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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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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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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Happy news for Canadian movie lovers. Netflix has announced that it’s setting up a new Internet-only service for the Canadian market. The innovation marks the company’s first experiment with solo streaming. Here in the US the service’s selling point is DVDs by mail, of course, but lots of Netflix’s 13 million subscribers also watch movies via its website.

And it looks like this is just the beginning of the Netflix international empire, as the company’s co-founder Reed Hastings disclosed in 2009.

“Looking at next year,” Hastings confided, “given our success to date on streaming with domestic consumers, with global studios and with global CE companies, we are planning our first international effort in the second half of 2010, which would include streaming but not DVD. Our basic approach is to start small, prove out our model and then expand into other countries one by one. For competitive reasons, we won’t be more specific at this time about which market is first in our expansion.”

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The nation is one step nearer to a law that would ban Federal prisoners from using mobile phones. The House of Representatives has approved Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) Cell Phone Contraband Act (S. 1749) on Tuesday, which classifies any cell phone used by an inmate as a “prohibited object.”

The Senate has also passed the bill, which received praise from the wireless industry. “We strongly oppose prisoners having access to contraband phones and believe inmates, and anyone who supplies them with a device, should be severely punished,” declared CTIA – the Wireless Association.

The group is doubtless happy that the bill doesn’t approve cell phone jamming technology, which CTIA also strongly opposes. That’s the bailiwick of Senator Kay Hutchison (R-TX), whose Safe Prisons Communications Act would permit “targeted interference” against mobiles in prison. The bill passed the Senate in October.

The main motive for these laws is to keep prisons secure. But Feinstein’s legislation also addresses concerns that cell phones are sometimes smuggled into prisons because of the high cost of landline access in these facilities. That was the logic of Rep. Bobby Rush’s (D-IL) Family Telephone Connection Protection Act (H.R. 1133).

Rush’s bill noted that per-minute charges in some facilities go as high as $1 with a $3.95 service or connection charge. Many prisons limit communications to collect calling.

“Excessive inmate telephone service rates thus weaken the family and community ties that are necessary for successful reentry into society by persons who were formerly incarcerated and the reduction in crime resulting from successful reentry,” the bill opined. It would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to regulate rates.

Feinstein’s proposed law doesn’t go that far. But it does require the Comptroller General to issue a report to Congress on ways to “lower telephone costs to inmates and their families, while still maintaining sufficient security.”

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It’s being billed as “the nation’s first wholesale-only integrated wireless broadband and satellite network.” LightSquared is a new, coast-to-coast 4G-LTE wireless broadband operation backed up by satellite coverage. The company will provide wholesale wireless to ISPs and cable operators—even device makers, content providers, and just about anybody else.

And the venture will do so as “first truly open and net neutral wireless network,” according to LightSquared’s elatedly worded press release, with build-out expected to produce over 100,000 “direct and indirect private sector jobs within five years.”

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The feedback is in on the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed “third way” net neutrality proposal, and few stakeholders are willing to give any ground in the matter. The cable companies, telcos, and their allies insist that the idea will kill investment. On the other side of the fence, online content providers say that without common carrier style protections, the ISPs will pick and choose winners and losers on the ‘Net.

Reclassification of ISPs as common carriers would “cram today’s broadband Internet access providers into an ill-fitting 20th century regulatory silo,” warns AT&T, and would “present risks and harms that dwarf any putative benefits, and would all but scuttle the Administration’s ambitious broadband agenda.” The agency’s National Broadband Plan calls for policies that encourage billions more in private sector investment in ISP networks.

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We’re picking up quite a bit of static between the wireless industry and the Federal Communications Commission over the concept of mobile phone “bill shock,” and how many consumers have actually been jolted by an unexpectedly high wireless bill.  CTIA – the Wireless Association calls the FCC’s latest data on the question ”Inflammatory” and

“an orchestrated ’solution’ in search of a problem.”

But the Commission isn’t taking these charges lying down. “Denying Bill Shock by Distorting the Facts,” the agency titled its response on the FCC’s official blog.

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