In yet another display of near complete disregard for its customers, Verizon Wireless announced this week it plans to eliminate the $30/Month unlimited data plan any user subscribed to prior to the company’s transition to tiered data plans last July. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said at the 40th J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference that once unlimited 3G data plan customers upgrade to 4G LTE, they will be forced to purchase the company’s shared data plan.

“Everyone will be on data share,” Shammo said. The carrier’s shared data plans are scheduled to launch in the coming months, and will allow users to share a single pool of data between multiple devices. “If I can add as many devices as I want, that is more efficient from a family perspective and a small business perspective,” the CFO said.

When asked how Verizon will migrate customers off their unlimited data plans, Shammo said that LTE will draw customers away from it. “A lot of our 3G base is on unlimited,” he said. “When they migrate off 3G they will have to go to data share. That is beneficial to us.”

Sure, beneficial to you, but how does that benefit customers again? Oh yeah, it doesn’t. It just means people should get ready to pay ever increasing costs for mobile data.

How do we feel about this?

To be honest, I’m surprised it took this long. But now it seems our government here in the U.S. has finally decided to take action and attempt to stop a merger that should not take place anyway.

That’s right, the government has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block AT&T’s proposed $39 Billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. According to the complaint, such a deal would “substantially lessen competition” in the U.S. wireless market. Bloomberg reports that the complaint was filed with the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday, and the government is asking for a declaration that the proposed merger would violate U.S. antitrust laws.

“AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low- priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market,” the U.S. said in its filing. AT&T has argued that it needs T-Mobile’s spectrum in order to improve service quality and cover the majority of the U.S. population with 4G LTE service.

Well, I can understand them wanting to improve service quality. However, competition is good and as long as T-Mobile is around, AT&T will have to work that much harder. That won’t hurt them one bit. In fact, it might just help them.

Even with the recent outage, it’s no secret lots of people use Skype to make calls on a daily basis. It’s also no secret many of those calls are video chats. However, if you wanted to video chat using your iPhone and all you had was a 3G signal, you were out of luck — even with Apple’s Facetime. That is until today.

Today Skype announced a new version of its iOS client simply titled Skype 3.0. The new update brings several improvements and, most notably, adds the ability to make and receive video-calls from your supported iOS device over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks. And while that’s great news when you can’t find a WiFi signal, I would take anything reported to work over AT&T’s 3G network with a big grain of salt. In other words, your mileage may vary.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

What would a week be without yet another “confirmation” of the iPhone’s long rumored appearance on Verizon? A boring week we say! So, to make sure we get one in for this week, here’s the latest from the folks at Fortune Magazine.

In a profile on Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, the magazine has to, of course, talk about the iPhone. Noting Seidenberg’s success in making Verizon the number one wireless carrier in the U.S, Fortune notes that “every tech company” — including Apple — “must find a way to partner with it [Verizon].”

However, that’s not the really juicy part. Nor is it the part that will cause even more speculation and machinations among Apple loving and AT&T hating fans. This is the part: “Fortune has confirmed that a Verizon iPhone will be released in early 2011.”

With all the other evidence mounting that we will actually see a Verizon iPhone combined with this new evidence, it must be a forgone conclusion, right? Sadly, with a company like Apple, you can’t really count on anything except absolute secrecy until they are ready to make the announcement. They love to control the message.

Of course, there’s always the possibility some hapless employee will leave one in a bar somewhere. Hey, it could happen.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. People love the iPhone but hate the AT&T network and are waiting for the day when the iPhone comes to Verizon. Well, as in the past, that rumor is being reported again that the device will indeed be coming to the Verizon network. This time the report is in USA Today.

Although they don’t name any sources due to anonymity, the report does say the iPhone will be hitting Verizon in January. If true, this is great news for those who really want an iPhone but love to have a network where phone calls are possible even sitting in the living room.

Although, with the issues that seem to be plaguing the new iPhone, you have to wonder if a new network is really the answer. Maybe those issues are because the iPhone 4 had to be modified with a new antenna to accommodate AT&T’s poor network performance?

If so, a Verizon iPhone potentially would not have to be designed the same way and any issues with antenna strength, for example, may be removed. Plus, with Verizon potentially rolling out its LTE network in November, perhaps the new Verizon iPhone would even have 4G?  Wouldn’t that be cool?

Of course, it’s all speculation until either Apple or Verizon confirm something is really going to happen. Still, it’s fun to think of the possibilities.