Most carriers live by the maxim “You can never have enough spectrum.” Now the FCC has adopted a variant: “You can never sell enough spectrum”. Flush from the $19.6 billion 700 MHz auction, the FCC is now examining what other parts of the electromagnetic rainbow it can tap for commercial wireless use. The two prime candidates are new Advanced Wireless Service licenses and, of course, the highly controversial ‘white spaces’ between broadcast channels.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin has scheduled a vote over whether to auction off another 25 MHz of the upper AWS band, but not for the traditional voice and data services of the original AWS sale. Instead, Martin is proposing the winner of said auction would begin an immediate and aggressive roll-out of a nationwide broadband network AND offer service gratis to the end customer. It sounds very similar to the now defunct plans of several muni-Wi-Fi providers, except this would require the operator to actually buy the airwaves it uses. It may sound far-fetched but the FCC has already gotten proposals from at least one company to offer just such a service. M2Z apparently thought enough of the free business model that it took the FCC to court when it rejected its request for the license.

Google founder Larry Page was in Washington this week lobbying the FCC, Congress and anyone else that would listen about the virtues of white space between the 700 MHz spectrum–how it would be an optimal place to shove a new broadband network. The FCC doesn’t appear to be anywhere near a decision on what to do with these nooks between television broadcast channels. It does, however, have the National Association of Broadcasters breathing down its neck to kill such a proposal, while Google pushes for the opposite. Meanwhile it continues to test white space devices, all of which seem to work in the lab, but not necessarily outside of it.

Nokia’s quest to gain greater market share in the U.S. got a welcome boost this week. T-Mobile announced it would launch four new Nokia feature phones this month. Avian securities estimated Nokia has 18% of T-Mobile’s “shelf space”, but that percentage would start inching up in June. T-Mobile is the smallest Tier I operator in the U.S. so Nokifying it handset portfolio won’t have a tremendous impact, but with new CDMA handsets emerging and its support for the new AWS bands, Nokia may see its market share percentages inch up a few points. NPD had Nokia with a No. 4 market share at 8% in Q1, still far behind No. 3 LG Electronics at 17%.

The Cricket EZ phone made the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall list this week because of problems establishing audio connections with 911 systems. Leap Wireless, Cricket’s umbrella company, reported the problem to regulators earlier this year and voluntarily recalled the devices. Leap officials said that it started notifying its customers by phone and text about six weeks ago, asking them to come to Cricket store for a firmware upgrade. About 190,000 phones are on the network, the majority of which have been fixed, Leap said.

Ontela’s networked camera phone platform is gaining some momentum among U.S. operators–at least the smaller ones. Cincinnati Bell this week launched Ontela’s photo upload application, which uses the cellular data network to automatically transfer photos snapped with a cameraphone to online photo storage sites or a customer’s PC. Alltel launched the same service in April.

Has the wireless market in the U.S. finally hit its saturation point? Have we finally “matured” so much that every subscriber add is a steal from someone else’s network and the few remaining souls without a cellphone are just too plain stubborn to not bother with? Do we have to look elsewhere for growth? There are plenty of signs pointing to just that.

A new report from Bernstein Research points out that Q1 net subscriber adds dropped 23% year-over-year, and overall subscriber numbers have fallen from 11.5% to 7.9% in the same period. Further, the NPD Group found that handsets sales volumes dropped 22% in Q1 compared to the same quarter in 2007. It’s eerie how those two percentages match up. Sure, we’re still growing, but the boom days are long gone.

What’s most interesting about this trend, however, is how it will change the fundamental business of wireless. more

Is Sprint finally giving up on Nextel? After three years of trying to integrate the iDEN network operator into its business, it looks like it may be throwing in the towel–at least according to the Wall Street Journal.  more

Robert Burst took over as Sprint’s chief financial officer today, and I’m sure he’s had better first days on the job. If Standard & Poor’s cutting Sprint’s credit rating to junk status wasn’t enough, a federal appeals court sided with the FCC, requiring Sprint switch off its iDEN network in 800 MHz in all markets by June 26, regardless of whether the public safety agencies occupying its replacement spectrum are ready to leave. more

The former CEO of a struggling operator is now taking over the board of a struggling vendor. It’s probably crossed more than a few of your minds that Dave Dorman played none too small a role in SBC’s acquisition of AT&T, which eventually took his former company’s venerable moniker before he retired. Now as chairman of Motorola, he’ll oversee Moto’s split into two entities: one focused solely on handsets and the other on a diverse array of carrier, enterprise, government and consumer equipment. more

The industry has claimed another two MVNO casualties. Micro-MVNO-enabler Sonopia has let go of all of its U.S. staff, according to MEOW! Blog, and last week Movida, an IDT-backed Cisneros Group-backed MVNO targeted at Spanish speakers, went bankrupt.

Let’s face it the MVNO market looks pathetic. more

LAS VEGAS–Qualcomm isn’t just about phones anymore. It’s also powering the radio connections of future laptops. According to the chipset maker, “several” laptop makers, including Dell, are incorporating Qualcomm’s data device UMTS and EV-DO radio chips into their PCs and plan to ship them in 2008. What’s more T-Mobile International, Verizon Wireless , Vodafone and Telefonica have either certified said laptops or will complete certification this month.  more

John Edwards and Fred Thompson have been added at the last minute to CTIA Wireless’ list of keynote speakers. The two former presidential candidates, both of whom flamed out in their separate nominating contests, will impart their wisdom on the wireless industry on Day 3. Perhaps that’s some incentive not to book the early flight out of Vegas next Thursday. more

If Sprint were a celebrity it would be a regular feature on Entertainment Tonight: the ruffled carrier in and out of rehab that is constantly seen gallivanting with the industry’s biggest stars. First it was Verizon, then it was T-Mobile, and the constant rumors of an Intel tie-up with Clearwire and Sprint never seem to go away. The Wall Street Journal now has Time Warner Cable and Comcast pegged as Sprint’s latest partners, and this time it might be right. more

All of the bids may be in, and the auction may have generated more than double its projected earnings, but after the 700 MHz auction’s close some people are asking why there weren’t a few more bids and a few more billion dollars in the pot. Specifically consumer advocates are pointing to the controversial D-block shared public safety/commercial license, which received only a single bid and failed to meet its reserve price after 261 rounds. more