Confused by how AT&T’s new shared-data planswork? Well, we’ve put together a primer to show you how they work and compare them to Verizon’s similar pricing structure. Ultimately, shared data might not be for you, but hopefully this guide will help clear up the confusion. Read more »
When Verizon announced its new shared-data plans, it should have enjoyed a big advantage over its archrival AT&T. Consumers had been demanding the right to pool data, and Verizon was the first carrier to deliver. Instead, Verizon fumbled, and AT&T has picked up the ball. Read more »
Hey, mobile developers, have you ever wondered where users are when they interact with your apps — like down to the level of whether they’re in a Starbucks or the McDonald’s right across the street? A startup called Placed can tell you so you can act accordingly. Read more »
Verizon Wireless is hauling COWs and COLTs to Kansas City and Detroit but not to any livestock show. These COWs and COLTs are cells on wheels and cells on light trucks. Carriers have long been using temporary cells. What’s interesting about these is they’re 4G. Read more »
Mobile virtual network operators are sprouting up like crazy all over the U.S. after becoming nearly extinct a few years ago. Why the renaissance? According to two of those new virtual operators, GSM Nation and TIng, the big carriers are finally letting MVNOs spread their wings. Read more »
T-Mobile USA has a well-deserved reputation for having the hungriest smartphone users in mobile, but now it’s offering proof. The typical smartphone user on its network consumes an impressive 760 MB per month. For HSPA+ 42 smartphones that number increases to an astonishing 1.3 GB. Read more »
As mobile app usage explodes, wireless equipment vendors have been forced to not only keep pace to with radio technologies scale the Internet infrastructure behind them. Cisco has built a new mobile core to handle the enormous data loads the smartphone has heaped onto wireless networks. Read more »
Carriers like Verizon and AT&T are trying to convince Netflix to pay for the bandwidth its subscribers consume on their networks. Rather than fork over the money, Netflix is giving its iPhone customers the option of turning off cellular access to Netflix completely. Read more »
Verizon Wireless revealed a new incarnation of its old V Cast streaming mobile video service on Tuesday. Called Viewdini, the Android app aggregates content from premium video services like Hulu and Netflix and could represent Verizon’s first attempts to charge content providers to carry their traffic. Read more »
Verizon Wireless apparently isn’t done talking about its controversial plan to phase out “grandfathered” unlimited data plans, issuing a statement Thursday explaining the new policy. What it boils down to is this: You can keep unlimited, but don’t expect Verizon to subsidize your device. Read more »
The Big 4 carriers took swipes at one another at CTIA Wireless, arguing over which had the faster network and whose were really 4G. Clearwire stayed out of the debate, but according to CTO John Saw the carrier is planning to shame them all. Read more »
New data from comScore indicates apps are driving traffic on the mobile Web far more than browsers. Despite claims that the mobile Web is dead, though, HTML5 is finally beginning to breathe life into Web-based mobile ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
U.S. Cellular has finally done away with that relic of a bygone 3G age: punitive overage charges on its mobile data plans. Almost all carriers have stopped charging exorbitant rates the slightest breech of the cap, but until this week U.S. Cellular was the exception. Read more »
AT&T is heating up its retaliatory campaign against the Federal Communications Commission for denying its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claimed once again that the merger’s death directly resulted in AT&T’s raising mobile data prices 30 percent. We don’t buy it. Read more »
What does a mobile network hosting 41.2 million smartphones look like? It’s a network where growth in data traffic far exceeds data revenue growth. AT&T is selling a lot of smartphones, but even millions of new iPhones don’t fully account for its huge spikes in traffic. Read more »
AT&T’s networks are getting an upgrade that will transform them from static cellular grids into a kind of network organism whose cells will grow and shrink as customers move through them. Ultimately these self-optimizing networks will be a critical component in providing cheap and ubiquitous mobile data. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
China already accounts for more new iPhone and Android activations than the U.S., and the country’s mobile data consumption will grow drastically as 3G networks are built out. But the exploding market also teems with challenges for outsiders looking to break ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
MetroPCS on Tuesday became the latest operator to begin throttling mobile data, but MetroPCS isn’t eliminating its unlimited data plans entirely. It’s added a $70 price tier that preserves unlimited voice, SMS and LTE data use, but all other customers get capped. Read more »
In the last year, there have been a lot of changes in the way that mobile operators charge for 3G/4G data. So at GigaOM, we figured it was time we updated you on just what the nationwide operators are charging for a gigabyte these days. Read more »
The Pew Research Center this week said mobile devices are increasingly driving traffic for traditional news outlets, but digital revenues aren’t enough to offset falling print revenues. So instead of investing heavily in mobile applications, some outlets should focus on building great mobile ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When AT&T first started throttling unlimited smartphone data users plans last fall, it claimed it had to limit the “extraordinary” consumption of its greediest customers. It turns out extraordinary is only 2 GB – a full gigabyte less than it sells customers under its most-common data plan. Read more »
Mobile data is picking up momentum in Latin America as the number of 3G connections in the region doubled in 2011. Operators in Latin and South America are shutting down their CDMA networks, replacing them with UMTS systems, resulting in a huge surge in data adoption. Read more »
Romanian startup Skin Scan is selling an iPhone app that lets consumers take pictures of questionable moles and get back information on its threat level. However, the company has much grander goals than helping consumers figure out whether to see a doctor. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Wondering why AT&T smartphone data rates just went up? Because the operator was denied its acquisition of T-Mobile – at least that’s what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson implied Thursday. Ma Bell is still bitter about AT&T-Mo’s failure and it’s taking it out on its customers. Read more »
Telecom networking giant Ericsson is buying BelAir Networks, adding its high-performance outdoor hotspot technology to its portfolio, sources told GigaOM. The deal signals a shift in mindset for the big cellular vendors, which until now have never gotten serious about Wi-Fi. Read more »
Skyfire, the mobile browser maker now working with carriers to tame mobile data, just raised a $8 million Series C round with participation from Verizon Ventures. The funding helps Skyfire expand its Rocket Optimizer product and launch a new browser portal for carriers. Read more »
On Sunday, AT&T is reconfiguring its mobile data plans in a way that will anger many customers but may actually please others. It’s raising its smartphone and tablet data plan rates, while simultaneously offering customers a better deal on the data they do consume. Read more »
A recent report on the outsized increase in data usage among iPhone 4S users blamed the bandwidth drain squarely on Siri. But while Siri may be used as the mechanism for more Internet searches and smartphone services, the application itself uses very little data. Read more »
At an analyst conference, Sprint CEO let slip a change in Sprint’s data policies that could have a big impact on iPhone and other smartphone customers lured in by Sprint’s unlimited plans: the carrier has been throttling back speeds to the heaviest consumers of smartphone data. Read more »
The past year in mobile has been even more eventful than most of us would have predicted. Our appetite for mobile data grew dramatically; Google’s Android continued its march to worldwide dominance; Amazon joined the tablet bandwagon; and AT&T tried and failed to acquire T-Mobile USA, among many other things. All of that activity lays the groundwork for a very promising — and very challenging — 2012. This research note serves both as a review of the major trends and events of 2011 as well as a forecast for the coming year. Companies mentioned in this report include Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless and Samsung. For a full list of companies, and to read the full research note, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The average web page has grown from 726 KB a year ago to 965 KB now, according to the HTTP Archive. That growth could eventually help put a squeeze on mobile consumers who have to deal with increasing broadband caps. Read more »
The U.S. MVNO market is now largely a niche where a handful of companies provide phones and services on the cheap. But several notable new players are joining the space next year and will provide a different, more-specialized kind of service; network operators could benefit in ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The spectrum deal that Verizon signed to buy the unused airwaves from the nation’s top cable providers signals the moment that the consumer benefits of the convergence of voice, video and data hit the wall. It’s a deal that’s great for Verizon and bad for consumers. Read more »
Amazingly, Apple approved an app called iTether that lets you share your iOS device’s data connection with a Mac or PC over USB — regardless of whether or not your carrier allows tethering. Even more surprising, maybe, is that it works with 3G-enabled iPads, too. Read more »
Devicescape customers may not be your average mobile data users, but they almost uniformly expect that wireless operators provide some kind of mobile data service and that they provide it for free. Devicescape’s study also found many consumers are unaware that operators are capping data. Read more »
According to an extensive comparative study of iPhone 4S performance across all three major U.S. carriers, AT&T offers by far the best data performance on paper, and also performs nearly as good or better than both Sprint and Verizon in terms of call quality and reliability. Read more »
When it comes to the promise of data as the currency of the web, the current state of affairs has privacy advocates and many consumers up in arms. But it doesn’t have to be the one-sided affair it is today, in which companies have all the data and all the rights, and we shouldn’t have to be afraid of who’s doing what with our information. With laws, products, practices and education, data can become a far more valuable currency than cash ever was. Keeping that in mind, this research note examines five issues that must be addressed by policy makers and entrepreneurs so that they can deliver on our data-driven digital future. Companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Pandora went public,bit.ly/vI6vQC and Spotify successfully launched in the U.S. So which streaming music service tops them on smartphones? Try TuneIn Radio. Onavo, a mobile data management and compression service, has done some work to figure which are the most popular mobile music apps. Read more »
AnchorFree, which distributes the world’s most popular consumer virtual private network, is bringing its Hotspot Shield to iOS devices in a new app that also offers data compression to help cut down people’s mobile data usage by up to half. Read more »
