AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) has seen massive negative publicity come in from earlier in the summer to know in regards to its policies on the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone it currently has an exclusive on. After all, that $99 or $199 purchase was not giving customers complete control over over the freedom to do what they wanted with those precious iPhones.

When the AT&T/Google/Apple situation flared up recently, it caused the microscope on AT&T's strict controls on the iPhone to become even more intense.

Wall Street appears ready to claim a third straight day of gains as stocks continue a rally cheered by brighter economic news and expectations of higher corporate profits. All three major U.S. indexes -- the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite -- were higher in premarket trading Wednesday morning.

Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average had its second-straight day of double-digit point gains, picking up 131.50 to end at 9,731.25 after Australia boosted interest rates citing an improved economy and earnings expectations that rose for the just-concluded third quarter.

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending The Summit Series conference in Aspen with 115 top young entrepreneurs and inspiring philanthropists under the age of 35. This event, founded by Elliot Bisnow of Bisnow Media, has created a community of the world's most influential innovators. "We are inspired by events like the Clinton Global Initiative, TED, and Davos," says Bisnow. $200,000 was raised for the four presenting non-profit organizations including NothingButNets.com, Feed Foundation, Invisible Children, and Grassroots Soccer.

These five start-ups were among the most impressive and interesting business ideas:

EBay, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: EBAY) Skype unit has been the butt of jokes for years now. The internet telephony company has made millions of worldwide fans, while not really jiving at all with eBay's core auction business (which is on the decline). Although eBay's PayPal unit continues to grow every quarter, speculation has run rampant that the online auction pioneer would unload Skype somehow. The question is: who would buy it?

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to try owning as many communication channels as possible to its customers. After buying unified messaging company GrandCentral a few years ago, the largest internet search company is has morphed that service into "Google Voice." Google Voice lets you can place free phone calls to anywhere (from anywhere) in the U.S. where you have internet access.

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) has decided to eat its own young. The company will introduce a wireless internet phone aimed at the home market. Verizon has been seeing its landline business shrink as consumers move to VoIP and wireless handsets.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The new home phone, called the Hub, aims to retain existing landline customers and attract other carriers' customers, the company said." Why go to all the trouble of switching people from a phone with a cord to one that is wireless?

Verizon has been losing home customers to cable VoIP for years. And, many wireless customers have been using cellphones at home and killing their landline service. The new "Hub" has features including streaming video capacity and the ability to access data over the internet. But, the unit costs $195 and subscribers must take out a two-year, $35 a month contract to get the new product.

That service contract is why the product will be a failure. As 3G networks get better, the cellphone becomes an excellent alternative to a landline phone. Buying a second phone, which is essentially another wireless product is unnecessary and expensive. Current wireless handsets can already get video and data. Another product with similar capacities is just redundant.

When eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) purchased Skype for over $2.5 billion U.S. dollars years ago, little did it know that price was blown all out of proportion. It's true that Skype is a profitable piece of the eBay empire these days, but to me it still seems like an odd fit. Unlike PayPal, Skype has not become an integral piece of the eBay auction system, where it was intended to get buyers and sellers communicating more in order to facilitate a greater number of successful transactions.

Skype has more then 330 million users across the globe. It has six straight quarters of profitability. What it doesn't have is a return on eBay's investment. Almost everyone agrees that eBay vastly overpaid for Skype, but should eBay just hang on to the company until it gets back as much money as it can, or give it away now (credit: Red Hot Chili Peppers)? It already wrote down the purchase by $900 million. When eBay CEO John Donahoe says that he'll keep Skype, I'm not so sure. If a bid in the area of $500 million came in, my personal thought it that he's change his tune instantly.

Who would buy Skype? A company that probably would not charge for the service, but would support its use with advertising. A famous Mountain View, Ca. company does that now to great success, but the move would have to fit a specific business model. Unlike eBay's "connect the buyer and seller" approach, Skype would also need to move voice calls off the PC and into individual products like WiFi-capable handsets (no PC required) and a slew of other internet-connected devices like, gasp, cellphones. Yes, there are already products that take Skype off the PC, but quality is questionable (after having personally used them). Until there is a suitor that lines up, Skype will sit by and earn a pittance for eBay, but nothing more.

For the first time in a long time, the future at Vonage (NYSE: VG) is brightening. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Vonage said Thursday that it had entered into a commitment letter with hedge fund Silver Point Finance LLC for as much as $215 million in financing." The company is about to bring in a new CEO to replace founder Jeffrey Citron.

The new money will allow Vonage to pay down a significant part of its debt.

A better balance sheet does not necessarily make for a better operating business, but it does buy the company time to prove that there is room in the market for an independent VoIP company. Fortunately for Vonage, there probably is.

While cable companies now dominate the voice-over-IP market because they can deliver the product as part of their broadband and TV offering, not all customers want their eggs in one basket. Cable companies often score low on customer satisfaction surveys. Vonage can use this to its advantage.

By positioning itself as the better service alternative, Vonage has a reasonable chance to build a decent business. Over time, that should get the stock up from $1.59.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) had decided that customers do not have to be landline clients to get the company's new fiber broadband and TV service. In other words, it is willing to walk away from its core business to move into the future.

According to the AP, "Surveys point to about one in seven U.S. households now lacking landlines." More people are using their cellphones instead of the traditional home phone connection.

The announcement points to the lengths to which Verizon will go to get customers away from cable companies like Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA). Cable does not require that people use its voice system, VoIP, to get cable television or broadband connections. If Verizon wants to match cable packages, it has to do the same.

To a large extent, the news is an indication that Verizon is not really a traditional "phone company" any more. The revenue from that part of its operations is shrinking. Its growth comes from cellular customers, home fiber subscribers, and DSL.

Alexander Graham Bell is turning in his grave.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Get ready for the price of making phone calls to drop, probably a lot. T-Mobile is introducing a product to replace most home landlines with internet-based phone service. According to The Wall Street Journal, "The service will be available only to T-Mobile cellphone customers. To sign up, they must buy a $50 Internet router from T-Mobile and pay $10 a month for unlimited local and long-distance domestic calling."

It is a good bet that the service will be rolled out to reach customers that T-Mobile does not have as cell subscribers or that AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless will have to match the program. In the case of AT&T and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), they will be competing with the shrinking but profitable landlines businesses which are being eroded by VoIP, especially from cable companies.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless have already announced flat-rate unlimited calling plans for $99.99 a month. The price war in the cellular market is cutting these stocks down to 52-week lows, but the deal for consumers is outstanding. And, that pricing pressure is about to move into the consumer home phone market.

A cellular price war. A home phone price war. For shareholders in major telecoms, it's bad news For consumers, it doesn't get any better.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com

For several years, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) was considered one of the most successful companies in America. It used its cable franchise to build a huge broadband, VOD, and VoIP cash machine. The so-called "triple play" of voice, TV, and broadband could not be matched by telecom competitors, so Comcast took hundreds of thousands of phone customers away from them each quarter.

From mid-2003 to early 2007, Comcast shares rose close to 100%. During the last three months, they are down 27%.

It finally occurred to Wall Street that competition from satellite TV and the new fiber-to-the-home products from telecom companies like Verizon (NYSE:VZ) were eating into Comcast's customer base. The company recently announced that its growth and cash flow would be less than expected. Customer growth was slowing and the firm had to put more money into infrastructure so that it could improve offerings for products like HDTV.

An influential cable analyst, Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley, says the slide in Comcast shares is over. According to Barron's the analyst "notes that the stock's multiples have been compressed to historic lows." He also thinks EPS and free cash flow could grow as much as 20% a year, if Comcast can keep adding voice and HDTV customers.

The logic for Comcast making a comeback may be a little thin. Verizon's FiOS is taking customers from Comcast and it is only in a small fraction of the 18 million homes that will eventually have access to the service.That means that the head-to-head competition for the cable company will actually increase. And satellite TV companies continue to ramp up their programming and HDTV offering.

The worst is probably not over for Comcast.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Cable shares were beginning to get back on track. FCC plans to further regulate the industry never made it off the ground. It looked like the the industry had clear running.

But, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) issued a profit warning saying that its cash flow in 2007 might be only 80% of what it was last year. The number of subscribers it expected to sign up would fall from previous forecasts and capital spending on new infrastructure would rise. Barron's reports "the company now sees revenue generating units up about 6 million, to 57 million, rather than previous guidance of 6.5 million unit growth. Comcast now sees cable revenue growth of about 11%, down from previous guidance of at least 12%."

It appears that Wall Street was right when it began to fear the worst about fiber-to-the-home competition from telephone companies. The new technology allows them to offer fast broadband, HDTV, and voice service in one package. For several years only cable could do that. Now the telecoms, lead by Verizon (NYSE: VZ), are aggressively offering their own packages.

For investors, the problem is that new competition is likely to keep cable stocks down for a long time. That means that the lows that they hit recently may be as good as it gets.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Like Gary mentioned over a month ago, eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is probably having quite a few meetings trying to decide what to do with Skype. The internet telephony company was apparently worth over $3 billion many years ago when eBay bought it, but with the recent billion-dollar write-off, the investment did not come close to the payoff eBay execs (like CEO Meg Whitman) expected. Was buying Skype a bad decision? In a word, yes.

Will eBay finally bow to critics and unload Skype? If so, longtime eBay investors will probably get their panties in a twist initially, but realize it is a good move. It's quite unsettling to think of how long it will take eBay to make its investment back from the Skype purchase, but it's not going to be any time soon based on the division's current financial performance levels. The funny thing is that Skype (to me) is a great product. I use it daily, while traveling and from other areas with hardly a problem. The rates are so cheap you'd think it was a free service. If that is so, why aren't more people using it and buying it's services? Beats me.

If customer minutes come in at lower levels than in 2006, then Skype will begin losing financial credibility fast. Sure, there are customer service issues that have been talked about loudly in the last few months, but all in all, Skype is more than adequate for the price it commands. It isn't a landline replacement (it's darn close, though), and reliability shouldn't be thought of as such.

A global VoIP company would be a great asset to many other global internet companies, and don't think for a second eBay has not shopped Skype around for that very purpose. The question remains, though: why didn't Skype turn out a success for eBay? Was it a mismatch from the start? Most likely, yes. An auction service buying a voice service sounds like a natural match, but it wasn't. But, if eBay sells it, some other suitor could probably land a great bargain on the back of eBay's misstep.

The Vonage (NYSE: VG) saga continues. Douglas McIntyre reported recently of a "sucker rally" in Vonage stock as Vonage tried to fight off a patent lawsuit brought against the company by Verizon (NYSE: VZ). Friday brought with it a refusal of an appeal made by Vonage and slapped the voice-over-IP telephony firm with a $120 million lawsuit.

Legal costs have hurt Vonage and may increase its risk of bankruptcy. The company said that it may not have enough money to pay $253.5 million in debt due as early as December 2008.

The firm had a first-move advantage and created an innovative service. Unfortunately, the legal issues and commoditization of voice-over-IP technology has severely hampered the prospects for the young company. I would expect the company and its customer-base would not be a standalone business a year or two from now.

Zack Miller is the lead equity analyst for America Israel Investment Associates, LLC., the managing editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund. Author holds no positions in the stocks mentioned above.

Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) is the weakest of the big cable companies. It has $19 billion in debt and most operating earnings to cover the interest. While its larger rivals may be able to weather a tough time as the telephone companies begin to take customers with their new "triple play" products, Charter may not make it.

Yesterday, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), the largest cable company, came out with earnings that showed its growth in digital cable subscribers was not moving up at the rate that it had in earlier reporting periods. With its VoIP offering it was able to steal telecom customers by offering VoIP, broadband, and TV bundled together. But, the telephone companies are putting in fiber systems that are allowing them to match those offerings.

Charter's shares fell from $2.50 to under $2 yesterday on the poor earnings out of Comcast.

Charter's stock price is now down from a 52-week high of almost $5. With its market cap well under $1 billion and a debt load that could crush that company, it is a real question whether the company can stay out of bankruptcy court. It does not have the capital to match the marketing dollars from the large telephone companies and certainly lacks the capital to upgrade its infrastructure to stay in the game.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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