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After four years of keeping Clearwire at arm’s length, Sprint apparently feels it’s time to step in and take the struggling 4G carrier under its wing.

The idea was that Clearwire as an independent company would attract outside investors and build a big honking 4G network. Sprint would get all of the benefit of that network without having to foot the bill. Well, that didn’t happen. Clearwire’s nationwide rollout stopped after it got a third of the country covered, and it’s been in a holding pattern ever since. Instead of re-upping its investment in Clearwire, Sprint spent just enough to keep it afloat and then launched its own LTE network. Talk about a dysfunctional relationship. Why would Sprint be suddenly interested in taking control over the partner it’s been jilting for years? Sprint is required to do so make good on its deal with Softbank. Softbank and Clearwire have a lot in common due to their 4G technology choices, but not necessarily enough in common to justify buying Clearwire outright. Maybe this option – if it proves to be true – splits the difference.

Television remains the top source for political election coverage for consumers and is cited by voters as the most important media for deciding which way to vote, according to a new study from Mindshare about media habits defining the 2012 campaign season.

The WPP-owned agency conducted a nationally representative online survey of 1,032 adults in late September. While much has been made of declining broadcast network news ratings in recent years, the Mindshare survey showed that TV was the go-to medium for election coverage. Sixty percent of respondents said they tuned to broadcast network news coverage of the presidential race -- more than any other medium. Cable TV news was cited as the second-most-favored medium for keeping up with politics. Fifty-three percent said they used the medium for doing so. Neither the Internet or newspapers was ranked third. Rather, it was word of mouth.

The agency charged with securing U.S. embassies plans to purchase a system that could locate and track diplomats during an emergency based on the signals beaming from their satellite and cell phones, solicitation documents show.

That system could be extremely effective at monitoring security during an embassy or consulate attack, such as the Sept. 11 attacks in Libya and Egypt, but also could expose diplomats to new dangers if the system is hacked. The personnel tracking locator system would replace nine-year-old technology that the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service uses to pinpoint the location of employees both at embassies and domestically, the solicitation documents said.

Heath Mallory works at Western Iowa Telephone, a small independent phone company. He says recent plans by the Federal Communications Commission to make high-speed Internet access available in rural areas could also slow it down.

That's because, if these FCC changes cause Western Iowa Telephone to lose money, they may not be able expand and maintain their rural broadband service. "What we're primarily concerned with is, carriers that have used our networks in the past are no longer going to be forced to pay us to use our network and what that means is our end user customers, our telephone customers, our cable TV customers, our Internet customers are going to have to pay higher rates" Mallory said. So, how does this affect pricing changes? The FCC tells us the old system of compensating phone companies for processing calls from other phone companies was becoming ineffective, especially as people started making calls using broadband connections. In some areas fees varied greatly. The FCC issued a release, explaining these changes. "The Connect America Fund is designed to expand broadband access to the 19 million rural Americans who lack it -- including over 200,000 rural Iowans -- while at the same time increasing fiscal responsibility in order to be fair to the consumers and small businesses nationwide who pay into the fund." That means, for some rural locations where subsidies artificially lowered phone service, bills could go up. Western Iowa Telephone is currently evaluating a possible rate increase as a result of the FCC's changes. Mallory says one option you have before his company raises rates is to write to your local representative.