If consumer advocates get their way, deconstructing that monthly cellphone bill could become a lot easier.

Comments are filing in to the Federal Communications Commission’s request for input on simplifying wireless bills.

The deadline comes amid a thicket of consumer-focused fee news, from credit cards to overdraft fees. Consumer advocates are arguing for more transparency in billing, both when shopping around for plans and for existing mobile subscribers.

Filing comment Tuesday is BillShrink.com, a site that analyzes the fine print of credit card bills and user profiles to find the cheapest cellphone plan. The average consumer overspends $300 a month on her cellphone plan a year, Schwark Satyavolu, BillShrink’s co-founder and president, said. In the last five months, the site has found $800 million in potential savings on cellphone plans.

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A 19-year-old from Hilo, Hawaii, recently overtook squeaky-voiced Fred Figglehorn as the YouTube channel with the most subscribers.

Ryan Higa, whose Nigahiga channel had more than 1.4 million subscribers Monday afternoon, thanked his fans in a new video in which he gave his own version of an acceptance speech. “It’s not just my achievement, it’s yours as well, because without you guys, I’d have no subscribers,” he said. “You guys make–you know–I don’t know where I’m going with this.”

He then previewed a short film, “Ninja Melk,” that he’s working on. “It’s full of action, comedy, and some scenes even have action and comedy in one,” he said.

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It’s almost impossible to believe, but there it is: the cable industry is actually outgrowing the wireless sector.

This stunning factoid comes courtesy of the latest Weekend Media Blast piece from Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett. He notes that in the U.S. wireless industry, subscriber growth over the last 12 months is up 5.3 percent, but revenue per subscriber is down 1.7 percent, producing just 3.6 percent revenue growth. The cable industry, by contrast, grew revenue per sub 4.1 percent over the same time period; combined with modest sub growth and you get industry growth of 5.3 percent.

Moffett says there are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is that the wireless market is much, much more competitive.

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San Diego-based prepaid cellular operator Leap Wireless (LEAP) wrapped up a horrendous day for budget calling that kicked off with Metro PCS’s (PCS) big miss for Q2 profit. Leap missed revenue estimates and reported a wider-than-expected loss per share for the quarter and ratcheted down its expectations for subscriber growth and profitability this year.

Revenue, excluding equipment sales, rose 30 percent, year over year, in the quarter ended in June to $541.6 million.

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Shares of pre-paid cellular operator Metro PCS (PCS), which offers phone plans in the $30 to $50 neighborhood, are plunging today, falling $3.74, or 30 percent, to $8.95, after the company missed Q2 EPS estimates by quite a bit on revenue that was in line. The company’s churn, or rate of customer defections, jumped.

Q2 revenue rose 27 percent, the company said, to $859.6 million, in line with the average $861.7 million estimate, while profit per share of 7 cents was half what analysts were looking for. The company reiterated an outlook for net subscriber additions this year of 1.4 million to 1.7 million.

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A warning would have been welcome when an Air Force jet flew unannounced over the New York Harbor weeks ago and sent frightened workers in lower Manhattan into a tizzy. (When it turned out the flyover was for an expensive photo op, the White House official who approved it resigned from his post over the scandal.)

On Monday it seemed it might happen again–but with advance warning from a little-known city service. Downtown New Yorkers received two messages via email and text from Notify NYC, an emergency public communication system of New York City, alerting them that a military plane had requested to fly a plane over the Hudson River around 10:30 a.m.

When the Federal Aviation Agency denied the request (ostensibly because the notice was too short, but maybe because April 27’s memory was too fresh), Notify NYC sent another message to keep subscribers in the loop.

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Prepaid wireless carriers have gotten a lot of attention in recent months because of the ailing economy, which has helped them as consumers seek out cheaper cellphone plans.

Now that most of the biggest ones in the U.S. have reported their first quarter results, how did they perform? We looked at six–Boost Mobile, Sprint’s (S) prepaid unit; Leap Wireless (LEAP); MetroPCS (PCS); T-Mobile; Tracfone, the U.S. prepaid unit of America Movil; and Virgin Mobile USA (VM), which posted earnings earlier today.

Of those, Tracfone remains the biggest in terms of subscribers, ending the first quarter with 11.8 million. MetroPCS and Boost added the most net new subscribers, gaining about 684,000 and 674,000, respectively.

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The explosion of low-cost, prepaid wireless plans are raking in the customers during this recession, and Boost Mobile, a division of Sprint (S) that boasts an estimated 4 million users, is no different.

But subscribers to Boost’s $50 unlimited plan, which was rolled out last January, have been experiencing delays in text message delivery, reports the AP, implying that the company may be experiencing some growing pains.

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Old computer products, like old soldiers, never die. They stay on the market–even though they haven’t been updated in eons. Or their names get slapped on new products–available only outside the U.S. Or obsessive fans refuse to accept that they’re obsolete–long after the rest of the world has moved on.

For this story–which I hereby dedicate to Richard Lamparski, whose “Whatever Became of…?” books I loved as a kid–I checked in on the whereabouts of 25 famous technology products, dating back to the 1970s. Some are specific hardware and software classics; some are services that once had millions of subscribers; some are entire categories of stuff that were once omnipresent. I focused on items that remain extant–if “extant” means that they remain for sale, in one way or another–and didn’t address products that, while no longer blockbusters, retain a reasonably robust U.S. presence (such as AOL and WordPerfect).

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Subscribers to print newspapers have gone missing, as everyone knows. Book publishers are also wondering where readers have disappeared to.

And yet television stands out as the one old-media business with surprising resilience. Though we are spending a record amount of time online, including a record amount of time watching video, we are also watching record amounts of very old-fashioned television, according to Nielsen Media Research. Our attachment to the medium, of course, is obscured by the splintering of our attention across so many cable offerings, in addition to the major networks.

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Blogging is a fast medium–that’s one of its advantages over traditional media. There are bloggers who specialize in reporting fast about breaking news on a wide variety of topics. Most of those bloggers use Google’s RSS publishing technology FeedBurner as a middleman to deliver their posts to subscribers and capture analytics.

If FeedBurner decides to take its sweet time in delivering the news, that’s bad for bloggers. Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening right now. We’ve been seeing delays of up to 20 minutes between posting to our site and our posts appearing in our FeedBurner feeds. That’s a pretty serious problem and we’re not alone in experiencing it.

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Sirius XM (SIRI) shares are down sharply again this morning, one day after the company provided updated guidance that disappointed the Street.

The company’s new guidance, in case you missed it:

Subscribers: 19.5 million at year-end 2008, 21.5 million at year-end 2009.
Revenue: $2.4 billion in 2008, $2.7 billion in 2009.
Adjusted EBITDA: Loss of $350 million 2008, with positive $300 million in 2009.
Synergies from the merger with XM: $425 million in 2009.

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