The Federal Communications Commission has finally approved the first 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone for sale in the US. Though the first LTE handset will be available through MetroPCS, the FCC has now opened the door for other LTE devices, including those for Verizon’s in-testing LTE network.

The Samsung SCH-r900 will be the first LTE phone to market in the US, which MetroPCS hopes to launch “this summer” according to InformationWeek. We’re still mostly in the dark as to where MetroPCS plans to build out its LTE network (the company said earlier this year that it was targeting a number of metro markets, but only named Las Vegas), but regardless, it looks like Sprint will soon have to share the 4G limelight.

One company that has been keeping the world slightly more up-to-date with its LTE buildout plans is Verizon. The carrier is already testing its network in Seattle and Boston, with around 30 more markets expected by the end of the year. Those markets, according to rumors from Engadget, include a number of airports, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Verizon apparently plans to make its first commercially available LTE devices laptop data cards, but the question many have been asking is whether Verizon’s LTE rollout could hail the launch of the Verizon iPhone. In addition to rampant rumors of a possible January release, Ars has heard from someone in the know that Verizon is already testing an LTE iPhone in Boston and that the official launch is dependent upon the mass expansion of the carrier’s 4G network. We hear an announcement could come as soon as September (a month when Apple traditionally holds an event to introduce new iPods), but we’re still filing this one in the rumor category. 

If you’re looking for a primer on LTE technology, check out our recent feature on the state of 4G.

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Witnessed the amazing birth of these pups yesterday afternoon. I’ve had so many dogs growing up. But this is really the first time I was actually…

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Free Press is still up in arms over what the reform group calls the Federal Communications Commission’s “back room” meetings with big corporations to cut a deal on net neutrality rules.

“Despite public outrage and repeated promises of transparency, the FCC continues to meet behind closed doors with the largest companies to negotiate a secret deal that would short circuit public participation in policymaking that will shape the Internet for a generation,” declared Free Press’s Josh Silver in a message just sent to us. “The great irony here is that the FCC’s ‘transparency’ policy is part of the negotiations behind closed doors.”

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iPhone users may be notorious data hogs that have done nothing but pillage and plunder AT&T’s network, but it’s Verizon’s smartphone users who consume the most data per month. That’s according Validas (a company that optimizes wireless phone bills), which analyzed 20,000 wireless bills between January and May 2010 to find that Verizon smartphone users consume more data than iPhone users at a ratio of 1.25 to 1.

According to Validas, the average data consumption for non-Blackberry Verizon smartphones was 421MB per month, compared to the 338MB per month consumed by AT&T iPhone users. 11 percent of Verizon subscribers use between 500MB and 1GB per month, while only 5.6 percent of iPhone users do the same. In fact, although many iPhone users complained when AT&T recently put a 2GB data cap on its subscribers, only 1.6 percent of iPhone users used that much bandwidth according to Validas’ data, compared to 4 percent of Verizon smartphone users.

(The company said it excluded Blackberrys from its analysis thanks to RIM’s “data compression techniques,” saying that the devices “do not follow similar data consumption patterns to those of iPhones and other Smartphones.”)

iPhones aside, Validas says that the number of smartphone users who pay for data packages increased over the last year from 42 percent to 53 percent of total wireless subscribers in the US. The mean number of megabytes (or is that the BIGGER EM-BEES?) downloaded per user went up as well, from 96.8MB to 145.8MB. Verizon’s customers were responsible for the largest increase in mean data usage among the four major US carriers, with T-Mobile coming in second and AT&T coming in third. Sprint saw a decrease in mean data usage largely because it gained new data customers that consumed 50MB or less.

This kind of analysis doesn’t take into account some of the efforts cell carriers are making to reduce their data traffic, such as AT&T’s WiFi “hot zones” that are specifically targeted toward heavy 3G-using markets. In fact, Validas might even encourage users to look into such solutions, as it would help users cut down on data overages and the resulting fees.

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I asked folks at Team Carnival about People You Want To See Less On TV and I’ve got six bloggers with their choices:

Mara thinks there’s a…

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Based on the book by Nelson Johnson, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, HBO’s upcoming program, Boardwalk…

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AT&T may not be able to expand its 3G network capacity at lightning speeds, but it can at least expand its availability of free WiFi hotspots in order to lighten the 3G data load. The company announced Monday that it was rolling out its WiFi “hotzones” to more cities after having launched them in New York City earlier this year, focusing on areas with the heaviest 3G traffic.

Charlotte, North Carolina will be the next city to pilot AT&T’s hotzones. The WiFi coverage will extend along South Brevard Street near the NASCAR Hall of Fame Plaza to East Trade Street, as well as the Lynx light rail. Similar coverage will be coming to Chicago as well in the “coming weeks,” said AT&T, though the company did not elaborate on which parts of the city would be included.

When AT&T first introduced the hotzones in NYC in May, the carrier said it was focusing on areas where there was consistently high 3G traffic and mobile data usage. That test has apparently worked well—after all, AT&T’s data network is notoriously bad in NYC, so any reprieve would be welcome. Of course, AT&T’s subscribers would like for the actual data network to get a boost everywhere, but for now, the hotzones will have to stand in while AT&T expands its infrastructure.

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San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is putting a brave face on the news that big wireless is suing the city over its new cell phone radiation labeling ordinance.

“I am disappointed that the association representing the wireless communication industry has decided to challenge our landmark consumer information law in court,” Newsom declared on Friday, calling it “a modest, common sense measure which merely takes information already made available by these companies and makes it more accessible and easier to find by the point-of-sale consumer.”

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Recycled TV Shows…they are rampant and everywhere. So much so that if recycling these shows would do a lot for the Earth’s carbon footprint, then…

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