Some believe Apple’s next iPad launch could lead to a three-tiered pricing strategy aimed at making the iPad appealing to a much broader cross-section of consumers. So is Apple’s next tablet move really designed to lock up the market from top to bottom? Read more »
Just in time for the northern hemisphere’s winter season: An alarm clock application that automatically wakes you earlier in case of frost or snow. Winter Wake-Up is freely available for both Apple iOS and Google Android devices and smartly adjusts your alarm based on weather. 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 »
Sandvine has some interesting New Year’s predictions about how tablets will intersect with the wacky world of mobile broadband. While new family data plans will encourage more consumers to connect their tablets to 3G and 4G networks, they will be awfully careful with their usage. Read more »
Got a Roku media streamer as a gift this holiday season? Then check out this guide for some essential tips on how to set it up, what content to watch, how to get additional channels not listed in the Roku store, and what accessories to buy. Read more »
Republic Wireless is dropping the “so-called” from its so-called unlimited data plan, revealing that it has lifted all restrictions on smartphone Internet use. While Republic’s customers are sure to be happy, let’s see how long it lasts. Unlimited is a hard business model to make work. Read more »
Gogo, an in-flight Wi-fi company, has become the dominant provider of connectivity in the skies and now it’s looking to raise up to $100 million in an IPO. The company plans to use the money to generate working capital and address other general corporate needs. Read more »
Ignoring the threats by Congress to kill off white spaces, the Federal Communications Commission has approved commercial operations of the first networks and devices to tap into the airwave gaps between TV broadcasts, potentially setting off a new revolution in ‘Super Wi-Fi’ services. Read more »
Operators may be using Wi-Fi to move data packets off of their 3G and 4G networks, but they could be shipping all kinds of mobile traffic via Wi-Fi. Kineto’s new smartphone software makes the world of Wi-Fi hotspots one big off-ramp for voice, SMS and MMS Read more »
One of the biggest draws of the Galaxy Nexus is the 4.65-inch high-definition screen; literally a pocketable 720p HDTV display. But some video services still stream standard definition video. Here’s how to get HD video from Netflix on the Nexus and what it looks like. Read more »
Amazon’s successful 7-inch tablet, the Kindle Fire, is locked down more than people might think: browser requests to Google’s Android Market are redirected to the Amazon AppStore. Imagine buying a new car and then being told you that it can only be driven on certain roadways. Read more »
Travelers are getting a welcome gift from Skype in the form of free Wi-Fi access at more than 50 U.S. airports to place voice or video calls over Skype’s service on PCs, Macs, or iOS devices. The year-end promotion runs from Dec. 21 through Dec. 27. Read more »
Wi-fi has shown a remarkable ability to evolve, to meet increasingly higher expectations and requirements, and to become pervasively adopted in mobile devices. All of these factors are highly prized by the enterprise and public and safety agencies, as well as health and educational institutions that are increasingly deploying larger, high-performance and high-capacity Wi-Fi networks that have become fully integrated within the IT infrastructure. This paper follows the ascent of Wi-Fi and looks at how its expanding role within the enterprise drives more-advanced requirements. We also examine how these requirements will be met by further expansion in the Wi-Fi standards and by a new generation of Wi-Fi equipment and devices. And we discuss how the enterprise can benefit from the evolution of Wi-Fi by deploying future-proof networks that will organically improve performance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We can stop wondering if Clearwire will default on its loan payment. Sprint has stepped up with a plan to spend $1.6 billion over the next four years that will help Clearwire stay solvent, and Clearwire said it would make its $237 million debt payment. 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 »
Quantenna, a startup building chips for sending massive data over Wi-Fi, has built the first gigabit chip for Wi-Fi networks and devices. The chip is available now for use in routers, home gateways and even consumer gadgets. Products containing the chips could arrive in 2012. Read more »
Mobile operators are paying hotspot aggregators for mobile offload capacity. Why not the other way around? BelAir Networks thinks operators should think big, building their own monster metro Wi-Fi networks, then turn around and sell that capacity back to aggregators and everyone else. 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 »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Smartphones are driving a renaissance in global Wi-Fi hotspots, according to a new report. But the primary beneficiaries of these millions of new access points, the mobile operators, aren’t all convinced of the hotspot’s merits as a means of adding cheap capacity to their networks. Read more »
Sony’s new Wi-Fi Reader is the only e-reader it introduced this year. It’s good that Sony is streamlining what was an unnecessarily complicated product line, but now that all the eggs are in one basket, how does the device stand up to the competition? Read more »
AT&T announced on Tuesday it’s extending free Wi-Fi to five more New York parks, part of the plan to bring Wi-Fi to 20 parks spread throughout the five boroughs of New York. Free Wi-Fi isn’t just good will; it’s a helpful tool in relieving cellular networks. Read more »
In the coming year, Wi-Fi is going to become a much more vital part of the plan for mobile carriers transforming them from providers of cellular voice and data to purveyors of connectivity thanks to a new Wi-Fi roaming standard in the works. Read more »
Faster in-home Wi-Fi is only a year or two away, says Craig Barratt, president of Qualcomm Atheros, who said next generation Wi-Fi could deliver gigabit speeds making it better and faster. This is good because the technology is the work-horse of home networking. Read more »
Data is in demand on college campuses, and it’s putting a strain on shared school networks. The iPad is partly to blame, according to University of Missouri-Columbia IT director Terry Robb, but it’s mostly acting as a gateway drug for the real culprit: online video. Read more »
Smartphones and tablets now trump laptops as the newer, more mobile devices use airport Wi-Fi more than traditional computers, according to data collected by Boingo Wireless. Although laptops outnumber mobile devices by a factor of five, the smaller devices use nearly 60 percent of airport Wi-Fi. Read more »
Apple’s presence in the aircraft that crisscross our skies is doing well, thanks to the iPad. It is not only being used by airline staff at United to replace paper manuals and charts but is also being tested by Qantas to replace existing in-flight entertainment options. Read more »
Cisco said its sales would grow by 5 to 7 percent through 2014, cutting its revenue growth in half, and signaling the end of its massive restructuring effort at an analyst day Tuesday. The move sent the stock up, but Cisco isn’t out of the woods. Read more »
Virgin America was the first U.S. airline to add in-flight Wi-Fi. Now the tech-savvy Bay Area–based airline is taking it up a notch by announcing it plans to make some Wi-Fi connectivity available through its soon-to-be-upgraded seat-back entertainment system, starting sometime in 2012. Read more »
Incumbent wireless service providers and a chorus of experts have warned of a looming spectrum crisis, which could threaten the success of cloud-based and other high-bandwidth offerings. A silver lining is on the horizon, however, in the form of policy and technological innovations. Read more »
Tablets and e-readers and connected electric meters … oh my! As device makers embed broadband into more gadgets, and consumer demand for ubiquitous broadband skyrockets, operators are realizing they aren’t in Kansas anymore and traditional financial metrics and ways of running their businesses won’t cut it. Read more »
Want a challenge? Try building a Wi-Fi network for a car designed to break the speed of sound. A project that aims to break the land-speed record has applied to the FCC for permission to operate an experimental Wi-Fi network at 800 mph in Nevada. Read more »
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The number of Wi-Fi hotspots around the world is expected to crack one million locations by 2013 as carriers continue to embrace the hotspot in face of growing data demand. Gone are the days where simple Wi-Fi is a second-class citizen when it comes to networks. Read more »
Android owners using Dropbox should take a look at Dropsync, a third-party client that offers more features than the native Dropbox software. Offering true, two-way sync, the app can be configured to sync at certain times, on Wi-Fi only or depending on the phone’s battery level. Read more »
Novatel’s second quarter results Thursday included a 50 percent rise in overall revenue and showed off the tight relationship between better mobile broadband, Wi-Fi and consumers toting multiple broadband-enabled devices. But how will carriers and customers react to downloading more content at faster speeds? Read more »
Trying to keep up with mobile data costs will be a mighty challenge for network operators, who are looking at delivery costs going up by sevenfold to $370 billion by 2016, according to Juniper Research. Read more »
Another hurdle was removed today for “Wi-Fi on steroids,” as the IEEE published a wireless standard that could bring high-speed broadband to rural areas. The so-called white-space networks use unlicensed spectrum freed up from old television channels and could send fast wireless signals across 100 kilometers. Read more »
Zinio now supports Google Android handsets, bringing content from 1,000 digital magazine publishers to smartphones and small tablets running Android versions 2.2 and 2.3. A first look at the new software shows a positive experience, but it may be better suited to devices with larger screens. Read more »
This week both Republicans and Democrats proposed drafts of mobile spectrum bills that would incent television broadcasters to give up some of their spectrum to be used for mobile broadband. But one of those bills could hurt the development of more unlicensed airwaves. Read more »
