“I think it is much to-do about nothing,” Sprint VP Fared Adib told AllThingsD in an interview on Tuesday. Customers sign up for two-year contracts, Adib said, and it makes sense for customers who want to have the latest technology get a device that will meet their needs throughout that time. People should be more concerned if Sprint weren’t doing that, he said.

“We’ve done this before,” he said. “So has every other carrier.”

Adib noted that Sprint’s LTE deployment, which will start with a few cities around midyear, will be faster than the rollout of prior technologies, including its 2G, 3G and WiMax networks.

Speaking of WiMax, Sprint may not be introducing new phones for its flagship brand, but it is now extending that technology to its Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid services. Virgin and Boost both announced plans to start selling a WiMax device from HTC. (Virgin has a variant of the Evo 3D, while Boost will sell a phone similar to the traditional Evo 4G.)

The company has said it plans to continue offering WiMax service through at least 2015.

Also on Tuesday, Sprint announced a new bundle of family safety and security applications under the Sprint Guardian banner. The effort consists of a $10 per month service from Location Labs’ Safely unit and a $5 per month security service from Lookout.

Both services cover up to five devices, which could be a savings for families that have a bunch of Sprint phones.

Adding such services can help increase loyalty to Sprint among families with multiple devices — already a traditionally loyal group and a key source of revenue for all the major carriers.

“You might change phones and plans but you don’t change carriers,” Adib said of those customers.

One area where Sprint hasn’t been all that aggressive is in introducing devices running Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Adib said that Sprint certainly took note of the slow initial sales globally for the first crop of Windows Phones.

Still, Adib said that the company is a longtime partner of Microsoft’s and expects to offer future Windows Phones, likely after the debut of Windows Phone 8.

“I don’t want to give you any specific dates,” he said.

But he said he is “very bullish” on Windows Phone overall and said the company has rapidly closed some of the gaps it had in terms of performance and capabilities. Adib said he has also been pleased to see the work Nokia has done in reintroducing itself in the U.S. with its first Lumia devices.

“I think we are going to continue to see that,” he said.

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T-Mobile is also looking to free up space in another part of its spectrum that should finally allow iPhone users to run on its network at full speed. The company has about a million iPhone subscribers, even though those devices can only run at slow 2G speeds. T-Mobile USA does not sell the iPhone itself.

At a dinner event in New Orleans on Monday, CTO Neville Ray said that the effort to reclaim some of its 1900 MHz spectrum should reach a critical mass in the fourth quarter of this year, allowing the company to more aggressively court AT&T subscribers that are no longer under contract.

Ray declined to comment on whether the company would directly target iPhone users in a big marketing push planned for later this year.

“It would make sense,” Ray agreed, but added, “We’re not there yet.”

The company announced on Monday night two of the companies that will help it build out its next-generation network: Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.

RELATED POSTS:

• With No Apple or Amazon at CTIA, iPad Rivals Free to Sling Arrows
• Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile CEOs Square Off in New Orleans
• Remember Carrier IQ? Well, It’s Still Around and Kicking.
• Sprint Product Exec: Launching LTE Devices Before Network Just Makes Sense
• FCC Chairman: Rejection of AT&T’s T-Mobile Deal Isn’t Causing Higher Prices
• Boingo Adds VPN and Crowdsource Hotspot Data to Its Wi-Fi Software
• T-Mobile CTO: Network Should be Ready for iPhone Users by Q4
• Interview: AT&T’s Glenn Lurie on Being the New Sheriff in Town
• Another Day, Another PayPal-esque Digital Wallet: Here’s MasterCard’s High-Tech Billfold
• CTIA Gets Down to Business in the Big Easy
• AT&T Aims to Break Into the Home-Security Business
• Interview: CTIA Boss Steve Largent Aims To Keep Conference From Being Lost in the Shuffle

During a media briefing at BlackBerry World this week, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told attendees to expect a 4G LTE-enabled PlayBook “later this year.” He provided no details beyond that, revealing nothing about potential carriers, specs or pricing.

So, for now, we have only RIM’s word that the device is coming relatively soon. Which is encouraging and somewhat dubious at the same time. Remember, RIM first announced plans to release a 4G version of the PlayBook in January of 2011, promising to deliver it that summer.

In June, former RIM President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis reiterated that plan, but pushed the launch date to the fall.

“We are now on a steady cadence of features and applications releases using our industry leading automatic wireless software update for PlayBook, including Facebook and video conferencing,” he said. “We are soon to release native email and BBM in our Android player later in the summer. To be followed in the fall with 4G PlayBooks for WiMAX, LTE and HSPA+.”

But that never happened. Sprint scrapped its WiMax PlayBook plan in August. And a promised LTE version of the device didn’t debut that fall, and hasn’t shown up since.

Of course, 2011 was a rocky year for RIM, and the company had more important things to worry about than the LTE PlayBook — like taking a $485 million writedown for discounting the first version of the device. Perhaps now, with its new leadership in place and BlackBerry 10 presumably on track for launch late this year, RIM finally has the focus and chops to deliver the device during the window Heins has promised.

That’s the word from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, who tells CNET that the carrier’s unlimited data plan has been far too much of a boon to its business to consider doing anything otherwise.

“I’m not anticipating the unlimited plan would change by that point,” Hesse said. “That’s our distinctive differentiator. Frankly, [the iPhone and unlimited data is] a marriage made in heaven.”

And that does appear to be true — to a point. Reporting first-quarter earnings today, Sprint said that 44 percent of iPhone sales during the period were to customers new to the carrier. “A huge percentage of our gross adds are iPhones, even though it’s a 3G device and it’s competing head to head with 4G devices,” Hesse said during Sprint’s earnings call.

Of course the next iteration of the iPhone is almost certain to be LTE-capable. So Sprint best get on the stick with its 4G network deployment, because its LTE network needs a lot of work. An iPhone with unlimited LTE data sounds great. Question is, can Sprint deliver that experience by the time the device launches?

When the company posted its earnings press release early by mistake before markets had closed, word of the beat encouraged traders to rush in and buy. The shares rose by 7 percent initially, and went as high as $22.20 per share after opening at $20.19.

Telecom carriers are again spending to build out and improve their networks, and that makes Juniper the Little Engine That Could, writes ISI analyst Brian Marshall in a note to clients today. Investments in wireless LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks are bringing carriers “back to the trough,” he wrote. “Carriers are searching for ways to stabilize their capital expenditures, reduce network cost per bit and increase average revenue per user.”

And so they’re turning to Juniper, which makes about two-thirds of its revenue from service providers. Marshall writes that, in the quarter, Juniper accounted for about 10 percent of Verizon’s capital spending; up from about 5 percent last quarter. “Even in the face of ‘stable’ CapEx budgets, we believe Juniper can flourish over the next several quarters as carriers re-allocate priorities. Marshall rates Juniper a “buy,” with a target price of $30.

Update: And apparently the Little Engine is headed back down the hill. Juniper shares are falling, and are down almost 7 percent to $20.22 as of 10:30 am ET, which is right back where it started yesterday.

It’s not the iPad that’s been mislabeled. It’s Australia’s 3G networks.

In a brief filed with the Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia, this week, Apple — which last month agreed to notify consumers that its new iPad is not compatible with Australia’s 4G LTE network, and to offer refunds to early purchasers who feel they were misled by its branding — refused to stop marketing the device as “iPad Wi-Fi + 4G.”

Its argument for doing so? Many of Australia’s 3G networks can reasonably be described as 4G under international definitions.

“The iPad with WiFi + 4G is a device which performs in accordance with the descriptor ‘4G’ in terms of data transfer speed,” Apple argued in its brief, according to the Australian, which first reported on the document. “The descriptor ‘4G’ … conveys to consumers in Australia that the iPad with WiFi + 4G will deliver a superior level of service in terms of data transfer speed (consistent with accepted industry and regulatory use of that term), and not that the iPad with WiFi + 4G is compatible with any particular network technology promoted by a particular mobile service provider in Australia.”

In other words: No, the iPad with WiFi + 4G doesn’t support Australia’s true 4G LTE network, but it does support networks that are fast enough to be defined as 4G. So, no harm, no foul.

And as silly as that might sound, it’s technically true. When the International Telecommunications Union, which sets the marketing standards for wireless networks, expanded its definition of 4G service in December of 2010, it said this of the term 4G:

“As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as ’4G,’ although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed.”

And if that’s the definition, Apple argues, then there’s no reason to change the branding on the “iPad Wi-Fi + 4G” in Australia.

It’s all semantics.

But will a court buy that argument? We’ll find out in May, when the case is expected to be given a full hearing.

(Image courtesy of Someecards)

Of those, 3.2 million were iPhones.

Now, that’s significantly less than the 4.3 million the carrier sold last quarter.

But remember: Last quarter saw record-setting iPhone sales of 37 million for Apple, driven by the launch of the iPhone 4S. So, while sales have certainly slowed, they’re impressive nonetheless.

After all, they represent more than half of Verizon’s smartphone business. And consider this: Verzion sold just 2.1 million 4G LTE-enabled smartphones during the same period — a million less than the iPhone, which is still 3G.

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:

Its U.S. presence has become more common at the low end of the Android market and at prepaid carriers as the high-end market has been dominated by the likes of Samsung and Motorola.

LG is hoping to improve its fortunes, starting with the Viper, a $99 LTE phone for Sprint. Among the markets LG hopes to target is busy parents.

“This is really easy to use and still has a ton of features,” LG spokesman Chaz Abbott said, showing off the phone.

To highlight its family-friendliness, LG has come up with a storytelling app that lets parents record a fairy tale using their own photos, sounds and words — sort of a Mad Libs for the digital era.

The Life’s Good Fairytale will eventually be free for all Android phones, though Viper owners will get first crack at the app, which is slated to be available for them starting April 27.

LG is showing off the phone and app later today at an event in New York. Unfortunately for LG, the N.Y. launch party market is almost as crowded as the Android smartphone one. Its event is up against both T-Mobile’s HTC One S launch and a party for Spotify.

The Viper, too, will find itself challenged to stand out. It launches at the same time Sprint is pushing out the Galaxy Nexus, a more high-end phone that also runs on the carrier’s nascent LTE network.

LG faces similar challenges outside the U.S. amid a host of Android competitors at all segments of the market.

Globally, LG is counting on a new lineup that includes a quad-core phone, a “phablet” and a new-look mainstream line.

Abbott said that LG has yet to announce U.S. plans for any of these devices, which were shown off at February’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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.

The Finnish phone maker reiterated that customers can either download and install the patch or exchange their phone at an AT&T store. Nokia had originally said to expect the software update to be ready by Monday.

“Consumers now have the opportunity to update their AT&T version Nokia Lumia 900 software through Zune and Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac earlier than anticipated,” Nokia said in a statement.

All Lumia 900 customers, regardless of whether they have had problems, will get a $100 credit, Nokia U.S. head Chris Weber told AllThingsD earlier this week. Customers that buy or order a Lumia 900 before midnight PT on April 21 will also get the credit.

That effectively makes the device free, for now, since AT&T had been selling it for $99 with a new two-year contract.

Nokia has gotten plaudits for its prompt and generous dealing with the issues. However, the glitches still threaten to diminish the launch of a product seen as key to the ambitions of Nokia and Microsoft to take on the top smartphones and re-establish themselves as serious players in the U.S. market.

The issue was particularly unfortunate given the teaser campaign that Nokia had run, touting that the arrival of the Lumia 900 meant that “the Smartphone Beta Test was over.”

I’ve been using the iPhone since it came out in 2007. And while I’m satisfied with the way it works, I’m considering changing phones just to have something different—in particular a larger screen. What, in your opinion, are the best alternatives to the iPhone? I use mine primarily for email, along with checking stocks and weather.

A:

I would go with an Android phone, which has plenty of apps that are similar to what you are used to, and which typically these days come with larger screens, some exceeding 4.5 inches. There are always new models coming out, and there are so many that it can be hard to recommend one. But, in my tests, I’ve been especially impressed with the Samsung Galaxy models.

Q:

I’m a Verizon user currently on 3G and we’ve been promised 4G in our area by end of 2013. Do you have any indication Verizon is actually going to continue with LTE service or is this just a smoke screen? Are they really going to roll out new 4G (LTE) service or is this just chosen markets?

A:

I don’t know where you live, or when or whether Verizon Wireless plans to offer LTE, the fastest cellular data network, in your particular area. But I can say that, for Verizon, LTE is anything but a “smoke screen,” and I’d be stunned if the carrier didn’t continue rolling it out. Verizon has deployed it in over 200 markets and says it plans to cover 400 markets by the end of 2012. It’s a key part of the company’s competitive strategy.

Every carrier that deploys a new network starts with a few “chosen markets,” and there are always some areas left out, even years later, for various reasons. But from everything I know, Verizon is planning a broad national LTE network.

Q:

I run Windows 7 on a Mac using Parallels Desktop. Can I use the normal Windows update process to keep Windows 7 up to date or will it compromise the Windows setup through Parallels?

A:

Your virtual copy of Windows inside the Parallels software is designed to work just like Windows on a physical PC. That includes the Windows update process, which I have used many times on Windows via Parallels. This is separate from any updates made by Apple to the Mac operating system, or updates to the Parallels program itself.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com

Nokia U.S. chief Chris Weber told AllThingsD that the problem is a memory-management issue with the phone’s software, and is not tied to any hardware issues or to a flaw with AT&T’s network. The connection problem affects only a limited number of customers, Weber said.

Nokia has created a software fix, and all customers can swap their device at an AT&T store for an updated one or download a software update starting around April 16.

“We’re already manufacturing devices with the new software,” Weber said. “Those are being shipped to AT&T stores.”

The company is offering a $100 credit to all customers, regardless of whether they are encountering the problem. The $100 credit is also being offered to any customer who purchases a Lumia 900 before midnight PT April 21, effectively making the device free.

“The customer always comes first, and I think we’re showing it here,” Weber said in an interview.

Weber said the cost of the program depends on how many people purchase Lumia devices through April 21, and said that the expense was not the issue.

Nokia, he said, was focused on “how do we do something unprecedented for any inconvenience, (and) pleasantly surprise the customers.”

Nonetheless, the issue is clearly not the way the company hoped to launch what is designed to be a flagship product aimed at reestablishing the company as a major smartphone presence in the U.S.

“Obviously you don’t want these things to happen,” Weber said.

AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg noted in his review that he experienced some other issues with the 900, including problems loading Internet Explorer pages over Wi-Fi.

Weber hopes the company will be remembered more for how it handled the problem than for the issues themselves. And, he said, visits to six Chicago-area stores on Monday affirmed for him that enthusiasm for the Lumia 900 is strong.

“We’re seeing incredible customer excitement and buzz,” Weber said. “I think we have a very compelling device that customers are excited about.”

Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T are all counting on big sales for the device and have said they are putting unprecedented marketing behind its launch.

Oddly, though, the product went on sale on Easter Sunday, a day when most of the Microsoft and AT&T stores that carry the device were closed.

As for how such a significant issue could have made it through the company’s testing processes, Weber said, “That’s something we are doing a current investigation on.”

It’s particularly unfortunate given that one of Nokia’s marketing pitches for the Lumia 900 was an online and TV ad campaign saying that the Smartphone Beta Test was over, and encouraging existing smartphone owners to trade in their “beta” Androids and iPhones for a real smartphone.

“Pending regulatory approval, T-Mobile will receive spectrum from Leap in several markets in Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota, and Leap will receive spectrum from T-Mobile in Phoenix, AZ and Houston, Galveston and Bryan-College Station, TX,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “Additionally, the companies will exchange spectrum in Philadelphia, Wilmington, DE and Atlantic City, NJ as well as several markets in Texas and New Mexico.”

The move will help T-Mobile as it looks to modernize its network and add LTE service by next year, T-Mobile said.

T-Mobile said that the two companies jointly filed an application for the spectrum transfer with the Federal Communications Commission last week.

For its part, Leap said the move would also help with its LTE efforts. Leap sells wireless service under the Cricket brand name.

“As we have previously announced, we plan to cover approximately two-thirds of our current network footprint with LTE technology over the next two to three years,” Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson said in a statement. “In addition the transactions will allow us to re-align spectrum in key markets into contiguous channels thereby optimizing our delivery of wireless services.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Leap and T-Mobile have been mentioned (along with many other combinations) as potential deal partners in the wake of AT&T’s failed T-Mobile acquisition. However, Monday’s deal was a fairly small-scale arrangement limited to exchanging some frequencies.

Sprint has said it will offer 4G LTE service by June in six larger markets — Kansas City, Mo., Baltimore, Dallas, San Antonio, Atlanta and Houston — and that the service will cover 120 million people by the end of the year.

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