Zebbo have developed a cool service for app developers so they can better monetize their apps. The app using SMS and carrier relationships to provide developers with a means to offer carrier billing for their apps. The downside is that for certain carriers, the website will take upwards of a 50% commission on the sale. This is probably because the fees that carriers are charging are so significant. In any case, the large commission may be offset by the fact that you can reach users who would otherwise not purchase with a credit card or PayPal.
Tag: carriersPage 2 of 31
The Big Three in Canada have announced that they’ve completed trials of two-way wireless video calling between carriers. Currently, you have to be on the same network to get video calling in Canada, but this announcement would really open up the market. Now if only we could get a BlackBerry with a front facing camera, I think this sort of service would be really fun.
TELUS have recently launched the BlackBerry Curve 8530 for $49.99 on a 3 year plan. You can also get it on 2 and 1 year plans for $249.99 and $349.99 respectively. The 8530 is a really solid phone with a trackpad and OS 5, and I’m expecting a lot of TELUS users to pick this one up. The downside here is that while many carriers are offering the 8530 for free, TELUS still want to offload their old 8330 stock and are offering that device for $0.
Recently, T-Mobile USA had to admit that they lost personal data belonging to Sidekick customers and only a small fraction of it could be recovered. The news resulted in damaging PR for the carrier, as well as tangible financial losses as they offered customers a $100 customer appreciation card, in addition to a free month of data service.
This news, while it did not affect BlackBerry users, leaves us wondering just how secure is our data? A BlackBerry can store your data, back it up to a computer, or connect to a server such as Rackspace, which can offer Microsoft Exchange storing and restoring of your data. App World adds a new dimension to our data storage as we now have a plethora of applications taking control of our data storage and restoration as well.
As applications become increasingly popular, with data being increasingly stored on the cloud, we are trusting these organizations to keep our personal data safe.
When speaking with Jasmine Noel of Ptak, Noel and Associates, it became very apparent that there doesn’t seem to be any standards associated with data storage and restoration. While carriers and third parties are increasingly taking control of our data, there is very little in the way of ensuring that your data is in good hands. It all comes down to trust, but that simply isn’t enough.
Getting a best practices and standards system could really address this issue but it isn’t easy. We want to know that if we are entrusting our data to a company, that they can be relied on to restore said data. When the Microsoft Danger servers that were charged with restoring Sidekick data failed, we found out there was no backup system in place and that the data resided on the cloud, with little ability to be restored. We could have avoided this with more transparency.
We want IT professionals to get together and understand what their back up and restore capabilities are. Do they test their processes internally? Can we see the results?
Now, some will take the opinion “if it’s important, you should never trust anyone else to hold it for you.” This is a solid argument but it’s not conducive to growing the industry. Consumers and enterprise should both be able to trust their service providers to hold data for them without having to have a redundant storage process. It’s this trust that is going to propel the smartphone industry forward, but service providers need to earn that trust.
So I put the question to you: Do you trust third parties to be able to restore your data? What proof do you have that they deserve this trust?
The above video is Neville Ray, SVP of Engineering and Operations, T-Mobile USA, discussing their strategy with respect to rolling out HSPA / HSPA+ networks and services in the USA. This demonstrates that several major carriers, now Rogers included, will be rolling out these networks in the near future.
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Rogers have just announced the debut of their HSPA+ network in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). This is incredible news for mobile Internet users, as they can now get access to speeds roughly equivalent to 3.75G with a mobile Internet stick.
From a BlackBerry perspective, this isn’t immediately pressing news. Back when Rogers announced their 3G network, called HSDPA and announced April 2nd, 2007, it took RIM around a year and a half to release a BlackBerry that was capable of taking advantage of the network: the BlackBerry Bold.
From the Press Release: “Rogers has begun the Canada-wide deployment of the 21 Megabits per second (Mbps) high-speed HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Plus) wireless network, following the successful expansion and doubling of speed of its high-speed network to 7.2 Mbps last year. Starting in August, Rogers will progressively increase wireless network download speeds up to 21 Mbps in the Greater Toronto Area, and expand quickly over the coming months to other cities across the country.”
The question is: will RIM even bother to make a device that utilizes the HSPA+ network? Currently, 3G seems to satisfy the needs of the market. We know that RIM has plans to make LTE compatible BlackBerry devices, which could mean we’ll skip HSPA all together.
What applications do we envision with an HSPA+ enabled device?
[Special thanks goes out to RogersDude69]
LTE is going to be an incredible evolutionary step for BlackBerry and smartphones. The technology will change the way we use data on our phone as well as aid carriers in coping with an increased network load.
According to research from ABI, wireless operators will spend about $3.3 billion building LTE base stations in 2011. That expenditure will have purchased some 142,000 base stations worldwide. LTE base station equipment spending is expected to rise sharply between 2011 and the end of 2012.
“Vendors will be shipping base station equipment in significant quantities in 2010 ahead of limited trials that typically last about a year, followed by full commercial launches,” says senior analyst Nadine Manjaro. “Many operators have been talking about re-use of existing equipment, but ABI Research understands that while there may be sharing of masts and cabinets most of those 142,000 base stations will have completely new baseband and RF components, because operators will generally try to keep the new LTE networks separate from their legacy networks.”
Continue reading the ABI Research data regarding LTE
