While living in DC for 3.5 years I always felt tied to Verizon because they were the only carrier that worked in the Metro. But that is all about to change! Rep. Henry Waxman has introduced an amendment providing $1.5 billion upgrade funding package.
Within the next year, at least 20 Metro stations will accommodate multiple operator coverage. The remaining stations will be added over the next four years.
So, if you live and DC and find yourself often on the Metro, you can soon feel comfortable about switching carriers.
Who knows, maybe I will move back now that I know my new AT&T account will have better reach.
This coming Monday September 22nd. Mobile Monday New York is having a unique event. Titled Broadband Everywhere – The Mobile Opportunity the events hope to spark a serious discussion around the issue of 3G, 4G, Wifi and Wimax.
The panelist so far are stellar and it hopes to be a discussion on the impacts of mobile broadband on carriers, content providers, laptop manufacturers and infrastructure vendors. So If you are any of those you need to attend.
not limited; unrestricted; unconfined, if and only if usage falls under preset restrictions, meaning that there will be no webcam posts, downloading or streaming audio or video or automated data feeds:
boundless; infinite; vast: as long as usage falls under 5GB:
without any qualification or exception, except when users are using too much bandwidth over a given month;
Verizon Wireless’ terms and conditions of its “unlimited” Broadband Access data plan now clearly states that using more than 5 GB of bandwidth during the course of a month will result in service termination. The exact phrasing from the terms and conditions:
“Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice.”
RCR News is reports on a recent ruling made by the U.S Copyright office. “The purpose of the software lock appears to be limited to restricting the owner’s use of the mobile handset to support a business model, rather than to protect access to copyrighted work itself,†said Marybeth Peters, register of copyrights.”
This means that mobile-phone subscribers beginning Dec. 1 can keep their handsets to use on other wireless networks when they change cellular operators and now have legal precedence for it.
However, “While we are still reviewing the decision, it is clear that the order does not prevent carriers from locking handsets—it only removes a legal tool carriers have used to enjoin persons who unlock the handset without the carrier’s consent,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA, the national cell-phone carrier association.
One little blurb, with huge implications for the industry…
This really is one of those why didn’t I think of that ideas. But it makes sense right? Engineers have developed a system for taking anonymous cell-phone location information and turning it into an illuminated traffic map that identifies congestion in real time. To answer your question, these types of signals are produced whether someone is talking on them or not. Pretty nifty.
As reported a while back, Wireless Services Corp, the first wireless data center company ever, announced yesterday that it closed a $30.75 million series C round of funding. and that a portion of the proceeds were used to acquire Mobile Media North America. With the acquisition, Wireless Services has changed its corporate name to SinglePoint to reflect the new focus and will remain headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. With that kind of money expect more acquisitions to come.
SinglePoint represents the marriage of proven mobile messaging technology with industry-leading campaign management and production tools. “The result is a mobile messaging and marketing company with the reliability required by carriers and the flexibility to drive marketing promotions,” said Rich Begert, who will remain as president and CEO of SinglePoint.
Seattle-based Ignition Partners led the funding round and was joined by new investor Rally Capital Services LLC. Pre-existing investors participating include Northwest Venture Associates, Madrona Venture Group LLC, Intel Capital and SeaPoint Ventures.
“We see SinglePoints years of experience in this space and strong leadership giving the company an edge to capitalize on the prospect of triple-digit growth in the mobile content market over the next few years,” said Adrian Smith with Ignition Partners.
The mobile messaging marketplace has changed dramatically in the past six months through mergers and acquisitions. Delivering content direct-to-consumer is expected to be a billion dollar business in a year, Begert said. “With SinglePoint we have addressed shortcomings in the content aggregator model and positioned ourselves to take advantage of the direction the market is moving and expanding,” he said.
SinglePoint can deliver any kind of message, regardless of format, to any subscriber in North America. SinglePoint currently delivers more than 700 million messages per month and has the ability to handle tens of thousands of messages per second during high-traffic scenarios such as interactive television text-to-vote campaigns. SinglePoint provides a scalable platform for content owners, media companies and advertisers to create, deliver and confirm premium mobile messages and capitalize on interactive TV messaging campaigns.
“We have an experienced group of investors who are knowledgeable about the wireless industry and realize mobile messaging is rapidly expanding,” Begert said. “The new funding underscores investor confidence in our business strategy and allows us to aggressively acquire and develop technology that carriers, media and enterprises need to further extend their reach into the mobile marketplace.”
“We are seeing just the tip of the iceberg for mobile marketing. The U.S. broadcast medias use of mobile applications and interactivity was once an add-on before a commercial break. Now it occupies four or five minutes during a 30-minute show,” said Doug Busk, vice president of Marketing & Product Strategy for SinglePoint. “Media, carriers and enterprises are looking for companies experienced in this space that can ensure reliable message delivery as well as handle the millions of messages generated from these campaigns.”
About SinglePoint
SinglePoint is a simple, powerful way for content owners to create, connect and confirm the delivery of wireless messages to mobile consumers. It combines a proven reliable message delivery service with the leading producer and distributor of branded, made-for-mobile entertainment, interactive TV formats and mobile marketing concepts. Today, SinglePoint is engaged with an audience of more than 220 million mobile users throughout North America working in partnership with mobile network and portal operations, media companies, brand managers and agencies. For more information, please visit gosinglepoint.com
The ladies and gentleman that run the show over there at Singlepoint are giants in the industry. I honestly would not trust anyone else with my aggregation needs.
For those that thing cell phone services are immune to disasters think again. Residents of Queens New York, a borough of NYC, have had it rough this summer. First a 10 day day blackout and yesterday a water leak in a Verizon Communications telephone switching facility knocked out service to Sprint Nextel customers in the borough.
The leak damaged equipment in a central office facility owned by Verizon in New York. Equipment from mobile-phone provider Sprint Nextel is housed in this facility, which switches traffic between the cellular access network and the traditional phone network.
Luckily the equipment in the facility only served customers using the old Nextel nationwide network. As a result, the outage impacts only longtime Nextel customers, a Sprint spokesman said. Customers using Sprint’s PCS network are not affected by the outage.
Since the two major airports in New York are also in the area I am sure it effected customers using the old Nextel network… which must have been a real pain the ass via all the new flight restrictions and delays.
I think its time for everyone to get on new services, whether Sprint /Nextel customers or Cingular.
This is about to be everywhere. Its official… Sprint is going Wimax. The first to go 3G only a couple of years ago, the always ballsy Sprint Nextel Corp. today announced its plans to develop and deploy the first fourth generation (4G) nationwide broadband mobile network. The 4G wireless broadband network will use the mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) IEEE 802.16e-2005 technology standard.
Working together with Intel, Motorola (via their “Harmony” project to mix iDEN with WiMAX), and Samsung, Sprint Nextel will develop a nationwide network infrastructure as well as mobile WiMAX-enabled chipsets that will support advanced wireless broadband services for computing, portable multimedia, interactive and other consumer electronic devices. These efforts are intended to allow Sprint Nextel customers to experience a nationwide mobile data network that is designed to offer faster speeds, lower cost, and greater convenience and enhanced multimedia quality.
Sprint said to be thinking of having the network built out by 2008, at a cost somewhere between $1 billion and $4 billion.
The service is expected to be rolled out by 2007 with wider coverage by 2008.
There’s some unspoken subtext here, too though: The idea of adopting a second technology, in addition to CDMA, that’s controlled by Qualcomm probably wasn’t particularly attractive. The big Q’s royalty system hasn’t won it a lot of friends (apart from happy investors), and it’s currently experiencing some discord with operators in emerging markets who feel its royalty demands, particularly on mobile handsets, and chip pricing inhibit their ability to compete with their GSM rivals. WiMax addresses all those factors — the technology isn’t controlled by a single entity, and nobody holds a commanding about of the IP behind it. This means there’s going to be a lot more competition, and Sprint’s fortunes won’t be as tied to one outside company.
Some other interesting points: Shen talked about how the WiMax network will be complementary, both to Sprint’s existing cellular networks, but also to fixed broadband networks, particularly those of the cable TV companies it’s partnered with. He said that the carrier wants WiMax chips in its devices to also support Wi-Fi, while it’s focusing on creating a network whose real value is in mobility, not necessarily in fixed wireless usage. Also, he mentioned billing access to the network on a per-household basis, rather than per device — this will be necessity if Sprint and it’s vendors’ vision of millions of connected electronic devices is to come true. It’s also an interesting pricing model that could shake up mobile operators a bit.
From the newly formed MO listserv. This has been rewritten a bit to protect the identity of certain people. Anyways, It appears that since last friday Cingular’s deck has been down and all subscription-based applications are still offline. If you have a Cingular phone you can try it yourself. Go to the Media Mall and try to subscribe to an application, if you can… all of the applications gone!
How much revenue would you estimate has been lost because all subscription-based applications have been taken offline on Cingular’s Media Mall for 4 days now?
Apparently the cause of all this was when Motricity did some kind of live update that caused some problems and as a result Cingular just took all the apps down. Apparently they also said it would be back up friday night. Its tuesday afternoon and the damn thing is still down.
UPDATE: Not Sure of This Claim. I am still waiting to hear from both sides. I have heard that this might not have anything to do with Motricity after all.
These things often turn into who dunnit’s with the carriers really showing their beer muscles. I mean, its not like Motricity is trying to cause problems, they are trying to make improvements, but Murphy’s Law seems to apply more rigorously at the intersection of technology and wireless networks. The fact that the storefront is up as often as it is says something positive about their technology. Examples of similar past experience show the cat fight’s that usually abound in these situations. You see, just as often the carriers are to blame – they cause problems by changing something small like swapping out a router without telling a vendor… Then they call that vendor yelling and screaming. That vendor would then track the problem back to them and would get off the hook.
But when the vendor caused the problem, someone from the carrier always calls and talks about reimbursement for lost revenue. (When they caused the problem, this conversation goes nowhere – as most vendors have a SLA with them, not the other way around.)
A 99% uptime SLA only allows for 7 hours downtime per month. We are looking at around 72 hours of downtime at this point. A lot of money is being lost, and not just Cingular’s. So I assume someone at Cingular is having the “breach of contract” discussion with someone at Motricity, and Motricity is trying to not pay or quietly find a way to sweep it under the rug. But let’s assume for a moment that Motricity is found to be at fault and Cingular successfully chases down their lost revenue from Motricity. Does that mean the application providers can also chase down their lost revenue from Motricity?
Oey! What a mess. But a pretty big deal. I am surprised that this is not being written about more. The perfect example of a world without net-neturality and perhaps a reason to think more and more about off-deck?
Over the past two days I have received two emails from two distinct companies both claiming to have found the ultimate business man or woman’s ubiquitous white-board dream. Both Scanr and Clicktoscan ( from Realeyes3D) allow you to scan, copy, and fax with your camera or camera phone. The idea is that you take a picture of a document, whiteboard, or business card (both currently in beta), e-mail the picture to them and then they do the rest, perform OCR on the file and send you a PDF version of the document. The whole process only takes about a minute or two, and the content of the PDF file that is delivered to you is tagged and easily searchable. This, the claim, provides a great way to keep digital copies of important documents, and it’s truly like having a FedEx Kinko’s with you all of the time.
I have given both of them a whirl and while the ability to send directly to a fax machine (or email) by placing the number or email address in the subject line of the MMS is pretty damn cool, neither ClickToScan nor ScanR won me over enough to get me to stop using an application like Shozu to record my ubiquitous camera phone needs. UPDATE: Andy Tiller, CTO of Shozu, has shown me a great way to converge Shozu with ClickToScan… UPDATE bellow.
For one thing, their is just to much involved in the processes of both ClickToScan and a Scanr. Its not as simple as taking a picture with your camera phone and sending it via MMS to either scan@clicktscan.com or doc@scanr.com. First you have to figure out your camera phone’s pixel resolution and set it to various settings some of which I have never heard of (at least on the Nokia N70 or 6682).
I liked ClickToScan’s web interface on this end in that when you put in your camera phone’s information it told you what to expect from it when using their service. I was shocked that the N70 got a lower usability score than the 6682.
Nevertheless, both sites pretty much tell you that for white boards the minimum pixel resolution is 1 and for business cards and and docs its 2 (which already eliminates a good number of American users). I tried both services using a Nokia 6682 (1.3 mega pixels) and a Nokia N91 (2 mega pixels). With the 6682 I took a picture of a whiteboard and a document. The results from ScanR and ClicktoScan where both far from satisfactory.
From scanR I received the SMS on both phones: service@scanR.com() The image you sent to ScanR is too small. Set your camera to 1 megapixel [it is] or higher resolution and fine mode [it is].
ClicktoScan sent the image to my email but told me that Clicktoscan has scanned your image but the resulting document may not be satisfying because the resolution of your original image is too low. To avoid this: (1) Ensure that your camera phone is 1 megapixel or greater [it is]. (2) Ensure that your camera is set to the appropriate resolution and image quality (it is) and (3) Ensure that your camera is not resizing images (see below) [oi! another thing to worry about!] They tell you solve the MMS resizing problem by setting the “creation mode” in your MMS settings to “unlimited” or “free” which worked, in my case, but also means that some of the receiving phones I try to send an MMS to may no longer support the message (unless I remember to switch back to guided mode). Besides, switching the MMS mode did not change the problem. But at least Clicktoscan brought this issue up.
As expected, the same problems existed with the 2 mega pixel N91.
To the average user I believe these companies are already beginning to ask to much when they ask you to take the picture and send it via MMS, especially here in the States where unlimited data plans are cheaply available (especially to the business types they are targeting). I believe a data uploading solution like that of Shozu is much better equipped for this type of thing.
Honestly, I only fiddled about the programs for an hour or so, achieving minimal to no success which for me means if I can’t get it, my dad or girlfriend or aunt definitely wont get it. They are not going to dedicate more than 15 min to figuring out something like this. They get Shozu cause it’s easy.
To be fair, the services work fine when using a regular camera and one of their up-loaders… but this is already missing the point of on-the-spot mobile phone to scan ubiquity they are shooting for isn’t it. So I guess, in a way, its more the fault of the Camera phone manufacturers (image quality) and the networks (MMS size sending issue) then their own but then again that is what they have to work with so perhaps this type of service is to young or early.
But then again, Shozu works just fine with all types of issues and probably, if they wanted to, integrate this type of functionality (and in a way already do). You can now set up your favourite email addresses and blogs in ShoZu – and then email or post your photos and videos in seconds. What do you say AttillatheChicken… Shozu to fax?
UPDATE: As I mentioned by stating that”and in a way they already do…” Shozu CTO Andy Tiller has pointed out that you can actually use Shozu to solve a lot of the MMS and image quality problems. I tried it using both services and it worked like charm! Yeah Shozu for saving the day! See comments bellow for more
If I where going to go with one or the other I would have to suggest ClickToScan in that their website and information was a lot more informative and user friendly. Also with 50 Mb of storage, you can securely store and forward your documents from your phone, your account or your PC, whenever you need to (when it works). With clicktoscan you can go back to documents you’ve previously scanned, either from your web browser or from your phone. In that sense it is a real document management system. Clicktoscan will also send you something, even if its screwed up, which at least makes you feel like you have accomplished something and at the very least can try to remind you of what you where aiming your camera phone at when you attempted to capture it.
Let me start out by saying “it’s about time!”
