Telecompetitor directs our attention to a study by ABI Research that indicates that femtocell shipments this year have been well, less than impressive. The technology, which creates essentially a micro-cell tower in the home, helps with coverage issues by allowing users to make calls over their home broadband connection. They're useful to carriers, in that they ease strain on local towers, but so far many operators have done a pretty poor job marketing the devices to users or offering consumer value in pricing models. For whatever reason ABI poo poo's the value issues, and instead blames the recession:It's hard to blame femtocell's slow adoption on the economy or getting the services deployed. Many carriers already offer femtocells but they only offer them to customers who call in to complain about coverage issues. And frankly some of the pricing models are just absurd; Verizon's femtocell pricing plan eats away at your wireless minutes even tough you're making the wireless call over your own broadband connection. Again, where's the value?

ABI predicts things could improve slightly in 2010 for the well-hyped technology, but that shipments will still be 40% lower than earlier predictions. That of course means a shake out among smaller femtocell vendors who actually listened to firms like ABI back in 2006 when they declared femtocells would be the hottest thing in telecom since the Hayes compatible.

You might remember Ohio-based Buckeye Cablesystems for when they came down hard on the heads of cable modem upcappers back in 2002, going so far as to bring in the FBI to investigate users who were trying to squeeze extra bandwidth out of the cable system. It's now 2009, and Buckeye has found a much better solution for bandwidth-hungry customers -- they've started a fiber to the home trial in Toledo, but they're installing it without having to dig up any existing infrastructure thanks to a new technology by Kabel-X. From the Kabel-X description of the technology:Delicious, just like the white filling of an Oreo. Those interested can watch this video for more detail.

Being the first carrier to launch a phone with the Android OS got T-Mobile lots of attention, though it also drew attention to the fact the carrier's 3G HSDPA network footprint was a little lacking. T-Mobile faced delays in getting the network up and running, and in 2008 blamed Uncle Sam for being slow to vacate the 1700MHz spectrum they purchased from the old fellow. They've since been playing catch up, and are doing a rather good job of it. Glenn Fleishman offers a good refresher on the company's plan to move quickly to HSPA 7.2, and ultimately to 21 Mbps service. HSPA+ should see deployment in 2010 on a "fairly broad-scale" basis, T-Mobile tells Fleishman.

Verizon's "iPhone killer," the Motorola Droid, went on sale last Friday, and Motorola says they sold about 100,000 of the devices according to Bloomberg. Verizon meanwhile had about 200,000 in stock and burned through most of that, according to the company. Those numbers don't come close to iPhone sales, "but anybody that was expecting that had their expectations too high,” says one analyst, who recommends buying Motorola stock. Another analyst, who advises selling Moto shares, tells Bloomberg they have a "nagging suspicion that Android is being overestimated by technology enthusiasts."

Did you buy a Droid?

AT&T is of course starting to deploy faster HSPA 7.2 upgrades, which nudge AT&T's downstream 3G network speed closer to 7.2 Mbps . Not that you'll actually see those kinds of speeds in the real world, but it's a decent improvement. Still, before you can see those faster speeds on your laptop, you'll need a new modem. To that end, AT&T says the new AT&T USBConnect Lightning from Sierra Wireless will be made available starting November 22. It's free after a $100 mail-in rebate -- and assuming you subscribe to a DataConnect Plan of at least $35 a month. AT&T says they'll have 25 of the nation’s 30 largest markets wired with HSPA 7.2 by the end of 2010, and 90% of their footprint upgraded by the end of 2011.

Update: AT&T clarifies to us that there are some folks who won't need a new modem -- mainly those who use The Mercury tethered.