisting that its smaller rival drops more calls. On Wednesday, T-Mobile fired back with ads of its own, suggesting that AT&T is staying up nights worrying about its little company.

“We love a good scrap, especially when the winner is the consumer,” said Mike Sievert, T-Mobile’s chief marketing officer (and, once upon a time, an AT&T wireless executive himself).

But while Sievert and T-Mobile’s marketing team prep ads, T-Mobile is also working on a new network that it hopes will make it a more serious longer-term competitor.

After trailing all its major rivals in building an LTE network, T-Mobile is preparing a rapid nationwide deployment this year, expecting to cover more than a third of the U.S. population by mid-year and reach 200 million people by the end of the year.

And, at long last, T-Mobile has said it will begin selling Apple products, filling the biggest hole in its product lineup.

“We’re feeling really confident,” T-Mobile engineering VP Mark McDiarmid said in an interview this week.

T-Mobile plans to offer the 4G LTE network alongside its existing HSPA+ network, which it has also dubbed 4G. But after years of touting how HSPA+ can be nearly as fast in some real-world scenarios, the company is now proudly showing test numbers that show just how much faster LTE will be, especially when uploading data.

McDiarmid has plenty of work to do, though. For now, T-Mobile has yet to turn on its LTE network for customers anywhere, though it has things ready to go in Las Vegas and Kansas City as soon as the company is ready to sell devices and make an announcement.

The company also has other technical battles on the horizon, including merging its operations with MetroPCS, once that deal is completed later this year. The move will give the new T-Mobile the spectrum it needs, along with greater scale, but will also be a fair bit of work, given that MetroPCS and T-Mobile are based on different network technologies.

In the meantime, McDiarmid said, he is happy just to see the company’s name staying in print — even if it is in ads from its rival.

“I was kind of excited to see our name printed so boldly,” he said.

The move, which begins with model year 2015 cars sold next year, will allow the carmaker to power a wider range of services from entertainment to safety and diagnostics than possible using the older generation of wireless it has been using.

“We envision, basically, with that big of a pipe, the car becomes a smartphone on wheels,” AT&T emerging devices head Glenn Lurie said in an interview.

It’s a multiyear deal, covering the bulk of cars sold in the U.S. and Canada, but neither company will say how long the deal will run, or what specific services will be offered and how much they will cost. In an interview, Lurie said there will be a range of services, including some that will be offered by GM and some that will be directly billed by AT&T.

Having a fast connection will allow for in-car Wi-Fi and rear-seat entertainment, as well as a new level of diagnostics never before possible, Lurie said. The car maker will also put out various programming hooks to allow software makers to create their own automobile-specific apps, Lurie said.

“We’re going to deliver a set of tools in the car that no one has ever seen before,” Lurie said.

He said he foresees a time when people will be able to add their car to a shared data plan, much as they do a phone or tablet today.

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Sprint announced this evening that beginning on Nov. 11, customers will be able to choose from four different no-contract data plans for their tablets, with packages starting at $14.99 for 300 megabytes of data. From there, you can get three gigabytes of data for $34.99, 6GB for $49.99 or 12GB for $79.99.

Existing customers will also get a break. If you’re already on a Sprint smartphone data plan and want to add a tablet to your account, you can now do so for as little as $15 per month for 1GB of data or $10 per month for 100MB.

The carrier is also waiving activation fees on all if its 3G and 4G tablets, though it did not say how long the promotion will last.

Sprint touts that its new rate plans offer up to 20 percent more data than Verizon’s and AT&T’s similarly priced plans. Verizon’s prepaid tablet plans charge $20 for 1GB of data, $30 for 2GB, $50 for 5GB and $80 for 10GB. Meanwhile, AT&T offers 3GB of data for $30 per month and 5GB for $50.

As the No. 3 carrier behind Verizon and AT&T, Sprint has relied on offering better value plans to woo new customers and maintain subscribers. Plus, it continues to offer unlimited data plans for its smartphones, whereas the other two carriers have switched to tiered pricing.

That said, Sprint currently has the smallest 4G LTE network of the three carriers. Its LTE service is available in 24 cities and will be rolling out to 100 more cities in the coming months. The carrier plans to complete most of its nationwide LTE build-out by the end of 2013.

Verizon Wireless said that more than a third of its data traffic is already travelling on its fastest LTE network, and that within a few months, the majority of data traffic will be on that network.

It is taking only two years to reach that milestone, compared to the eight years it took 3G to account for the bulk of data traffic, Chief Technical Officer Nicola Palmer said in a presentation on Tuesday at the MobileCon event in San Diego.

“As we look at the growth of data, it’s been phenomenal,” Palmer said.

As of last quarter, 11 million of Verizon’s 89 million contract customers are on 4G LTE devices.

The company had said it would hit 400 markets by the end of the year, and Palmer said the company will hit that milestone on Oct. 18, with Marquette, Michigan. The company plans to cover its complete 3G coverage area with LTE by the end of next year.

Palmer said that the company will then look to LTE Advanced to boost the company’s capacity in addition to its coverage area.

“It’s one of the tools we have in our toolbox,” Palmer said, in addition to building more cell sites and adding spectrum.

Palmer noted that the company’s network is the largest LTE network in the world, and now covers 75 percent of the U.S. population, with more markets being added each month.

In a move to get more devices onto the network, Verizon announced in June a shift to new shared data plans. Such plans, also offered by AT&T, allow customers to share a pool of gigabytes across multiple devices.

The company is also doing the work needed to prepare to handle voice as well as data over LTE. Testing is ongoing, with Palmer noting that she recently made a call over the network.

As for when service will kick off, Palmer said to “expect something toward end of 2013.”

T-Mobile’s network has evolved from the type of system used by AT&T while MetroPCS has historically relied on a CDMA network similar to those used by Verizon and Sprint.

That has some analysts and investors worried that the combined company could face the kind of hurdles that Sprint saw in the wake of its Nextel deal — a combination that, years later, still forces the company to operate two incompatible networks.

But T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray says the key is that both companies have been moving toward a similar next-generation LTE network. Indeed, Ray says the combined spectrum will allow the company to offer a much stronger network in key cities than the two carriers ever could have done solo.

The key, he said, is that T-Mobile plans to quickly migrate MetroPCS customers to phones that use T-Mobile’s network.

“This isn’t about integrating these two networks,” he said in an interview Friday. “It’s about moving MetroPCS over to a bigger and stronger converged network.”

With Nextel, Sprint acquired a set of customers dependent on features that it couldn’t match on its own network. But Ray says there is no feature MetroPCS customers are used to that T-Mobile can’t immediately match on its own network.

From the day the merger takes effect, T-Mobile plans to start selling phones that use the MetroPCS brand but run on its network technology, with a goal to fully migrate users to its network within a couple of years, eventually decommissioning the CDMA network to free up more spectrum for LTE.

Ray said the hardest part will be moving MetroPCS customers over to T-Mobile’s network as quickly as possible.

The technology pieces are relatively straightforward here,” Ray said. “I don’t see any big technology barriers we need to knock down.”

That said, T-Mobile is already involved in a pretty big technological undertaking as it looks to turn on its LTE network by the second half of next year. It’s part of a $4 billion network modernization effort that it kicked off this year after its failed bid to sell itself to AT&T.

MetroPCS is actually somewhat ahead on this front, having already launched LTE along with a number of low-cost LTE devices. The company is also ahead of some major carriers in testing delivering voice in addition to data over the newer network.

T-Mobile, meanwhile is the last of the four major carriers to move to LTE, following Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, which is just now expanding its LTE network.

Even before it has LTE, T-Mobile is working to offer up more iPhone-compatible HSPA+ service in hopes of attracting existing iPhone owners to bring their device onto its network. Currently T-Mobile USA doesn’t sell an iPhone and yet has 1 million or so customers, even though they are limited to very slow 2G data speeds.

“There’s a lot of work ahead,” Ray agreed, but said much of it has more to do with logistics and execution than major technology risk.

[Shutterstock/GTS]

Ross

Among the companies banding together are AT&T, Clearwire, Hewlett-Packard, KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and ZTE. The effort is coordinated by Via Licensing, a spinoff of Dolby Laboratories that is in the business of managing patent pools.

Via Licensing isn’t disclosing the exact pricing for the LTE patents, which varies based on volume, but it is on the order of a few dollars per device.

One of the major challenges, though, is that the group only accounts for a small part of the patents essential to incorporating the LTE standard.

Via Licensing president Roger Ross said that it is difficult to put a precise estimate on how much of the intellectual property is behind the LTE standard, but estimates maybe 20 percent is represented by current partners. Via hopes eventually to have entities representing up to half of all the related intellectual property.

“We expect participation in this program to grow significantly once the patent pool is announced, even in the next few weeks,” said John Ehler, director of wireless programs for Via.

Some big names aren’t part of the group, though, including Qualcomm, Ericsson and Nokia. Nokia, for its part, says it has already licensed its LTE essential patents to more than 40 companies, noting that it has more than 400 families of patents related to the technology.

“This has been estimated by independent sources to represent around 50 percent of the total patents declared essential to LTE by all companies,” Nokia said. (Clearly, if you ask all the parties what percentage of LTE patents they hold, you will get an answer that adds up to more than 100 percent.)

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told AllThingsD on Tuesday that he sees intellectual property licensing as one of five key businesses for the company, alongside basic phones, Windows phones, location services and network infrastructure.

While Nokia is actively licensing its LTE patents, there is concern that other parties might use their LTE patents as bargaining power in an increasingly litigious wireless industry that has seen an array of lawsuits.

Ross said that it is frustrating to see so much litigation over standards-essential patents, especially when intellectual property holders are supposed to commit to reasonable licensing of their technology as part of the standards-setting processes.

Licensing efforts such as Via’s offer a way for the industry to save money while still allowing companies to get paid for their intellectual property.

“Every dollar companies don’t have to spend on litigation is a dollar they can spend on LTE innovation,” Ross said.

The smartphone, which runs Google Android’s 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, has both Starter and Standard modes. The Starter mode offers an oversimplified interface with a quick-dial option to make phone calls right from the home screen, while Standard mode looks more like what you’d expect from an Android OS, with customizable apps on the home screen.

Clearly falling into the category of budget phones, the Samsung Galaxy Stellar has a four-inch, 800 x 480 resolution display (low-res compared to the specs of some higher-end phones), a 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera with auto focus and a 1.3-megapixel front camera, and runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. One bonus: It’s compatible with Verizon’s high-speed 4G LTE wireless network.

It’s selling exclusively through Verizon Wireless starting Sept. 6; with a two-year contract and a data plan, the phone costs $50, though Verizon says it’s available for “free” with a mail-in rebate. It won’t be offered through prepaid plans.

The Galaxy Stellar will join the ranks of smartphones like the recently launched Pantech Marauder, which also offers Standard and Starter modes for consumers who are just making the jump to smartphones and may be intimidated by the user interfaces.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, LG Electronics also teased a dual-solution VMware smartphone that would run two Android operating systems on a single device — one for work and one geared toward personal use — though we haven’t seen that one hit the market yet.

So, naturally, there was much kerfuffle on Wednesday after reports that Verizon was planning to ax plans, even for those grandfathered in. The reports stemmed from comments made by Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo at an investor conference.

Thing is, he didn’t actually say that those on plans would lose them. However, he did suggest that those looking to upgrade to a 4G LTE smartphone would soon be unable to take their plan on to a new phone.

Until now, Verizon has been letting those with unlimited plans move to 4G and keep their plan. Shammo said that will come to an end once the company introduces shared data plans this summer.

“So when you think about our 3G base, a lot of our 3G base is unlimited,” Shammo said. “As they start to migrate into 4G, they will have to come off of unlimited and go into the data share plan.”

But those who have unlimited plans and are okay with keeping their 3G phones are likely to be able to keep their plan. My understanding is that there are Verizon customers on 10-year-old rate plans and, so long as they are happy with their phone, no one will force them to change plans.

In a statement on Thursday, Verizon Wireless didn’t exactly clear things up entirely, but suggested that there will be fair warning before anything changes.

As we have stated publicly, Verizon Wireless has been re-evaluating its data pricing structure for some time, Customers have told us that they want to share data, similar to how they share minutes today. We are working on plans to provide customers with that option later this year.

We will share specific details of the plans and any related policy changes well in advance of their introduction, so customers will have time to evaluate their choices and make the best decisions for their wireless service. It is our goal and commitment to continue to provide customers with the same high value service they have come to expect from Verizon Wireless.

That said, if you have an unlimited plan and think you might want to move to 4G, it’s probably best to do so now.

Update: I got a few more details on how this will be rolled out. First of all, Verizon is saying definitively that customers that are on an unlimited plan and want to keep it with their existing phone can do so.

What will happen is that once shared data plans arrive, unlimited data customers won’t be able to upgrade to a new phone at a discount and keep their unlimited plan. Should they want to, customers could opt to pay the full unsubsidized price for a new phone (3G or 4G) and keep their unlimited data plan.

The wireline and wireless operator said it earned $3.91 billion in net income, or 59 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared to $3.26 billion, or 51 cents per share, in last year’s first quarter. Verizon’s operating revenue was $28.2 billion, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier.

Verizon Wireless said it added 734,000 retail customers in the first quarter, including 501,000 traditional postpaid customers, to end the quarter with 93 million retail customers, a 5.2 percent increase from a year earlier. As of the end of the quarter, nearly 47 percent of traditional contract customers were using smartphones, up from 43.5 percent a quarter earlier. As far as new sales, almost three out of four new customers were opting for smartphones, up from a rate of three in five a year ago.

The company said it also posted improvements in the area of customer defections, known in the industry as “churn.”

On the wired side of things, Verizon said it added 193,000 net new FiOS Internet connections and 180,000 net new FiOS Video connections in the quarter, to give it a total of five million FiOS Internet and 4.4 million FiOS video customers by the end of March.

Update: Verizon’s slides prepared for its earnings call offer up a few more interesting numbers:

And, depending on which of two studies you believe, both can lay claim to having the fastest network.

AT&T is pushing a PCWorld study that found its network to be the faster of the two.

“In our tests, AT&T’s new LTE network pumped out the fastest speeds of any 4G provider,” PCWorld senior editor Mark Sullivan said in a statement.

Verizon, meanwhile, calls attention to a RootMetrics study that finds that it has the better-performing of the LTE networks.

“While AT&T outperformed Verizon in pure LTE download speeds, Verizon had the clear upper hand in the more meaningful real-world experience of average download and upload speeds,” RootMetrics president Bill Moore said in a post on GigaOM. “AT&T’s LTE might be faster, but our overall experience with AT&T was still slower than what we found with Verizon.”

One thing is clear: Verizon’s network covers more ground. The company is launching more cities this week and with those will have two-thirds of the U.S. population covered. AT&T’s network is still smaller, but it is rapidly adding cities as well.

Sprint, meanwhile, is just gearing up to launch LTE, while T-Mobile is aiming to launch an LTE network next year.

Key details:

And, crucially, it will work with new high-speed 4G LTE networks from AT&T and Verizon. It will also work with two other new mobile networks — HSPA+ and dual-channel HSDP — which will be important outside the U.S.

Apple says the new device will boast the same battery life as the iPad 2: Nine hours for wireless use.

Pricing will stay the same as the iPad 2: $499 for 16 gigabytes, with $100 more for 32GB, and $200 more for 64GB. 4G wireless models cost an extra $130. The new model will be available March 16.

One thing not included with the new model: A new name. Apple is simply referring to this device as “the new iPad.”

More details — and photos — are available from Ina Fried’s comprehensive liveblog.

Recent reports have added 4G LTE connectivity and a quad-core processor to a rumored spec list that already includes Siri voice recognition, better cameras, a higher-capacity battery and a much-improved display with double the pixel density of the iPad 2.

All of which sounds entirely reasonable, and certainly like the makings of a formidable successor to the iPad 2. Enough of one that analysts are already tweaking their sales estimates upward.

“We believe this significant refresh will likely help drive higher iPad sales and help further differentiate from arguably the only real competitor in the market, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and not to mention the myriad of Android offerings out there,” says Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. “We are currently modeling 48 million iPad shipments for calendar 2012.”

That’s an awfully big number, but it could prove too small before the year is out. Says Wu, “[48 million] could turn out conservative.”

Over the long-term, the company is aiming for an average of five devices per subscriber.

“We think customers are going to have five devices,” said Colson Hillier, Verizon’s executive director of data applications.

Today, customers often have multiple connected devices, including laptops, televisions and tablets. Even when they are connected, most of those devices are linked to the Internet via Wi-Fi. Over time, though, Hillier said that Verizon sees an opportunity to add 4G.

One of the obvious impediments is today that would require either the use of a hotspot or signing up for multiple rate plans. Verizon, like other U.S. carriers, is looking at offering data plans that allow customers to share a pool of gigabytes among a number of different devices.

“You don’t get there with five plans,” he said.

Verizon’s chief executive said last month that some sort of shared data plan should arrive some time in 2012.

AT&T has also said it wants to offer such plans, but mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said in an interview this week that ironing out the details is taking longer than he had hoped.

Hillier also said that Verizon plans to offer home broadband service using its 4G LTE network in the first half of this year.

“We think it fits very well (for) rural markets and customers that are under-serviced,” Hillier said.

(Image credit: iStockphoto | thesuperph)

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The same folks who were on stage at AT&T’s event this morning — Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and AT&T Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega — are all expected here, and one would presume they will have devices in hand.

As a reminder, Nokia has already announced its first Windows Phone for the U.S. — the Lumia 710 for T-Mobile. That phone, due this month, is an entry-level product that will sell for $50 with a new contract.

We’ll have live coverage, wireless permitting, once the event starts around 3 pm PT.

Earlier:

2:53 pm: OK, we’re here, charged up and logged in. Fingers crossed that Wi-Fi behaves for the event, which should run for about an hour.

3:02 pm: Elop takes the stage. “It’s wonderful to be here in North America on behalf of Nokia,” says Elop, the Canadian former Microsoft executive.

3:04 pm: Elop very briefly mentions the company’s entry-level phones for emerging markets, before turning to the company’s Windows Phone-based smartphone strategy.

Elop uses his favorite lines, talking about how a battle of devices is now a war of ecosystems and once again refers to the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 as the first real Windows Phones.

3:06 pm: Elop talking up Lumia 710, which goes on sale this week (Jan. 11) on T-Mobile.

More war talk: Nokia is establishing beachheads, country by country …

Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T introduced with a video. Elop holding it up, talking about AT&T’s exclusive.

Initially available in black and cyan (that’s blue to you and me).

Primary camera has Zeiss optics and wide aperture for low light along with a front-facing camera for video chat.

It looks like the Lumia 800, only bigger with its 4.3-inch screen.

3:10 pm: Nokia senior VP Kevin Shields comes up to show off a few of the device’s features.

The device is made from injection-molded polycarbonate, like the N9 and Lumia 800, which it looks an awful lot like.

3:17 pm: Shields touts the phone’s front and rear cameras, Nokia Drive (built-in turn-by-turn directions) and some custom apps such as the ESPN Windows Phone app that is exclusive to Nokia.

Other partners include Univision, the Atlantic Coast Conference and Sesame Street (of which I am a huge fan).

3:21 pm: Ballmer now on stage talking about Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia. He notes that Nokia has delivered the first Windows Phones in well under a year.

3:23 pm: Ballmer underscored, as he has repeatedly of late, that Microsoft has “room to grow” in terms of selling Windows Phones.

3:24 pm: Now out is the third in the executive triumvirate, AT&T Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together,” de la Vega said, noting their appearance together at AT&T’s event this morning.

“Nokia is going to be back in the U.S. in a very big way,” de la Vega said, adding the Lumia 900 will be out “in the coming months.”

“We’re big fans of Windows Phone,” he said.

3:26 pm: Elop isn’t any clearer about Nokia 900 timing, saying only that the device will ship “in the months immediately ahead.”

Time for Q and A.

3:28 pm: What about Verizon? “Today we are just announcing AT&T” but clearly the company wants to get in front of as many U.S. consumers as possible.

3:30 pm: Asked about potential for fragmentation in the Windows Phone market, Elop says he is glad that Nokia isn’t alone in making Windows Phones. “I’m so happy companies like Samsung and HTC are releasing” Windows Phones. “We all need that to get the ecosystem going.”

That said, he added that “we do need some elements of differentiation.” The company is focused on specific apps and other things that won’t break compatibility within Windows Phone.

3:32 pm: Asked about pricing and specifics on availability, Elop again declines to give a more detailed time frame and, on pricing, he says only that it will be “aggressive.”

3:33 pm: As for where Nokia is headed, Elop indicated the company sees room for Windows Phone devices that cost less than the 710.

3:35 pm: In addition to its other app partnerships, Nokia said on Monday that it is working with games leader Electronic Arts to bring more than 20 new games to Windows Phone “coming first to Nokia Lumia devices.”

3:38 pm: Asked about what it would take for Nokia to get into tablets, Elop said it would want room to stand out.

3:40 pm: Why no NFC?

Elop notes that Nokia has been a pioneer in near field communications and already ships it on some Symbian phones.

As for why it is not on the first Windows Phones, Elop said the company had to prioritize and it wasn’t the most critical thing for consumers at this point.

“NFC is growing in importance. It’s something I personally believe in.”

Asked for an update on reports that Nokia looked at some sort of deal for RIM, he said, “There’s never been any information at all so there is no update available.” That said, he indicated Nokia does see an opportunity to make inroads in the business market RIM has dominated.

And with that, the press conference ends.

“We’re still working on that,” AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega said in an interview on Monday, just after wrapping up his keynote speech at AT&T’s developer conference in Las Vegas. “It just takes a little more time than we all would want it to take. But sometimes it’s better to make sure you take your time and get it right.”

Verizon has said it expects to see such plans arrive this year and de la Vega himself said at last year’s D9 conference that AT&T was also looking to let customers pool their data into a single plan.

“We’re working on one,” he said at the time. “It will be soon. I can’t comment on a quarter (when it will launch) but it will be soon.”

France Telecom already offers such plans in some of its European markets.

The need for such plans was further highlighted on Monday by one of AT&T’s announcements. The company plans to sell a bundle with Pantech’s LTE phone and tablet for just $249. It is a good deal, of course, but the annoying catch is that it requires signing up for two separate data plans.

De la Vega talked about a number of other topics during our chat, including why he thinks Samsung’s 5-inch Galaxy Note phone/tablet hybrid stands a chance and why Motorola and Research In Motion were entirely absent from Monday’s talk.

I’ll have more from our interview in a bit.

This year, much of the focus is going to be on the company’s just-launched LTE network and all of the devices that the company plans to have running on it soon.

On Thursday, AT&T announced that it has added service in several more cities, including three of the biggest markets: Los Angeles, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. In all, the carrier is now in 26 spots, though its network remains far smaller than the LTE footprint of Verizon Wireless.

The company has announced several LTE devices, but a bunch more are expected to be shown later on Monday. The most closely watched of these will be a new Nokia device running Microsoft’s Windows Phone, though we’re also expecting to hear from AT&T about other gadgets, including Samsung’s 5-inch Galaxy Note and Sony’s PlayStation Vita.

AT&T’s act runs from 9 am to 11 am PT. We’ll spare you a full recitation of the script and instead just offer the Playbill summary, along with insight on the performance and maybe a little inside info about the cast.

Earlier:
8:48 am: The good news: AT&T is passing out 5-Hour Energy bottles, more than enough for its keynote. The bad news: No power outlets. Many in the press row are fretting their laptops won’t have enough juice to make it through.

8:50 am: To keep everyone entertained, AT&T has been posting a set of “Would you rather” questions. My favorite one so far was, “Would you rather telecommute using a 14.4Kbps modem or commute two hours each way carpooling with the Kardashians?”

Modem all the way, personally.

Other questions include, “Would you rather use a cellphone from the 1980s or a pager from the 1990s?” and, “Would you rather only be able to text during the day and make calls at night or only be able to make calls during the day and text at night?”

It’s entertaining, but I’m not sure making people choose between two painful options is the branding message you need, AT&T.

8:55 am: OK, we should be getting started in a few minutes. Going to save laptop juice.

By the way, sponsors of AT&T’s developer summit include the expected array of partners — Samsung, HTC, Microsoft — as well as Nokia.

Somehow they managed to get RIM to pay twice, as both QNX and BlackBerry are sponsors.

9:03 am: We must be getting close. AT&T just put a slide on the big screen with its SEC-appeasing “safe harbor” warning. Basically, if things change, you can’t say they didn’t warn you.

9:08 am: AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega takes the stage. Overview so far, no news yet.

Expect the new devices toward the end.

9:12 am: Handoff to head marketing guy David Christopher, who is taking a stroll down memory lane, going back 16 years to when the company launched its developer program. I’ll let you know when we get back to the present.

9:13 am: AT&T is announcing a few new programs for developers, including some new programming interfaces to tie into its network.

Lots of carriers are doing this and there are benefits to developers that want to do the extra work. The downside is that developers already have to support multiple operating systems and HTML5. For many, writing to each carrier’s developer tools is too much extra work.

Among the new APIs, though, is carrier billing for payment — that appeals because it helps developers actually get paid.

9:20 am: AT&T is bringing an interesting developer out — Viva Vision chief and former NFL player Joe Tafoya.

Tafoya is showing an app his firm built for Dallas Mavericks player Jason “Jet” Terry. Incidentally, Terry went to high school with our own Tricia Duryee, who is helping out with this live blog, via Webcast.

9:25 am: Some stats on AT&T’s TV product, U-Verse. It’s up to 3.6 million customers, as of last year’s third quarter.

9:31 am: Lots of talk about partners and stuff. Apparently developers have to pay a $99 registration fee and can get unlimited access to the programming interfaces this year.

I’m ready for that energy drink.

Anyway, now up is Chief Technology Officer John Donovan.

He’s talking about the company’s 4G strategy, which includes both its HSPA+ network as well as the LTE network it is just building out now.

“AT&T delivers the best possible blended speed,” Donovan said, noting this is paying off for iPhone 4S users, since that phone supports HSPA+ but not any other 4G network.

He’s talking about the company’s network investments including 80,000 new antennas and 150,000 network improvements.

He’s suggesting the network is going to become like oxygen. Personally, I’m happy that I am able to get oxygen on my own, without having to pay AT&T or rely on them (or anyone else) to deliver it. But that could be just me.

And, as Tricia points out, wireless connectivity is inherently more limited than oxygen molecules, which are abundant, even if increasingly in the shape of carbon dioxide.

9:39 am: AT&T also has a cloud strategy, with droplets and other features that I am a little cloudy on. Got distracted by the clouds on the PowerPoint slide, which look like fluffy little pillows to me.

Donovan promises the ability to pay hourly or monthly for its cloud services and pledges more news on this front this year.

Now he’s talking more about programming interfaces. Developers do care about this stuff, but pretty sure they are all here or watching the Webcast. So I will spare you most of the details.

Donovan said the company expects to see 10 billion calls to its interfaces this year, more than double what it saw in 2011.

9:47 am: Pretty sure we will get some new devices at some point.

But sadly that point is not now.

9:52 am: Promising sign — now up is Senior VP Jeff Bradley who heads AT&T’s device business.

First up, though, are the winners of a developer conference …

Still a bit away from the device news. AT&T is talking about a technology for developers designed to allow their apps to be more power and bandwidth efficient.

10:08 am: Zynga and Pandora talking about how that tech helps their apps be smarter about when and how to connect to the network.

The tool also works across other devices and networks, Zynga noted.

And, Bradley said, it will be made available as open source code later this year.

10:11 am: And, just ahead of the device news, AT&T is talking about AppCenter — its new tool for app discovery. It’s more of a magazine pointing to existing app stores and mobile Web sites than yet another marketplace.

10:12 am: Back on stage are David Christopher and John Donovan. They are talking about three apps created in last night’s hackathon.

It’s similar to what AT&T does at its foundries, but this time live. The winner gets backstage passes to AT&T’s concert with Nickelback as well as the opportunity to be featured in an AT&T ad.

First up is Action X-Ray, which lets you share your extreme sports injuries with friends. It’s really good for targeted ads. Say, if you have a head injury, you get an ad for a helmet.

Next is HopiChest, a health-tracking app for kids to enter stats about their exercise and health habits and tweet it to their friends.

Finally is Sleepbot, which is a mobile and web app designed to help users get a better night’s sleep and compare one’s sleep with others who are tracking their Zzzzzs.

Now the audience is being asked to vote by text message for a winner.

10:19 am: AT&T isn’t the only carrier making news at CES today, by the way. Verizon has just announced the Verizon Jetpack, a new hotspot from ZTE and a new phone from LG.

10:22 am: AT&T is ready to start with its device news as well, with emerging devices head Glenn Lurie on stage. First up is gaming and Sony’s PlayStation Vita.

AT&T has already said it will have the wirelessly connected game console (an announcement made almost a year ago). It will debut next month.

Now it is sharing the fine print.

Sony’s SVP Kuni Suzuki is out, but decides to talk first about Sony’s Tablet P, a dual-screen clamshell device that folds out into a tablet-size screen. Sony announced the device last year and said it would come to AT&T, but again, we’ve been waiting on final details like price and availability.

10:30 am: Now he’s showing off the PS Vita, which is already on sale in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

He’s showing pictures of the long lines that accompanied the launch. However, after a strong initial burst, sales trailed off.

The Vita is coming to the U.S. on Feb. 22, by the way.

Data plans for the Vita will be similar to the iPad, AT&T announced. For $15 a month, gamers will get 250 MB of data and for $25 a month, they will get 2GB.

However, since the Vita is a designated gaming device, it will be interesting to see if consumers will be willing to pay just as much for wireless connectivity.

The device itself will cost $299.

10:34 am: OK, back to de la Vega for more devices. But first, the results of that developer live pitch. And the winner is…

Action X-Ray, the one that lets you share your injuries with friends.

10:40 am: Device time, starting with six new Android devices, all with LTE.

Sony Xperia Ion, an exclusive to AT&T, will pack a 12 megapixel camera and a 4.6-inch screen. Planned for second quarter (with Sony branding now that it has bought out Ericsson).

Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD adds a bigger 4.6-inch Super AMOLED screen to the current Skyrocket model as well as a removable battery. Also, as widely leaked, AT&T is getting the Galaxy Note, a 5-inch cross between phone and tablet.

W.P. Hong, Samsung’s head of global product strategy, comes out to explain why we actually need such a thing.

It’s coming to the U.S. exclusively with AT&T and comes in blue and white. U.S. head Kevin Packingham is brought out to add to the Galaxy Note pitch.

He touts the pressure-sensitive pen capability, 5.3-inch screen and other features.

“And yes, it does make phone calls,” Packingham said.

De la Vega says AT&T also wants to bring LTE to the masses and is doing so with a lower-end LTE phone and tablet from Pantech as well as entry-level phone from Samsung.

10:50 am: De la Vega said the Pantech phone will be available for under $50, with a bundle coming that offers the tablet and phone for $249 (as long as you sign up for contracts for both, of course.)

The tablet, the Element, is also waterproof, notes Pantech marketing chief S. Jay Yim, who is now on stage.

Yim ends his talk by dipping the tablet in water, with de la Vega handing him a towel to dry off himself — and the tablet.

The Samsung Exhilarate, an eco-friendly budget LTE phone, will also be priced at less than $50, AT&T said.

10:57 am: OK, Windows Phone time, with de la Vega saying it sees a lot of promise in the platform. AT&T has been the biggest backer of the technology.

AT&T will be first with LTE Windows Phones. And, out comes CEO Steve Ballmer.

“The devices are blindingly fast,” Ballmer said, promising more details will come throughout the day. (Think Nokia event at 3 pm.)

Ballmer draws a contrast between Windows Phone and its app-centric rivals and says that others’ approach puts distance between a user and what they want to do.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t love apps,” Ballmer insists. Microsoft’s approach lets apps work together more easily, he said.

Ballmer notes that the company now has 50,000 apps in its marketplace, with 300 more coming each day.

As for Windows and Windows Phone getting more similar, Ballmer said, “We’ll continue to move in the direction of sharing more technology.”

Ballmer’s also sneaking in a quick pitch for Windows 8.

There have been 3 million downloads of the developer preview version of Windows 8, released at the Build conference last fall, Ballmer said.

Beta coming in February, Ballmer reminds developers.

And, he wraps up with his now-familiar chant of “developers, developers, developers.”

11:08 am: On to Windows Phone devices. Nokia is coming, but first up is HTC.

HTC CEO Peter Chou comes on stage to show that company’s first LTE-capable Windows Phone.

He shows off HTC Titan II, with its whopping 16 megapixel camera.

“I’ve tested it,” Chou said. “It’s blazing fast on the AT&T network.”

The press conference is running over and it’s fingernail biting time in the press row as our laptop batteries all dip into the red.

11:15 am: Chou is cracking up Ballmer and de la Vega. Maybe if he keeps it up there won’t be any time for Nokia.

11:16 am: Nope, here’s Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

De la Vega said AT&T is betting on Nokia and on Elop. “We have bet on this person because I think he is the right person for this job.”

Elop starts out with his now-familiar line about the battle of devices turning into a war of ecosystems.

He also repeats his assertion that Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 were “the first real Windows Phones,” a phrase that is now doubt giving Chou fits backstage.

Elop promises first 4G LTE phone will be with AT&T.

But he also says that Nokia will share “more details” later this afternoon at its press conference.

And with that, the presentation is over.

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On the intended front, CEO Dan Hesse told investors that the company would launch its first high-speed LTE service before the middle of the year in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Perhaps less intended was the announcement of the company’s first LTE smartphone. However, as spotted by The Verge, Sprint is advertising on CNET’s CES page that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be the company’s first LTE phone. Clicking on the phone in the ad does nothing, while a link in the bottom of the ad for more info about Sprint’s LTE plans led to an error page as of Thursday afternoon.

After being early to the game with its WiMax-based 4G network, Sprint is now racing to catch up as it adopts LTE. Verizon already has coverage in a good chunk of the nation, while AT&T announced on Thursday that it is offering service in 11 more cities, including Los Angeles, the New York City Metro area and the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’ve asked the company for more details on its plans for the Galaxy Nexus and whether the ad was meant to go live on Thursday.

Update, 5:50 p.m. PT: In a story on its own site, CNET said the ad was published accidentally.

Users in Alabama, California and Indiana, among other places, are taking to the company’s support Web site to document their connection woes.

The company had an outage last week and another earlier this month.

With the past outages, Verizon has confirmed the issues but declined to discuss the specific causes. A Verizon representative was not immediately available for comment on the latest outage.

Update: Verizon has provided the following comment:

We are investigating reports of some customers experiencing trouble accessing the 4GLTE network. The network itself continues to operate and all customers continue to be able to make calls, send text messages and utilize data services. 3G devices are operating normally.