In the past, CBS has invested heavily in the development of their mobile sports presence. And building upon last year’s successful mobile coverage and corresponding iPhone app for March Madness, CBS is rolling out a host of new developments for the CBS mobile sports platform.

Chief among such noteworthy developments is the addition of 3G/EDGE support, which will bring live streaming video to the “CBS Sports: NCAA March Madness on Demand” iPhone/iPod Touch application.

The app in question debuted last year to much fanfare and was created with the help of mobile video solutions provider MobiTV. In 2009, however, the application’s enjoyment was limited to those capable of securing a WiFi connection.

The 3G support add-on is certainly a welcome addition, although the upgrade comes with a substantial price increase. Last year’s $4.99 has been replaced by 2010’s new price tag of $9.99.

CBS says their NCAA March Madness on Demand will provide the most comprehensive coverage possible, including all tournament games from the opening round to the Final Four. That means basketball fans can stream 63 live games in all right from their mobile device.

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Delving into the technical aspects of wireless carriers and how they operate, one interesting concept relates to how the carriers access and distribute its network backbone- meaning mobile voice and data services.  You’ve likely heard the terms “tier-1″ or tier-2″ carriers, but what does it mean and how do the major US carriers stack up?

Put simply, a tier-1 carrier possess a network in which it’s the sole operator- meaning it has a direct connection to the Internet and the networks it uses to deliver voice and data services.  Similarly, a tier-2 carrier operates the same way, except it may get a portion of its network from a tier-1 operator by way of a concept known as “peering,” which can be loosely defined as piggybacking onto the network already in place by a tier-1 source.  Tier-3 refers to a carrier who gets 100% of its network through a tier-1 or tier-2 operator, with no direct-access of its own.

The landscape in the US has changed dramatically in recent years, with consolidation of smaller carrier making way for a select group of premiere carriers- mainly AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.  All four of the aforementioned wireless carriers are tier-1 carriers, meaning they don’t borrow network capacity from anyone else.  These four tier-1 operators have been busy acquiring tier-2 and tier-3 carriers in an attempt to broaden its subscriber base, leaving very few independent tier-2 and 3 operators in the US.  An example of a tier-2 carrier in the US is U.S Cellular, who has an agreement in place with Sprint for voice and data coverage.

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Airvana, a mobile broadband solutions company, has conducted some interesting research regarding the effects of smartphones and their data-intensive nature on wireless broadband networks.

Through its research, Airvana identified a significant mobile network “load multiplier effect” caused by smartphone data traffic on the macro-cellular network.  Airvana engineers comparing data use profiles found that for a given volume of data transmitted, one smartphone typically generates eight times the network signaling load of a USB modem-equipped laptop. Although smartphones may only account for a minority percentage of all devices on operator networks today, they’re always on, moving between cell sites and continually ‘polling’ the network.  As a result, smartphones are already responsible for the majority—two to three times as much as laptops—of the total signaling activity.

Put simply, the nature of smartphones – with their mobile Web-focused design and always-on capabilities are swallowing bandwidth faster than any other device in use on wireless networks today- eight times more than a laptop pulling the same bandwidth from a USB-based mobile broadband connection.

“Conventional wisdom has been that data traffic produced by laptops equipped with mobile broadband was the culprit when looking at the impact on the network,” said David Nowicki, vice president, Marketing and Product Management, Airvana.  “The industry is just now beginning to understand the real impact of smartphones on network performance and we’re finding that their effect is distinctly out of proportion to the amount of data they transmit and receive.”

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Since 2007, the mobile marketing industry has grown almost in lockstep with the iPhone’s progress. Where the iPhone goes, so too does the opportunity for reaching new audiences with applications and campaigns tailored to any number of diverse marketing purposes.

For mobile marketers, the prospect of reaching a whole new world of potential via the introduction of the iPhone into the Chinese marketplace has been one of the most exciting prospects to come down the pike in a long while. Yet, what helped make the iPhone such a ubiquitous device in the USA and Europe – its affordable price tag – won’t likely follow its introduction to China.

And that has some mobile marketers concerned.

According to Reuters, China Unicom will introduce the iPhone in October at an estimated retail price of 5,000 yuan. That’s approximately $730. A number of mobile analysts have already been quoted in the media today acknowledging that this high pricing will likely – at first, anyway – restrict the phones to the relatively small pool of high end consumers in China.

It should be noted, however, that the iPhone doesn’t come with a very cheap price tag elsewhere in Asia either. In Hong Kong, for example, the iPhone will you cost you approximately $695, only $35 less than the expected asking price in China.

The high price of the iPhone will all but certainly keep its diffusion in China at a minimum for the remainder of this year. But as China’s 3G network takes root and demand increases, it doesn’t seem like a wise or sustainable plan for the iPhone to remain at such high retail prices beyond the short term. Until then, mobile marketers will sadly encounter more barriers than initially imaged in dispersing their work within the largest mobile community on the planet.

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AT&T has announced that the release of the latest iPhone 3.0 firmware has lead to a dramatic increase in its WiFi hotspot usage.  Use has increased nearly 41% over the previous quarter, according to AT&T.

The major reason for such a spike, is the fact that the 3.0 firmware update included an easier way for users to login to freely available hotspots sponsored by AT&T at places like Starbucks, McDonalds and other public places.

Before the update, users had to enter their phone number, recieve an SMS message with an embedded link, and click the link to be logged into any WiFi network.  Now, the iPhone will automatically detect and log a user in automatically.  This ease of connection has resonated with consumers, and usage is finally taking off.

AT&T, and other carriers, have been introducing massive WiFi networks to its customers using smartphones in an attempt to save bandwidth on their 3G networks.  AT&T in particular has a major need for this shift, given that increased iPhone saturation is putting a major burden on its network.

Any attempt to get users off its network and using WiFi is a win for AT&T- and it’s doing a pretty good job at it.  The company said it has already had 25.6 million WiFi connections for 2009, which already surpasses the 20 million times the service was used in all of 2008.

It’s a relatively smart move for a company that’s been receiving plenty of bad press regarding its weathered 3G network and its surge of iPhone data usage.  By covering as much ground as possible with WiFi, AT&T is making sure it’s network remains strong- but will it work?  Early reports say it’s helping more than expected, but we’ll have to wait and see.

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AT&T again announced recently that it plans to double the speed of its 3G network in the near future from the current 3.6M to a hefty 7.2M, while laying the groundwork for its upcoming conversion to LTE 4G speeds by 2011.

The increased speed is courtesy of an upgrade to its network to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology later this year, but will speeds actually peak at what’s promised? Many still believe it won’t. In the past, promises of 1.7M and the current 3.6M speeds have proven controversial, and have even resulted in AT&T and Apple being sued for not delivering on its promises when the original iPhone debuted.

Last June, AT&T said that it had already upgraded its 3G network to reach peak speeds of 1.7M. This past April, the company said that it was doubling its 3G capacity to reach peak speeds of 3.6M, but in reality, many people are still only seeing speeds in the range of 500-700Kbps. A recent survey by Gartner Research showed that all four major U.S. carriers’ 3G networks failed to deliver on customers’ expectations for data rates. Gartner said that it received the most complaints from users about AT&T’s network and that actual mobile network averages are “generally between 300Kbps and 700Kbps lower” than expected for both uplink and downlink speeds

For a 3G network that AT&T has spent an estimated $20 Billion on to build out over recent years, you’d think it could handle the speeds that have been promised. This most likely will come with the transition to LTE technology which is poised to delivery true “mobile broadband” speeds that many have been wishing for, including me. I guess only time will tell.

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Many Apple addicts twiddled their thumbs awaiting the release of the 3G iPhone earlier this year, only to be disappointed by the by the quality of data reception when they got it.

Luckily for iPhone owners, jumping on a Wi-Fi network is an easy way to deal with sporadically crappy reception. Turns out the 3G in the 3G iPhone isn’t quite what it was hyped (and hoped) to be, especially outside of NYC. Its coverage beats the very-slow EDGE network, but it’s still extremely spotty.

Even iPhone owners with good 3G data receiption opt for Wi-Fi over 3G. Last week, San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile advertising company AdMob put out a report highlighting a rise in Wi-Fi usage among iPhone users.

In the US, 42 percent of iPhone Internet requests are made from WiFi, way higher than other Wi-Fi capable phones which average between 10 and 20 percent. 8 percent of total requests in November were on Wi-Fi networks, up from 4 percent in August, according to the report.

The ease of Wi-Fi connecting may be one reason the on-and-off poor receiption of the 3G iPhone is not keeping gadget lovers from purchasing the “invincible” device. Smartphone sales, largely fueled by iPhone sale growth, are defying economic gravity. Thank goodness AT&T bought Wi-Fi hotspots operator Wayport in November, upping the AT&T hotspot count to 80,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the world.

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