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-- Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) has exclusive Beyonce content: Prior to Beyonce's new album release "I AM.. SASHA FIERCE" on Nov. 18, Verizon Wireless will be able to offer its customers on V CAST Music. Starting tomorrow, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to download and purchase some full tracks including: "Halo," "Satellites," "Broken-Hearted Girl," "Ave Maria," "Sweet Dreams," "Video Phone" and "If I Were A Boy." Today, customers were able to start downloading ringtones and ringback tones on those songs and "Disappear," "Radio," "Diva" and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." As part of the promotion, Beyonce will be able to tave over the mobile music store, and select her favorite albums, songs, and other content to play from Nov. 14 to 18. -- Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) launches Homeless Youth TV Network: Virgin Mobile said it is launching HYTV, which stands for the Homeless Youth TV Network. The online campaign features such programs as "Meal or No Meal," "American Idle," "My Street 16," and "Project Runaway." The intention is to raise awareness of the more than one million youth living on the streets, and is timed for National Homeless Youth Awareness Month in November. Viewers can go watch episodes at http://www.homelessyouthtv.com/ and sponsor their favorite program with a donation of $1. The proceeds go to charity partners, such as Green Chimneys and StandUp For Kids. Sponsor will have their names listed in the show's credits. Virgin will match the first $10,000 in total donations. -- HTC launches WiMax/GSM phone: HTC has launched its first WiMax cellphone that comes with a GSM radio chip. The phone, dubbed MAX 4G, will be launching on Scartel's Yota network in Russa, and there's no plans for it to make a debut in the U.S. Obviously, for Clearwire ( NSDQ: CLWR ) or Sprint (...

There's still a cloud of uncertainty hovering over Verizon ( NYSE: VZ ) Wireless' on-again, off-again plans to begin charging aggregators, messaging companies and other partners 3 cents per SMS delivered on its network. And yet, plenty of companies are expecting the worst – which would see Verizon implement the new charge Nov. 1, which it clearly outlined in contract addendums with various affected companies last week. We're told Verizon has been holding meetings with some of the companies that were caught off guard by the change last week. It's too soon to tell whether fears have been adequately allayed or if Verizon is simply buying time. We recently caught up with Zaw Thet, CEO of 4INFO, to get his take on the snafu and how the fee increase might impact his company and so many others. What's your initial reaction to this change? Do you think it's a negotiating tactic on Verizon's part? "We're really disappointed about it. It's unfortunate that Verizon is trying to go down this path when companies like 4INFO have driven so much direct and related business to them over the past four plus years. I can't speculate on what Verizon is thinking. There are several reasons why they may have chosen this approach, but since we're in direct dialog with them it wouldn't be appropriate to comment. Their revised statement (on Friday afternoon) was welcome news." If implemented, how will this new fee impact your business? "Verizon will make it difficult to continue to work with them in the same capacity that we currently do." Will you simply have to cut off services to the customers on any carriers charging these high fees? "We will certainly consider that alternative." Much more after the jump... How can you adapt to make these new hits on revenue less painful or diminished? "4INFO's reputation with customers and partners is built on the fact that we provide the best in quality content – from...

Last week, I caught up with Jeff Holden , the CEO of Pelago , which is developing Whrrl , an application for mobile phones that lets people share opinions about events and restaurants and organize meet-ups with friends. Pelago has the distinction of being the first investment of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer's iFund, which is dedicated to funding iPhone applications. It subsequently also raised funds from T-Mobile's investment arm, among others. But Holden, who is a former Amazon exec, is distinctive in his own right. From his office in downtown Seattle, where he was wearing cargo shorts and a polo shirt on a rainy day, he covers ground quickly, and makes whopping predictions. One is that Amazon ( NSDQ: AMZN ) will become a hardware company and the second is something he's banking on—that Apple's ( NSDQ: AAPL ) iPhone will evolve from a niche device to one that gains double-digit market share. When it comes to explaining his company's vision, he references scenes from sci-fi movies and uses made-up words and phrases, like "foot-streaming" and the "digital augmentation of the physical world." He addressed the challenges they faced with the first iPhone app, the new version; integration into Facebook and Twitter, and the carriers Whrrl will launch with soon. Holden summarizes his excitement by drawing parallels between Pelago and Amazon: "Whrrl makes people's lives a lot better. Amazon made their lives a lot better, too. I get charged about that." Here's a summary of our conversation: -- The iPhone app: The Whrrl application launched In July with the App store, but received hundreds of complaints on its landing page for not using GPS and not being able to zoom to find restaurants. Holden said it still was downloaded more than 100,000 times over the first few days, and that iPhone users have been more active and engaged than users on the Blackberry platforms. A new iPhone version launched in the last week solves...

Verizon Wireless's ( NYSE: VZ ) $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel will create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, but at the same time, it will eliminate one of the most innovative carriers in the country, which begs the question: Is Verizon buying Alltel for its towers and subscribers, or also for its forward-looking approach to the market? As a regional carrier, Alltel may only serve 13 million subscribers in limited territories, but that gives the company a level of comfort and flexibility to quickly roll-out new services without the constraints larger carriers face. It doesn't worry that millions of users will start using a new service overnight that crash the network, and it doesn't have to train as many customer-service and retail representatives every time it launches a new phone or application. So, the concern is that once apart of Verizon this attitude will fade. Some of it probably will, but if the merger gains regulatory approval, will companies lose an important petri dish, or gain a larger one? As an example, Alltel was Seattle-based Ontela first customer. CEO Dan Shapiro said he heard about the potential merger yesterday while in a board meeting. Immediately, the topic of conversation focused on how it would affect the industry. "There's two different thoughts," he said. "There's the conventional wisdom that the big carrier eats smaller carriers, and all good things come to the end," he said. But they came up with a second scenario: "They are buying a hard asset with towers and subscribers—that's 80 percent of the truth. Another piece, is that Alltel has been a pioneer that experiments with the way to bring value to its subscribers, outside of text and voice services, and that's valuable. They have a full-time business development person in Seattle to make sure that everything gets back to Little Rock. I strongly suspect that Verizon sees that culture of innovation and that skill-set as a way to maximize...

If you can trust Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) on this, they say small banner ads on a tiny cellphone screens can produce the same level of brand recall as a typical 30-second TV spot. Stephanie Bauer Marshall, Verizon Wireless's mobile advertising manager who spoke at the Mobile Advertising Degree conference in Los Angeles yesterday, said they believe this to be true based on several research reports, MediaPost reported . Bauer Marshall said she was "blown away" by the data that cellphone banner ads have click-through rates that are "exponentially higher" than online banner ads. She said online rates hover around 0.3 percent, while mobile banners can be 2 percent or higher. Because of this, Ben Kennedy, director of business development for GroupM Kinetic's mobile advertising operation, said mobile CPM's (cost per thousand) can be higher on average for mobile than other media because of a high level of engagement. Currently, mobile CPMs range from $20 to $30. Although it is a positive sign that Bauer Marshall was pulling the information from a wide range of sources to get the most accurate data, a need for more transparent reporting is often given as the reason for why the industry is slow to take off. The article also quoted Dag Olav Norem, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, who said only 20 percent of U.S. subscribers receive a marketing message by SMS during any given month, whereas in Europe it's up to 75 percent. But with higher volume, comes lower response rates. In the U.S., 12.4 percent of users respond to messages, compared to Europe where the response rate is 4.9 percent.