Wall Street Journal

Competition in the US wireless market has increased, but so have Americans' overall phone bills.

While carriers have trimmed the price of their plans here and there in recent months, billings per user continue to grow amid a shift to smartphones and a surge in wireless Internet use.

The results call into question the notion of a price war in the US market. Rather than aggressively compete outright on price, carriers are tailoring their moves to accomplish other goals as well, like weaning customers off expensive smartphone subsidies and encouraging them to use more data. T-Mobile US raised the cost of its core unlimited data plan. The carrier says it has been competing more effectively by doing away with subscriber "pain points" like service contracts and international data fees. But its executives have also been signaling that they don't plan to start a price war.

"When you really analyze a lot of the pricing moves that have been made, there has not been a significant repricing," Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said. To be sure, subscribers can find deals that weren't available before. AT&T said it will cut the price of plans offering unlimited voice and text with two gigabytes of wireless Internet use by $15. A subscriber who brings or buys his own phone can pay as little as $65 a month, about 19% less than previously.

[March 10]

At a meeting with Sprint executives in October, the chief executive of parent company SoftBank lost his temper about the mobile carrier's advertising, complaining that it wasn't luring enough new customers.

"Are you stupid?" yelled Masayoshi Son, who engineered the Japanese company's takeover of the No. 3 wireless provider in the US in 2103 for about $22 billion, according to three people in the room. He slammed his fist on a table and suggested that Sprint fire all its ad agencies and start over.

The 56-year-old Son, a maverick billionaire and one of Japan's best-known CEOs, wants to use Sprint to upend the US wireless industry much the same way he did in Japan with a takeover of beleaguered Vodafone Japan in 2006. He blames a lack of competition between AT&T and Verizon Communications, which together have more than two-thirds of US mobile-phone customers and nearly all the industry's profits, for what he says are slow networks that cost consumers too much.

Son has established a shadow headquarters in San Carlos (CA), a Silicon Valley city near Apple and Google. Son is bringing in about 1,000 SoftBank employees from Japan, who will try to help turn around the struggling mobile carrier and develop new services that SoftBank can use back at home. [March 7]

To a degree shared by few, John Inglis knows the risks of collecting a lot of data on people. Until January, Inglis, who goes by "Chris," was the number-two official at the National Security Agency. He spent much of 2013 pushing back against disclosures from former contractor Edward Snowden about the extent of NSA surveillance.

Now, the former NSA deputy director is warning technology companies that amass vast amounts of personal information to learn from his agency's mistakes. Be transparent about what they collect, and why they collect it, Inglis said.

"There's an enormous amount of data held in the private sector," Inglis said, in his first published interview since leaving government. "There might be some concerns not just on the part of the American public, but the international public."

Samsung spent an estimated $20 million on ads to run during breaks in the Academy Awards broadcast. But Samsung may have got more promotional mileage from Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres during the show itself.

DeGeneres toyed with a white Samsung phone during the broadcast, including when she handed a Galaxy Note 3 to actor Bradley Cooper so he could take a "selfie" photo of himself and other stars including Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Lawrence surrounding the host. While the stunt felt spontaneous, it wasn't entirely unplanned.

As part of its sponsorship and ad pact for the Oscars with ABC, the TV network airing the show, Samsung and its media buying firm Starcom MediaVest negotiated to have its Galaxy smartphone integrated into the show, according to two people familiar with the matter. Samsung gave ABC smartphones to use during the broadcast and was promised its devices would get airtime, these people said.

At least one of the product plugs was planned: during the "red carpet" preshow, ABC ran a clip of six aspiring young filmmakers touring Disney Studios. The group were seen in the video using Samsung devices. Advertisers say that product placement combined with ad buys help viewers better remember the products being promoted.