Fortunately for me, the topics were largely familiar, as several were topics I had written about, including layoffs at Nokia, Microsoft’s preview version of Windows 8, and the impact of the iPhone on Sprint.

Here’s a video of the show. It’s 45 minutes, but Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane and Iyaz Akhtar are a lot of fun. Plus, if you watch until the “randomizer” segment at the end, you will get to see this super crazy robotic pack mule the Army has cooked up:

As part of its fourth-quarter earnings report, Sprint disclosed on Wednesday that it sold 1.8 million iPhones during its first quarter carrying the Apple smartphone.

Of those, 40 percent of the sales were to new customers, Sprint said in a slide prepared for its earnings conference call.

Sprint highlighted a range of devices, but I’ve circled the one that I think had the biggest impact.

For the three months ended Dec. 31, Sprint lost $1.3 billion, or 43 cents per share, on revenue of $8.7 billion. That compares to a loss of $929 million, or 31 cents per share, on revenue of $8.3 billion for the same quarter a year earlier. It’s also a much wider loss than in the prior quarter.

“Our strong fourth quarter performance illustrates the power of matching iconic devices like the iPhone with our simple, unlimited plans and industry-leading customer experience,” CEO Dan Hesse said in a statement. “During the past year, Sprint added more than 5 million net new customers and grew wireless service revenue by more than 5 percent, including 17 percent for the Sprint platform. This momentum gives us confidence as we execute our Network Vision upgrade and 4G LTE roll-out.”

The company added more than 1.6 million customers overall during the quarter, including both prepaid, wholesale and contract customers.

Sprint also added two more cities — Baltimore and its hometown of Kansas City — to the roster of launch markets for the company’s LTE service, which will begin around midyear. It will also launch service in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Atlanta at that time.

The Optik, for Sprint, will sell for $99 with a two-year contract, or $349 without a contract. It runs the Honeycomb version of Android, packs a dual-core Qualcomm chip, front and rear cameras and a 7-inch screen.

ZTE has laid out some ambitious goals, both globally and in North America. The company says it wants to become a player in hotspots, phones and tablets here.

“That’s our strategy this year,” ZTE USA chief Lixin Cheng told AllThingsD last month.

In a statement on Thursday, Cheng said that the Optik should make tablets available to a new range of customers.

Whether it can do that, or will instead just become one of many low-cost Android tablets, remains to be seen.

Shares were down almost 30 percent, at $7.24 in afternoon trading Tuesday after the consumer-electronics retailer said it expected earnings between 11 cents and 13 cents a share, while analysts polled by Thomson Reuters most recently predicted 37 cents a share.

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Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey said on Monday that he had drafted a bill requiring device makers and others to inform consumers of what software is installed or added to their phones.

The move comes after last year’s uproar surrounding Carrier IQ software installed on various devices on behalf of cellular providers.

“Consumers have the right to know and to say no to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said in a statement.

A number of carriers and device makers have backed away from supporting or using Carrier IQ, including Apple and Sprint. Carrier IQ has also defended its practices.

As drafted, the bill would require consumers to be notified when they buy a device about what monitoring software is installed; and to be told if the device maker, carrier or operating-system provider later installs such software, or if a downloaded app also includes tracking software.

Consumers would be told what type of information is collected, how it will be used and to whom it is provided. Cellphone owners would have to give consent, and any parties getting the information would be required to have policies in place to protect the information.

I’ve sent notes to the major carriers, device makers and mobile operating system vendors to see if they have anything to say about the new bill. A representative of the CTIA, a cellphone industry trade association, said the group had no position or comment.

The carrier, which had charged $25 a month for 2GB of data, will now offer 3GB for $30 a month. Its entry-level data plan, which was $15 for 200 megabytes, will shift to $20 for 300MB, while its $45 high-end 4GB plan (which allows tethering to another device) will now be $50 for 5GB.

Existing customers will be able to keep their current data plan, even if they upgrade their phones, but can also opt to switch to one of the new plans.

AT&T says the change reflects the ever-increasing amounts of data that customers are consuming, noting that data usage is up 40 percent in the past year. The company expects data use to continue to rise as the carrier offers its new high-speed LTE network in more cities.

AT&T’s primary rival, Verizon, charges $30 for 2GB of data, though it has been running a “double your data” promotion offering 4G customers 4GB of data for that price.

Customers, meanwhile, are still trying to get a handle on just how much data they are using, now that most of the major carriers have moved away from fully unlimited plans.

Sprint still offers unlimited plans on phones, while Verizon and AT&T have tiered plans with overage charges and T-Mobile throttles the speed of users once they hit a certain level of paid data use.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks Windows Phone with Ryan Seacrest at CES

Myerson took a screenshot of the pages and included them in a memo to the entire Windows Phone team.

“We have an awareness problem,” Myerson told AllThingsD in his first extended interview since he replaced Andy Lees as overall head of the Windows Phone business in December.

CEO Steve Ballmer has praised the work the Windows Phone team has done, but also noted that sales haven’t been what he would have hoped.

“People just don’t know about Windows Phone and if it could be for them and if they should consider it,” Myerson said. “When people try it, they generally love it.”

Myerson didn’t offer a ton of details on how Microsoft will go about getting people more familiar with Windows Phone, but said that is his first objective.

“We know we need to do something new and different,” Myerson said.

Microsoft has also had a challenge getting much love from either Sprint or Verizon. Redmond was late with support for their CDMA networks and both have offered only the barest of Windows Phone lineups.

“We’re working on a relationship with both of them,” Myerson said. Asked whether the ill-fated Kin project might have soured Verizon on Microsoft, he said simply that the company needed a partnership with Verizon in which both parties see benefit. “It’s important in the U.S. that we do that.”

The big news for Microsoft at the Consumer Electronics Show, of course, was the announcement by Nokia that it is readying the Lumia 900, an LTE-based Windows Phone, exclusively for AT&T. However, Nokia and AT&T declined to comment on when the phone would arrive beyond saying it would be “in the coming months.”

T-Mobile is also starting this week to sell the Lumia 710, the entry-level model in Nokia’s lineup.

Microsoft is also working on the next major release of Windows Phone, though Myerson wouldn’t offer any details. Word on what’s in that release might not even come at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, suggesting that last fall’s Mango release (or a minor update to it) will be at the core of Windows Phones for a while.

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The move also will result in four top executives leaving the company, according to a memo from CEO Dan Hesse.

“As the wireless market has evolved, the lines between consumers and businesses have blurred,” Hesse said in the memo, which was first reported by Reuters. “Because of the enormous investments we’re making this year in Network Vision and in the iPhone, we need to consistently be looking for ways to be more efficient.”

Leaving the company are divisional presidents Bob Johnson and Danny Bowman and senior VPs Chris Rogers and John Carney.

All sales will now report to Paget Alves, with all consumer and business marketing being headed by Bill Malloy. Sprint’s machine-to-machine business will switch over to wholesale unit president Matt Carter.

A Sprint representative confirmed the moves and the authenticity of the memo.

Although Sprint got its way in seeing AT&T’s efforts to buy T-Mobile derailed, the company faces plenty of hurdles of its own, and remains a distant No. 3 to AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

The company had placed a big bet on being first to market with a high-speed 4G network, choosing WiMax. However, with LTE offering higher speeds and more ubiquitous adoption, the carrier is now shifting gears and aiming to build an LTE network, as well.

Sprint said this week that it will launch by midyear in several southern U.S. cities, but it now trails both AT&T and Verizon in the LTE race.

Also, as paidContent’s Tom Krazit notes, the Sprint Web site could do with a bit of business/consumer consolidation, too. The screenshot below is what folks see when going to Sprint.com:

Updated at 1:40 pm PT to include confirmation of the moves by a Sprint representative.

“For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off,” Hesse said, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report. The report also said the carrier was slowing the speeds of about 1 percent of its most data-hungry customers.

However, in a blog post on Friday, the carrier insisted that it is not slowing down the speeds of any of its customers on traditional postpaid contract plans.

“Reports that Sprint throttles the top one percent of data users are false,” Sprint said in the post. “At yesterday’s investor conference, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was referring to Sprint’s right to terminate service of data abusers who violate Sprint’s terms and conditions.”

Hesse’s comments raised a lot of eyebrows given that Sprint has spent a fortune on ads reminding Americans that it is not charging overages like AT&T or Verizon Wireless, nor is it slowing the speeds of those who use a lot of data, as does T-Mobile USA.

Sprint said it contacts customers doing things like using a ton of off-network data or tethering their devices, but says it reserves the right to terminate customers that don’t change that behavior. “Consistent with our advertising, engaging in such uses will not result in throttling for customers on unlimited data-included plans for phones.”

Also, as we’ve reported, the company is exploring using so-called throttling on its Virgin Mobile prepaid brand.

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.

Also getting the service are Austin; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Orlando; Phoenix; Raleigh, N.C.; and San Diego, Calif.

That’s in addition to the 15 other markets in which AT&T launched LTE last year. Of course, AT&T still trails Verizon, which has coverage in 190 markets, with service available to more than 200 million people.

Sprint, meanwhile, has much of the country covered with an alternate 4G technology, WiMax. However, Sprint has announced plans to launch an LTE network of its own later this year.

Constrained by spectrum, T-Mobile USA has focused on rolling out ever-faster variants of its 3G network. The company had hoped a merger with AT&T would solve its problems, but is now scrambling for other options since that deal collapsed.

Update, 1 p.m.: In a Twitter posting, Sprint noted on Wednesday that it plans to launch its LTE service in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio by mid-year.

On Wednesday, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said Verizon Wireless sold 4.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter — more than double the number it sold in the third quarter. And today, analysts are taking that to mean Apple probably sold quite a few more iPhones than they were expecting it to.

Back in December, for example, BTIG’s Walter Piecyk (registration required for link) predicted Apple would sell 30 million iPhones in the December quarter. Now he figures it will sell a record 35 million, thanks to the particularly strong demand in the U.S., showcased by the Verizon number Shammo disclosed yesterday. His rationale: If Verizon’s iPhone sales are that high, then so are AT&T’s and Sprint’s, as well.

“Yesterday, Verizon disclosed it had sold 4.2 million iPhones which is above our estimate of 3.75 million and in early December AT&T referenced strong iPhone sales at the UBS conference which we now estimate translates to sales of 7.0 million iPhones, which was above our estimate of 5.25 million,” Piecyk explains. “We are also raising our estimate for Sprint to over 2.0 million from our prior estimate of 1.75 million. This adds up to more than 13 million iPhones sold in the United States in calendar Q4 2011, up from our August estimate of 10 million.”

That’s a big number, one that means the U.S. will represent almost 40 percent of iPhone sales in the quarter, a big spike over the quarter prior, when the U.S. represented about 26 percent of iPhone sales.

And if it’s in the right ballpark, Piecyk says it means Apple could be on track to sell 125 million iPhones in calendar 2012 — 17 percent more than his earlier prediction of 107 million.

Getting FCC clearance is a condition of a 15-year fourth-generation spectrum-and-equipment-sharing accord between the two companies. LightSquared has said the Sprint accord will help it save $13 billion through the end of this decade.

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The wireless company said on its Web site earlier today that the fee will go toward costs incurred by processing individual online or phone payments — in other words, actual customer service representatives handling telephone transactions.

Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, or to an inquiry about how many of its customers currently pay their bills online or over the phone.

One fed-up user has already launched a fledgling petition drive aimed at getting Verizon to reverse course.

Sprint does not currently charge its customers to pay bills online, though it notes, as other wireless providers do, that if you pay through your bank, you could incur charges from that financial institution. AT&T also doesn’t charge customers for monthly online bill payments, nor does T-Mobile, though T-Mobile notes that certain types of accounts, such as T-Mobile Monthly4G (prepaid) and certain business and government accounts, aren’t eligible for paperless payment. T-Mobile customers are actually encouraged to make online payments, as they’re charged a $5 processing fee for payments made over the phone through a customer service representative.

(Image courtesy of EMay78/Flickr)

Republic’s thesis is that with Wi-Fi networks so plentiful, most people only occasionally need cellular networks, and can do most of their calling, texting and surfing over Wi-Fi. The carrier’s initial service plan promised unlimited calling and data use, but said that it was encouraging customers to use Wi-Fi for most of their needs and that those who exceeded certain usage could find themselves looking elsewhere for service.

Republic still wants its users to rely on Wi-Fi, but it is no longer threatening to cut them off if they use cellular networks too much.

“From today, republic wireless is all-in,” the company said in a blog post last week. “We’re eliminating all usage thresholds, and with them the concern some of you have expressed about losing your membership for maintaining too large a cellular footprint.”

Even with the move, Republic Wireless still probably isn’t for everyone. It offers a single basic Android phone, and users must pay for that phone upfront. The phone uses custom software on top of Android to route things over Wi-Fi whenever possible, and uses Sprint’s 3G network when cellular service is needed.

Republic also notes that the service remains in beta, promising that the service will remain unlimited during the beta phase.

“Everyone who has purchased or purchases a phone during beta will be guaranteed the opportunity to enjoy unlimited service, without fear of cancellation, until the end of beta,” Republic said. “We won’t end beta until we either achieve economic sustainability or become convinced that doing so is impossible. In the event that we end beta with a decision to abandon or change our unlimited offering, we’ll give you the option of canceling for a full refund for your device at that time.”

Republic will keep — at least for now — a tool that shows users how much of their data and voice use is on Wi-Fi versus cellular, relative to how others are using their devices. It also plans to keep a clause that could remove users for “unacceptable use” beyond what is appropriate for a personal smartphone, though it says it may revise its language on that term, as well.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

Shares of Sprint are rallying by about 6 percent in after-hours trading, on word that AT&T has abandoned its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile.

That’s really only a jump of 13 cents per share — a figure that says a lot about the pickle in which Sprint remains, despite the fact that its arguments against the AT&T-T-Mobile combination have prevailed.

Sprint no longer has to deal with the threat of a merged AT&T-T-Mobile. But it still has to cope with the fact that it is a distant No. 3 to AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And, after betting on a different 4G technology, the company also has to bring up an entirely new network, all while trying to turn off its older Nextel network.

Still, there is some cause for celebration, an opportunity that Sprint did not let go to waste.

“From the beginning, Sprint has stood with consumers who spoke loudly and clearly that AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile would create an undeniable duopoly that would have resulted in higher prices, less innovation and fewer choices for the American consumer,” Sprint said today in a statement, in which it also praised federal regulators for their opposition to the deal.

Sprint and its CEO, Dan Hesse, had opposed the deal mightily before government regulators and Congress, and in the court of public opinion, investing a lot of political capital in the process.

That said, the deal’s failure doesn’t exactly help Sprint out of the messy spot it’s in.

For one thing, Sprint is still losing money. In its most recent quarter, it booked a $301 million loss on revenue of $8.3 billion, which was an improvement over the prior year’s period. On the bright side, it added 1.3 million customers — and that was before it had Apple’s iPhone in its stores to help entice new customers.

But while having the iPhone is nice, it’s not helping the bottom line. As The Wall Street Journal reported in October, Sprint has committed to buy more than 30 million iPhones, which will cost it as much as $20 billion over time, and on which it expects to lose money through at least 2014.

And that’s not even the half of it. Sprint also plans to spend big to build a new LTE network in 2012, and currently relies on WiMax as its 4G technology. With $5 billion in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet as of the end of December, Hesse said, the company will have to go to the credit markets and borrow to get the build-out done.

Meanwhile, its relationship with the wireless broadband concern Clearwire isn’t exactly helping. Clearwire is the provider of Sprint’s 4G technology, and relies heavily on Sprint for its funding. By using Clearwire’s WiMax technology, Sprint was first to the market with 4G, something that gave it an early advantage over its rivals. But that the move also left Sprint alone as both AT&T and T-Mobile Verizon joined numerous carriers in Europe in moving to a rival 4G technology, known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE.

Had Sprint not started the move to LTE, it likely would have faced an increasingly tough time getting device makers to bring out their latest and greatest devices for a WiMax standard that few other carriers were adopting.

So for Sprint, while one important battle is won, the war to turn the company around — and it will be a tough one — is far from over, and far from victory.

Update: Initially I identified T-Mobile as going launching an LTE network, which it’s not. I meant to say Verizon. Sorry about that.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

While the carrier gets valuable spectrum, a roaming agreement and $3 billion in cash, the future of the No. 4 U.S. carrier is cloudier than ever, now that AT&T has called off its planned purchase.

T-Mobile has been operating as something of a lame duck since AT&T first proposed its $39 billion acquisition in March. Consumers, employees and potential partners have all been writing the carrier off, assuming that it would soon be swallowed up by its far-larger rival.

The abrupt turn of events will send T-Mobile and its parent company back to the drawing board, which will include soliciting new buyers, figuring out a strategy for its next-generation network and coming up with some inducements to avoid losing even more customers.

The blow of the breakup is only softened by the fact that the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier will be handed a huge chunk of spending money to ride out the near-term bumps.

As T-Mobile looks to come up with Plan B, here are some potential options:

Spectrum sharing: As part of the breakup, AT&T has entered a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom. Terms of the agreement have not yet been shared, but there could be some pretty compelling outcomes.

In Europe, it is common for carriers to share spectrum and even the cost of maintaining the network and towers. From the consumer’s perspective, it’s two different networks and two different brands. The carriers only end up competing on handset offerings, price and features — not coverage.

Another merger: T-Mobile will entertain any and all offers. Most recently, Dish said it was interested in partnering with T-Mobile if its merger with AT&T fell apart. Other candidates could include Sprint, or other companies from the media industry that are always sniffing around wireless, such as cable operators.

A bid from a company like Google or Microsoft would definitely make things interesting. While both are less likely candidates, they could use the network to push their agenda, including handsets and applications.

A total overhaul: The $4 billion breakup fee could give Deutsche Telekom the confidence to take another shot at the U.S. market. Probably not, but there’s always a chance. The company’s roots have been entrepreneurial and scrappy, but it’s been awhile since it has been able to make an impact on the market.

Worst-case scenario: Deutsche Telekom passes out the cash as a dividend to stockholders. It has always leaned on the U.S. as a moneymaker, and this could be no exception.

The 4G conundrum: Regardless, T-Mobile still does not have enough spectrum to update its network to the next generation. It may gain access to AT&T’s 4G network as part of the roaming agreement with AT&T, but both companies will arguably need more spectrum to keep up with demand.

The only two options will be to partner with Clearwire or LightSquared, or to wait until the next government auction. Both Clearwire and LightSquared are always in need of more cash, and have their difficulties. A deal with Clearwire would be additionally complicated by the fact that Sprint owns nearly half of the company.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

“People have a fundamental right to control their private information,” Franken said in a statement posted to his Web site. “After reading the companies’ responses, I’m still concerned that this right is not being respected.”

Franken said he is concerned that the average user of a phone running Carrier IQ’s software has no idea what information is being collected and who is getting it, or even the fact the software is running at all.

“I’m also bothered by the software’s ability to capture the contents of our online searches — even when users wish to encrypt them,” Franken said. “So there are still many questions to be answered here and things that need to be fixed.”

In addition to his statements, Franken’s office also released the responses from Carrier IQ, AT&T, Sprint, Samsung, and HTC. The senator says he still hopes to hear from T-Mobile and Motorola by Tuesday.

Sprint, for example, said it began installing the software on devices in 2006 and has put it on about 26 million devices, though only 5 percent of those phones are being asked to send data at any given time. AT&T said the software is installed on about 1 percent of its devices, or 900,000 phones, with 575,000 of those reporting data at any given time.

The carrier noted it has not used the software to profile customers or deliver ads but only to certify devices prior to launch and to review performance of the device and network after launch.

There’s a lot of other interesting bits of data in the response letters, each of which is posted as a PDF on Franken’s site.

Carrier IQ, which sent a response letter to Franken, has also tried to clear the air in interviews and in meetings with both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

Update: Sprint said on Friday that it has decided to stop collecting data using the software.

“We have weighed customer concerns and we have disabled use of the tool so that diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected,” Sprint said in a statement. “At Sprint, we work hard to earn the trust of our customers and believe this course of action is in the best interest of our business and customers.”

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

Sprint and the league didn’t disclose the size of the deal, though I am told it is fair to say that it is “in the millions” of dollars. Sprint replaces T-Mobile USA, which had been the league’s partner from 2005 until the end of last season.

As part of the pact, Sprint will offer its subscribers a new Sprint NBA Mobile app that will offer in-game and post-game video highlights, radio broadcasts of every game (including home and away radio broadcasts) as well as the usual assortment of news, scores and stats. Sprint says the app should be ready for Android by the time the delayed season tips off later this month. An iPhone version should be available at some point, though it may not have the exact same features.

Sprint subscribers who want even more basketball can get a 20 percent discount on the NBA’s mobile “League Pass,” which offers up to 40 out-of-market games per week.

The two companies on Monday filed a joint motion to stay their pending federal court case until at least January. The move clearly wasn’t AT&T’s idea, however. The Justice Department said last week it would seek a stay in the case given that AT&T had pulled its paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission.

“If approved by the court, all pretrial and trial deadlines, including depositions and discovery, would be cancelled and a status conference would be held before the court on Jan. 18,” the Justice Department said in a statement. The government said that under the joint plan, AT&T will file a status report with the court by noon on Jan. 12 indicating “whether they intend to proceed with the transaction at issue in the litigation, whether they intend to proceed with another transaction, the status of related proceedings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and their plans and timetable for seeking any necessary approval from the FCC.”

In a statement on Monday, AT&T said it is working with T-Mobile on “whether and how” to proceed with the deal.

“AT&T is committed to working with Deutsche Telekom to find a solution that is in the best interests of our respective customers, shareholders and employees,” the company said. “We are actively considering whether and how to revise our current transaction to achieve the necessary regulatory approvals so that we can deliver the capacity enhancements and improved customer service that can only be derived from combining our two companies’ wireless assets.”

Until now, AT&T has plowed full steam ahead with the proposed $39 billion deal, despite objections from a long list of competitors and regulators, including the FCC, DOJ, Sprint and C Spire Wireless (formerly known as Cellular South).

Once again, the magazine has found that, when it comes to the national wireless carriers, consumers are most satisfied with Verizon and least so with AT&T.

Potentially more interesting was that the annual survey found that three smaller carriers — U.S. Cellular, Credo and Consumer Cellular — all scored higher than any of the Big 4 wireless providers. Several prepaid brands, including TracFone and Straight Talk, also scored higher than the big brands.

“Our survey indicates that subscribers to prepaid and smaller standard-service providers are happiest overall with their cell-phone service,” Consumer Reports electronics editor Paul Reynolds said in a blog posting. “However, these carriers aren’t for everyone. Some are only regional, and prepaid carriers tend to offer few or no smart phones.The major carriers are still leading options for many consumers, and we found they ranged widely in how well they satisfied their customers.”

Also notable was the fact that the national carriers achieved higher scores for their prepaid service than they did among their traditional contract-based customers.

The magazine also called out new “value” pricing plans from T-Mobile which allow even contract customers to get their phones unsubsidized in exchange for a lower fee. Though the plans are a bit hard to wrap one’s head around, they can be money savers over time.

Update: AT&T said it will use the survey as a learning opportunity, but stressed the investments the company has been making.

“While we’ll of course evaluate and learn from the Consumer Reports survey, we made significant progress in our network in 2011 including a 25 percent improvement 3G dropped call performance, 48,000 network improvements (more capacity, new cell sites, faster data speeds, and better connections), and many billions of dollars in capital investment to continue to improve our network,” the company said in a statement to AllThingsD. AT&T also contends that its service would benefit further if it were allowed to buy T-Mobile, a deal that has been opposed by U.S. regulators.

The findings of a Connecticut-based systems administrator have sparked alarm in millions of smartphone users, after security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a video showing how a cellphone software company has the ability to log users’ Web searches and keystrokes.

The technology, made by Carrier IQ, is currently deployed on more than 150 million devices worldwide.

Research In Motion and HTC — the maker of the phone targeted in the security demo — have issued statements denying that Carrier IQ is preinstalled on their devices. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has sent a letter to Carrier IQ seeking more information on what the software does.

Carrier IQ has told AllThingsD that while its software has the ability to receive a tremendous amount of information, some of which could be relayed to a carrier for diagnostics purposes, the company doesn’t log keystrokes and the software is not being used to gather intelligence about the phone’s user.

But while we wait for more answers, what’s a smartphone user to do?

Google Android Phones: If you’re wondering whether your Google Android phone might have Carrier IQ installed on it, Eckhart, the researcher behind all of this, points people to a Logging Test app that he claims can be used to verify “what logging is being done on your phone and where the data is going to.” If successfully installed — which we hear may take some finagling, including emailing the app link to yourself to access it, and “rooting” your phone first — the $1 app is meant to detect Carrier IQ and remove it.

According to his blog post, Eckhart has tested this app on the HTC Evo 3D phone; he believes it works on the Sprint Evo 4G and HTC Thunderbolt, as well.

But since the Google Android operating system runs on devices from multiple manufacturers, it is not known at this point which models could be running Carrier IQ and which ones are not.

It should be noted that some manufacturers have denied responsibility for the app; HTC, for example, has put the blame on wireless carriers, and basically advises HTC phone owners to contact their carriers. The company did add it was looking into an option for allowing its customers to opt out of the Carrier IQ application, but no further details were given beyond that.

Sprint has not yet responded to my inquiry as to whether the wireless company was actively involved in the installation of Carrier IQ, or how users might disable such applications on Sprint. AT&T said it uses Carrier IQ solely to improve its network performance; Verizon claims not to use it at all, although my colleague John Paczkowski reports that may not be the case.

RIM BlackBerrys: While RIM hasn’t explicitly pointed to wireless carriers as HTC did, the BlackBerry maker also denies any involvement with Carrier IQ, stating “RIM does not pre-install the CarrierIQ app on BlackBerry smartphones or authorize its carrier partners to install the CarrierIQ app before sales or distribution.”

However, the next part of RIM’s statement on the BlackBerry developers forum indicates that it’s possible Carrier IQ could live on a BlackBerry device.

According to BlackBerry Development Advisor Mark Sohm: “If the Carrier IQ application is present on a BlackBerry smartphone, it does not mean that the Carrier IQ application has ‘hacked’ the BlackBerry platform. It means that either the BlackBerry smartphone user or the user’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server admin explicitly installed the application and authorized it to run.”

In other words, if it’s on your phone, you may have granted it access in some way, shape, form or click of your Qwerty keypad.

Apple iPhones: Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD declaring that the company stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5, its latest version of mobile software, and plans to remove it from future mobile software updates, too.

But what if you’re running an earlier version of iOS on your iPhone and are worried about where your data is going? Apparently, you can opt out of having your usage data submitted for diagnostics. To do that, go to to Settings → General → About → Diagnostics & Usage. Select “Don’t Send.”

More info to come as I get it.

Related Posts on Carrier IQ:

• Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring
• Carrier IQ: How to Hack Back Your Phone
  
• Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Monitors Service Messages, Ignores Other Data
• Apple: We Stopped Supporting Carrier IQ With iOS 5
• RIM, HTC, Google on Carrier IQ: Blame the Carriers
• Carrier IQ Improves My Wireless Service by Logging My Keystrokes? Please Explain.

Full Carrier IQ Coverage »