The participating trucks are run by empanadas specialist Nuchas, Andy’s Italian Ices, mobile burger flipper Frites ‘N’ Meats and coffee wagon Mudtruck. Karma is also installing the hotspots — which connect users through Wi-Fi to Clearwire’s WiMAX network — at Mad. Sq. Eats, a seasonal outdoor market in Madison Square Park.

Once interested web surfers log into a hotspot (under the Your Karma SSID) using Facebook, they will receive 100 MB of free data access, which they can use not only at the hosting food truck but also at any other participating food truck or any other Karma hotspot. If you like the hosting food truck’s Facebook page, you receive an additional 25 MB.

The fascinating thing about Karma is that unlike other wireless ISPs, it doesn’t just sell you access to your own mobile hotspot. Karma gives you access to everyone else’s hotspots, too. Any Karma customer can link to any Karma hotspot — whether it is on a food truck or in your neighbor’s pocket — allowing you to use your megabytes wherever its ad hoc network of devices are present.

Karma doesn’t want to be another mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) selling devices and bulk megabytes. Instead it hopes to build a social mesh network that divorces access from the device. If Karma can achieve scale, customers will no longer be forced to tether their tablets or PCs to a single modem they have to lug around wherever they go, said Karma CEO and co-founder Robert Gaal. By working with food trucks, Gaal said, Karma can seed its social mesh network in more places, helping it achieve that scale.

“This all started because the Mudtruck was parked around the office from TechStars,” Gaal said in an email. “During our time in the program and after, we kept in touch with them. At one point, we figured that all those people in line for the truck with their eyes glued to their phones might need some Wi-Fi. The first tests we did worked really well, so we approached many more after.”

After using up your initial 100 MB of free data, you can buy an additional gigabyte for $14, and that data never expires. Since Karma is so small today, customers will need to get their own dedicated hotspots if they expect to get a connection in most places. But Karma offers incentives to share your connection with as many people as possible: for everyone who connects to your modem you get 100 MB of free data, and any data those guests consume isn’t subtracted from your data bucket.

Eventually it may be possible to be a Karma customer without ever owning a Karma modem. As more customers buy into the service, the likelihood of finding a Karma signal will increase, especially in areas where internet users converge like airports and coffee shops. Gaal said Karma will also build on the food truck project and began seeding hotspots in other heavily trafficked areas.

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Why the big boost? América Móvil, the Latin America multinational telecom provider that owns TracFone, didn’t give specifics. But it just so happens that in January TracFone started selling the iPhone 5 at Walmart through its Straight Talk brand.

The offer presents a cheap alternative for consumers craving Apple’s latest and greatest device. You still have to pay the unsubsidized iPhone 5 price of $649, but Walmart spreads it out over 26 monthly payments of $25. Meanwhile Straight Talk’s prepaid service comes in at just $45 a month, including unlimited SMS, voice and data, though Straight Talk will start throttling back speeds if you consume much more than 2 GB each month.

That plan is even cheaper than T-Mobile’s new “Un-carrier” $50 tier while also offering more data. The major drawback is that you  don’t get 4G access.  As a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), TracFone buys network access from the major carriers. The iPhone deal uses either Sprint or Verizon Wireless’s CDMA networks, but so far Tracfone hasn’t gotten permission from either to use their LTE services, which can deliver data speeds up ten times faster than their older 3G EV-DO systems.

In its earnings statement (PDF), América Móvil said that its big subscriber gains are coming from Straight Talk and its new brand targeting Mexican nationals Telcel América. Both brands offer more expensive plans than Tracfone’s core prepaid service focused on budget users. Consequently, its average revenue per subscriber jumped 16 percent year over year to $19 a month.

There’s no way to know for certain whether the iPhone is driving those Straight Talk gains unless Tracfone starts releasing device figures. But more of the prepaid operators’ customers seem to be gravitating toward higher-end devices like the iPhone and purchasing more expensive service plans.

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T-Mobile MVNO Solavei said on Wednesday it will fully support all of the HSPA+ radios in the new version of the iPhone 5. That means anywhere T-Mobile offers 3G service, Solavei will too. Previously all iPhones’ 3G capabilities were restricted to areas where T-Mobile had completed its ongoing network overhaul, which to date is about 50 cities. Solavei – which has adopted a multi-level marketing approach (think Amway) to distributing its service – is selling the unlocked iPhone 5 directly to customers for the steep price of $700 through its retail partner GSMNation. But unlocked versions of the device will work just fine with Solavei’s SIM cards.

Solavei, however, won’t get access to T-Mo’s latest and greatest 4G network though. The MVNO confirmed that none of its customers will be able to tap T-Mobile’s LTE network, no matter what phone they own. T-Mobile has only launched LTE in seven cities, and it appears to be keeping its new 4G service for itself for the time being. I would expect that change eventually though. Sprint, for instance, is already opening its new LTE network to its numerous MVNO partners.

T-Mobile’s 3G network, though, is nothing to scoff at. T-Mo the only U.S. carrier to offer dual-carrier HSPA+, which is now accessible by the iPhone 5 and many other devices supporting its Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band. T-Mobile also has several other MVNO partners, such as Tracfone’s Straight Talk Wireless, that can theoretically support the iPhone 5. Solavei is the only one we know of that is selling a nano-SIM card that fits into to device, but many consumers are getting around that problem by cutting larger SIM cards down to size.

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Abramovich’s new 23.3 percent stake in Truphone isn’t quite as impressive as his outright ownership of the world-famous Chelsea Football Club (that’s soccer to us Yanks). But the investment is a huge vote of confidence to an aging startup, which is on its second business model in six years. Abramovich’s investment vehicle Minden led a £75 million round – it’s first since its £16.5 million Series B in 2008 — valuing the company at £300 million.

Truphone started out in 2006 as the mobile equivalent of Skype, developing handset software that allowed customers to place free or low-cost VoIP calls over Wi-Fi to international destinations and while roaming onto international networks. Rather than compete with other VoIP providers like Skype it partnered, supporting their services within its client.

But in 2010 Truphone became a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), creating an international SIM card that access multiple networks in different countries as if they were “home” networks. The result is a service where customers paid the same local rates regardless of whether they were in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Truphone plans to use the new funds to expand its virtual footprint outside of Anglophone countries. It plans to target the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Poland, Germany and Spain this year, but is also in negotiations with carriers in other countries to buy capacity off their networks, the company said. Truphone added that it would hire another 500 employees, most of which would be based in the U.K.

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But ACN announced a deal with Devicescape on Tuesday that could make its rather plain-Jane mobile service plans much more attractive in the future. Flash will tap into Devicescape’s virtual network of 11 million hotspots. It’s the same approach that both Republic Wireless and U.S. Cellular to offload traffic off of 3G and 4G networks.

Currently Flash resells minutes, texts and data from both Verizon Wireless and Sprint, but its pricing is still higher than many MVNOs and budget carriers in the market. For instance it offers an unlimited plan, including voice, data and domestic and international SMS, on Sprint’s network for $60 a month, but if you tap into Sprint’s LTE network the cost goes up to $70 a month. Most MVNOs and even prepaid operators like MetroPCS far undercut those rates. Fellow multilevel marketing MVNO Solavei sells an unlimited plan for $50 a month.

But if ACN follows the lead of other carriers that have begun leaning on Wi-Fi to take over the data connection’s heavy lifting, Flash could find plenty more wiggle room in pricing. Republic is experimenting with a $19 monthly unlimited plan, defraying its costs by relying on customers’ home and business Wi-Fi connections, as well as Devicescape’s virtual network, to handle the bulk of its voice calling and data usage. Free Mobile is doing the same in France with its own 4-million node Wi-Fi network.

Wi-Fi image courtesy of Flickr user suttonhoo

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Red Pocket isn’t so much contracting with YouMail as it is removing the obstacles preventing third-party voicemail services from working on Red Pocket phones. Since MVNOs don’t run their own networks (Red Pocket buys minutes and megabytes from AT&T) they usually don’t support the call forwarding features that would allow a third-party voicemail platform to work. Red Pocket is lifting that call-forward restriction to let YouMail’s Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 apps work on its customers’ handsets.

It’s an ideal setup for Red Pocket since it’s primarily a SIM-card service provider, selling prepaid buckets of domestic and international minutes, text messages and data to customers who bring their own devices. Rather than keep investing in antiquated mailbox servers – or shell out the money for a new visual voicemail platform – it can simply let customers choose their own voicemail provider, just like they choose their own email providers and social networks.

YouMail’s free basic service gives customers a universal cloud mailbox that can be accessed from any mobile or PC browser, and its smartphone app can download voice messages, caller ID and caller photos into its mailbox. Its premium service not only provides more cloud storage, but has a speech-to-text function that will transcribe any message into a text file.

I would expect more MVNOs to follow in Red Pocket’s footsteps. In fact, it probably won’t be long before some MVNOs start abandoning their old voicemail services completely. Rural operator Viaero has started preloading YouMail on its Android handsets, and Pennsylvania’s Immix wireless has retired its old mailbox servers, relying solely on YouMail.

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Stacey Higginbotham

Chip wars intensify as more gain LTE integration

Qualcomm has experienced a phenomenal run as the provider of integration applications processors and radios for smartphones this past year. The application processor is the brains for the smartphone, while the radios allow them to communicate. Qualcomm’s longstanding practice is to combine those chips onto one system on a chip to save space inside the handset, which has helped it lead the pack in terms of market share.

Now others are finally following its lead with Nvidia, which purchased radio maker Icera, and Intel, which purchased Infineon’s wireless business; both are set to release integrated chips next year. Nvidia’s Grey and Wayne chips will combine its Tegra processor and should hit devices in the second half of the year

Intel on the other hand has released an integrated modem and application processor that found its way into a handful of handsets this year, but didn’t support LTE. The chip giant plans to release an Atom-based application processor that supports the 4G standard early next year. Qualcomm is going to get some competition with good tech and competition with deep pockets as handset makers will have more chip options for the onslaught of LTE handsets expected in 2013.

Kevin Fitchard

The incredibly shrinking network

Next year networks are going to get smaller — or at least the cells within them are. The major U.S. operators led by AT&T and Sprint plan to begin their first small cell launches in 2013, paving the way for far denser networks and big increases in mobile data capacity.

Why are small cells important? Each cell in a network only has a finite amount of capacity, so if you increase the number of cells in a given area you increase the overall amount of shared bandwidth available to a carrier’s subscribers. Radio network analytics and optimization firm Actix estimates that today the typical square kilometer in a busy urban area contains five to seven macrocells, but in 2015 that same area will be augmented with a layer of 40 or more micro and picocells. Such an architecture could support 3,000 GB of traffic a day within a single square-kilometer, a 10X increase in capacity over what our networks support today.

The big cell mounted on rooftops and towers isn’t going away. Instead it will be incorporated into the heterogeneous network, allowing our smartphones and tablets to choose among many connection options and eventually to establish multiple connections simultaneously. Mobile bandwidth will become more plentiful and hopefully much cheaper. This won’t happen overnight, but we’ll see the precursors of these hetnets next year.

The resurgence of the MVNO

The independent mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) all but died in the last decade. But in 2012 the MVNO made a big comeback. Dozens of new virtual carriers emerged, but instead of focusing on a specific demographic or a media brand like the defunct Amp’d Mobile or Disney Mobile, this new breed of MVNO is targeting the industry’s traditional business models.

There are dozens of virtual operators led by Straight Talk that are now undercutting the big operators in price, but a few of them have gone further, upturning the usual minutes/bucket of megabytes plans. Republic Wireless is tapping into public, readily available Wi-Fi to offer unlimited data and voice plans at sub-$40 rates. Ting is offering what amounts to metered pricing, charging customers only for what they use. Karma and FreedomPop are using social networking principles to distribute 4G bandwidth.

Most of these MVNOs are just getting off the ground and many of them may get culled by the market. But 2013 could be the year for those MVNOs to flourish. There’s growing discontent in the market with the major carriers’ pricing models, sending consumers searching for alternatives. But there’s also greater willingness among carriers to work with MVNOs. They’re lifting many of the old restrictions such as limited access to networks and device that previously kept MVNOs from thriving.

Kevin Tofel

Wi-Fi gets better both in and out of the home

As carriers continue moving towards tiered and shared mobile broadband data plans, look for reliance on Wi-Fi networks to continue to increase. The one-time barrier of hotspot availability has diminished, but hasn’t solved a key problem: seamless connection to Wi-Fi networks. That’s where Passpoint and Hotspot 2.0 initiatives come into play. These services add new capabilities to Wi-Fi devices, primarily allowing certified products to automatically sign in and use a Wi-Fi network.

Asus 80211ac router

That’s just the first step, however; the idea is that smartphones, tablets and laptops will roam from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another without any user intervention. Not only will that help consumers and enterprise workers out in the field, but it also benefits cellular operators, making it even easier to offload data traffic from 3G and 4G networks to hotspots.

Home Wi-Fi use will improve as well thanks to the new 802.11ac standard, which boosts throughput over today’s 802.11n networks. Supporting up to eight antennas and wider bandwidth on a 5 GHz channel, 802.11ac devices deliver a wider coverage range with throughput speeds over a gigabit per second. Although the standard is still in draft form, expect to see some mobile devices support early versions of 802.11ac mainly for traditional networking activities and video sharing in the home.

Digital assistance and contextual smarts improve on smartphones… and beyond.

Siri, Google Now and various third-party assistants set the stage for contextual software in smartphones, but there’s more work to be done. Expect to see these and other related services mature by taking advantage of more mobile device sensors combined with deeper access to personal information such as schedules, contacts, locations, and your historical smartphone usage. More apps will arrive to help our handsets become more effective, and the successful apps will be eyed by platform vendors for integration at the operating system level.

This coming year will also see such contextual services appear in other objects. Think televisions that learn your viewing habits and automatically record shows you may be interested in, for example. How about a smart desk chair sets your online IM status to “available” thanks to a pressure sensor that “sees” when you’re sitting at your desk and back to “away” when you leave?

The possibilities are limitless thanks to the advances in apps and small hardware pioneered by smartphones. Helping to drive this movement are the hacker and tinkerer communities. These have long created their own solutions, but will drive change this year through open-source hardware and software projects such as Arduino.

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The service will look almost identical to the mobile service, which awards each customer 500 MB for free and incentives to earn and trade megabytes through social networking and promotional programs, FreedomPop Stephen Stokols said. The residential service will use Clearwire’s WiMAX network initially, making it available in larger cities covering about one-third of the U.S. population. It will link into the same social features and eventually host the same value-added services such as VoIP, Stokols added.

The key differences will be that residential customers will receive a more powerful stationary modem called the Hub Burst, get access to bigger pool of free data and pay cheaper data rates once they consume that free allotment. In fact, Stokols said FreedomPop plans to increase the size of the bucket of free data it gives its mobile customers beyond 500 MB. We’ll have to wait until next month, though, to see the new pricing and policy details on both the residential and mobile service, Stokols said.

Update: FreedomPop began taking pre-orders for the $89 Hub Burst on its website Wednesday though it still hasn’t released any additional service plan details.

Why residential broadband? Stokols said it’s a market just screaming for a low-price alternative. By FreedomPop’s calculations the typical residential DSL or cable user consumes less than 6 GB of month, but still pays the same $50 or more a month as power users. “We can provide a meaningful broadband plan for around $10 a month for that user,” Stokols said.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user alexmillos

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“Adding a 4G mobile broadband product with Clearwire gives our customers new connectivity options and allows Kajeet to expand our mobile service offerings so that we continue to lead in the creation and delivery of mobile solutions that are great for kids, families and educators,” CEO and founder Daniel Neal said in Kajeet’s announcement.

Kajeet is already selling mobile broadband dongles and hotspots through its education arm, which provides schools with devices and connectivity for learning purposes. It may now be planning to bring those devices over to its consumer-facing carrier business, which for now is focused on selling feature phones, smartphones and tablets.

Backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kajeet differentiates itself from the competition by offering parental control and management software with every device. Parents can define the phone numbers allowed to call the device, restrict usage by time and track their kinds using GPS. Modems are typically open connections to the internet, but Kajeet has developed similar management software for schools called Sentinel.

While putting a 4G hotspot into a child’s hands might seem extreme, it makes more sense if you think of the device as an internet nanny rather than a modem. Children are increasingly connecting to the internet with devices through Wi-Fi: tablets, e-readers, PCc, etc. By placing its protection software on a hotspot, Kajeet can expand its parental control services to devices it doesn’t sell or directly connect.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Hasloo Group Production Studio

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“There is an incentive for good behavior, which is why we’re called Karma,” co-founder Robert Gaal said.

After percolating all summer, Karma officially went live on Tuesday. It began accepting orders on its website for its $79 WiMAX hotspot, which taps into Clearwire’s 4G network in 70 cities. For that price you get free shipping and 1 GB of data that doesn’t expire. You can buy more bandwidth for $14 a gig, but if all goes according to Karma’s plans, it might be a while before you have to.

The Wi-Fi connections on all of Karma’s hotspots are open. Whenever the hotspot is on, anyone can latch onto its Wi-Fi signal, where they will encounter a welcome screen offering them 100 MBs of free data. That 100 MBs isn’t subtracted from the hotspot owner’s data bucket though; rather Karma awards the hotspot owner an additional 100 MB for making the connection happen.

A Karma customer could feasibly rack up a nearly unlimited amount of free data by simply leaving the hotspot on and open all day in public areas, though Gaal said in Karma’s beta trials the typical hotspot receives about five guests a week. Karma, however, is hoping that number will increase dramatically as word of mouth spreads and users learn to pick the Your Karma SSIDs from Wi-Fi network lists.

As for guests, they’re free to use that 100 MB in one sitting or spread it over several sessions, each from a different Karma hotspot. Karma tracks data use by tying you back to a Facebook account. Once that 100 MB is used up though, it’s gone. You can either sign up as a Karma customer or bid the service farewell.

Welcome to the social mesh

Karma launched in Amsterdam, but relocated to New York City last year to participate in TechStars and to find the 4G network required to make its shared mobile broadband experiment work. Karma calls its concept “social bandwidth,” but it’s an idea we’re seeing start to gain traction throughout the MVNO community and the wireless industry at large.

FreedomPop, another Clearwire MVNO that just launched, is doling out network capacity on social principles as well, allowing customers to earn and trade megabytes like virtual currency. Ultimately, FreedomPop doesn’t want to sell access, it wants to sell services like VoIP that ride over a free or heavily discounted data connection.

FreedomPop is using those social features largely as a means to attract customers, which is Karma’s goal as well. As people encounter its open hotspots and free bandwidth in public, a portion of them will eventually turn into paying customers, who will in turn seed the country with more open hotspots, which will be used to recruit more customers. And since every Karma account is linked to a Facebook profile, Karma is hoping to grow through traditional social networking as well.

But Karma sees social bandwidth as more than just a marketing tool. Rather it’s a more efficient way to deliver mobile data. What’s really revolutionary about Karma is how it’s decoupling the service from the device. It’s possible to be a paying Karma customer without ever owning a hotspot – you just latch onto whatever Karma Wi-Fi signal happens to available at any location.

Of course, buying a hotspot guarantees you’ll have connection rather than depending on chance. But Gaal said not everyone will have their hotspots with them at all times. If Karma can reach a certain scale, it can build a persistent network where enough hotspots are in the wild at any given time that Karma users are almost guaranteed of getting a signal in crowded public places like airports or city squares.

I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours

This concept of collective networking is starting to gain currency around the world through networks like Fon. Even carriers are starting to build social contracts into their services: In France, Iliad’s Free Mobile has a network of 4 million Wi-Fi hotspots, each of which hangs off of its residential customers’ home broadband connections. MVNO Republic Wireless is adopting a similar Wi-Fi-first approach.

The idea is that devices shouldn’t be designed to connect to specific networks. Instead, they should use the best network connection available. Perhaps the most radical proponent this sort of crowdsourced network is startup Open Garden, which is distributing software that links any device into ad hoc mesh networks. That network then connects to the internet through the fastest and most reliable link.

Open Garden’s approach is social bandwidth taken to its logical conclusion: every device has access to every possible connection and everyone benefits. But Gaal said consumers aren’t quite ready for such a radical approach in networking. They’re too accustomed to the idea that they own their connections to the network, and therefore they need incentive to share them.

“I do believe there is a huge opportunity there but there has to be a way to implement it so it doesn’t cost you,” Gaal said. “Mesh networks are awesome, but if only one person is footing the bill, not so awesome. If there is no value exchanged in the long run, it’s not a sustainable model.”

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Reno Martin

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