Category: Mobile

Mobile data bits traveling around the world outnumbered voice traffic for the first time during December of 2009, according to wireless equipment vendor Ericsson. Worryingly, that data traffic was generated by an estimated 400 million smartphones set against 4.6 billion mobile subscribers making voice calls. What happens when everyone has a smartphone?

Ericsson measured traffic across networks around the world and discovered that once data traffic surpassed 140,000 terabytes per month, those bytes outnumbered the traffic generated by voice calls. Data traffic grew 280 percent during each of the last two years, and Ericsson expects it to double annually over the next five (see Cisco’s estimates here). Already traffic in 3G networks has surpassed that of 2G networks. Note that in India and China, the world’s two most populous countries, 3G networks are only now coming online or have yet to do so.

Ericsson credits/blames social networking as accounting for “a large percentage of mobile data traffic” consumption, although video seems to consume many more bytes. Ericsson notes that 200 mobile operators in 60 countries are deploying and promoting the social networking site’s mobile products, with over 100 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. But Facebook is more an example of why we want always-on, always accessible broadband (we talk to our friends now, not merely via voice, but with pictures, texts and status updates) than it is the cause of the data deluge.

Here’s a video from Ericsson talking yesterday about this historic moment (of three months ago):

Related GigaOM Pro research: Metered Mobile Data Is Coming and Here’s How (sub req’d)

Fox Mobile is hoping it can convince consumers to shell out to watch TV on their smartphones. The News Corp. subsidiary this morning unveiled Bitbop, a subscription service for smartphone owners that will deliver both streaming and downloadable movies and TV programs to smartphone users.

The app will be free to download when it launches on an unspecified date in the next several weeks, but the app itself will only offer sneak previews — full content will cost $10 monthly over 3G and Wi-Fi connections. Bitbop will work on devices such as the iPhone, Droid and several BlackBerry models at launch with more handsets on the way. Fox, NBC Universal and Discovery will provide content, along with other yet-to-be-announced partners, and some movies will incur a yet-to-be-determined charge beyond the monthly subscription fee.

Whether Fox can finally entice users to pay for on-the-go video is far from clear, though.  Qualcomm appears to be repositioning MediaFLO -– the most highly publicized mobile TV effort thus far -– as a content delivery network after the TV business failed to draw large numbers of paying viewers. Overall, only 115 million mobile TV subscribers exist worldwide, according to recent figures from Screen Digest.

And Bitbop faces some unique challenges even for a mobile TV business. The company is hoping to secure carrier-billing relationships but will support only credit card payments at launch, requiring users to walk through the tedious process of establishing accounts either on their phones or a parallel web site. Bitbop may have difficulty hammering out business deals with carriers — particularly AT&T — which struggle to handle data-intense traffic such as mobile video. Plus, at least one major network (CBS) already offers full-length content free via an iPhone app. There’s also questionable demand for full-length TV shows and movies on mobile devices, which is the effort’s primary value proposition.

Bitbop can leverage some interesting advantages, however. Content is modified for each device, Fox Mobile Group EVP Joe Bilman told me, and Fox hits such as “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” may be especially attractive to users interested in mobile entertainment. And I’ve long argued that a lack of on-demand and downloadable content has been a major hurdle for mobile video, which has largely consisted of streaming programming, which can falter on dodgy mobile connections.

More importantly, Fox is likely to back Bitbop with some serious marketing muscle, using its substantial TV presence to promote the effort to users who may not even be aware mobile TV exists.  (It’s unclear, however, why Fox isn’t bringing some version of the News Corp. co-owned Hulu service and brand to mobiles instead of its own, mobile-specific play.) But even brand awareness and Fox marketing may not be enough to move the needle in mobile video. However, if Bitbop is successful there will be no shortage of others looking to duplicate its traction in a very difficult space.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Making Movies Mobile

Qualcomm’s Big Push for Mobile TV

Image courtesy Flickr user masochismtango.

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) is rolling out a new mobile video service that will help entertainment and wireless companies tap into consumers’ increasing demand for watching video on the go.

As networks and devices get better, users want to watch news, sports and other video content on their phone. But getting applications to market can be expensive and time consuming. With one-time events, like the Olympics or March Madness, often only one application is developed, and usually its for the iphone. RealNetworks will be demonstrating a new platform this week at CTIA that aims to make video apps for all platforms much easier to produce. The mobile video service leverages Real’s technology that is being used today by AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless for their respective video-streaming services.

Video can either be streamed live or played back on-demand and Real supports the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Java, as well as, the mobile web. “Consumers have gone from watching five-minute snacks to wanting to see full-length episodes,” said Vincent Guytan, RealNetworks’ director of product management.

The Mobile Video Portal (MVP) service provides the media company or carrier with the tools to make the application (via an drag-and-drop style web interface) and even billing and advertising services through a partnership with Omniture (NSDQ: OMTR) and DoubleClick. Real will also submit the apps to the various app stores, and provide editorial services to the company if they don’t want to be responsible for updating the content in the applications. Neither AT&T or Verizon Wireless are using the new platform, and no customers have been announced.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is in third place when it comes to the number of subscribers it has on its network, but it wants everyone to know that it is the first to roll out a 4G network in the U.S.

To add to that momentum, Sprint unveiled the first WiMax-based phone, HTC Evo 4G, at CTIA today. Although the phone won’t be available until summer, Sprint still may beat all other carriers to market with a 4G phone by a year or more. Verizon Wireless, which is rolling out a competing LTE network, said phones won’t be ready until 2011. Sprint is live with 4G in 27 markets and expects to quadruple its footprint this year.

The HTC Evo 4G runs Google’s Android operating system and has a 4.3 inch screen and a 1 Ghz processor. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse said the phone will also allow users to connect eight other devices using WiFi to gain mobile broadband access—that’s three more than the company’s previously announced Overdrive modem that allows five.

Sprint had no problem coming up with applications to demonstrate 4G. Here are just some highlighted during today’s press conference:

—YouTube high quality: Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has worked with Sprint and HTC to automatically launch high quality content when 4G is detected. The browser has not been released. In a side-by-side demonstration, the video is much more crisp than the 3G streaming version.

—Kick-stand: Video is obviously a big feature on the device. It comes with a kickstand to watch hands-free.

—TV connectivity: The phone easily connects to a plasma TV so that you can watch a HD movie on a big screen.

—Cameras: There are two on the device. The one on the back is 8 megapixels, and the one on the front is 1.3 megapixels. Photos taken with the one on the back can easily be uploaded over 4G, and the one on the front can be used for video conferencing that can be streamed to your Facebook page using Qik.

—Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash: The Evo supports full Flash capabilities.

—Modem: Users will be able to connect eight different devices to the Evo using WiFi to gain internet access to the 4G network. In a humorous demo it connected Verizon’s Droid device.

Sprint said it’s withholding some details about the phone until closer to the launch.

Location-based ad startup Placecast has added $3 million in additional funding. The company says it will use the cash to expand its ‘ShopAlerts’ service, which sends people promotional text messages when they’re near a specific retail location. (It’s all opt-in). This is a double hot space—with both Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) buying up mobile ad networks and with ‘location’ seemingly replacing ‘real-time’ as the buzz word du jour.

And indeed, in its announcement, Placecast takes the highly unusual step of mentioning a specific company that theoretically could be interested in acquiring it. Talk about chutzpah! (From the e-mail a representative sent us: “The 451 Group’s mobile analyst, Thomas Rasmussen believes the next mobile ad M&A will happen with a location twist. He predicts someone like Nokia (NYSE: NOK) will want to buy a company like Placecast.”)

This is an add-on to the $5 million round the company raised only five months ago. The cash is coming from existing investors, Quatrex Capital, ONSET Ventures and Voyager Capital.

Related

• Location-Based Ad Net 1020 Placecast Raises $5 Million Second Round

Who will never, ever kill an electric car again? GM. Clearly having learned from the EV1 public-relations nightmare, GM proudly announced that it will “repurpose” most of the 119 surviving Equinox Fuel Cell vehicles it produced for its ambitious Project Driveway program as it develops its second-generation fuel-cell powertrains.

During the last three years, Project Driveway has placed hydrogen-fueled Equinoxes into the hands of real-world consumers and public agencies in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., for stints lasting from a few days to several months. (One even spent about a week in my own driveway.) Project Driveway participants have helped GM log a total of 1.2 million miles on its fleet of Equinox Fuel Cells, which would be a lot of laps around the General’s Milford proving grounds. Now, as these vehicles are handed back over to GM one by one, many of them are being fitted with various components and fuel/power management upgrades that GM hopes will make it into its much smaller, more efficient second-gen fuel cells, which it has shown in “production intent” form but are still a ways from actual production en masse.

Soon after receiving new vinyl tattoos covering half of their bodies, being stripped of all Equinox badging, and receiving their sundry powertrain updates, which will be made on a per-vehicle basis as new bits and programs are readied, the freshened vehicles (rechristened “Chevrolet Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles”) will find their way back into the driveways of real-world drivers in the three aforementioned regions. To kick off this new phase of Project Driveway, GM introduced biologist and committed environmentalist Stephanie White from West Los Angeles and handed her the keys to the first of the repurposed vehicles, to become her transportation companion for the next six months. GM declined to state which of the numerous powertrain updates were installed on White’s vehicle, but it did say that they are several upgrades away from being able to install the actual “production” second-gen fuel-cell powertrain, which is about half the size and roughly 60 percent of the mass of the original system, whilst being far less reliant on the expensive platinum used in the fuel-cell membranes.

While some might expect that GM would use the new and improved Equinox or some other current GM chassis to test out these various new technologies, using the old vehicles, boxy and inelegant as they may be (and which are rumored to have cost at least half a million bucks apiece), is a smart move. For starters, this represents recycling at the highest level and thus avoids the wrath of the enviro-nazis that crucified the wasteful ways of “Old GM” so viciously in the past. But more importantly for development purposes, the unchanged weight and aerodynamic properties of the host vehicles allows GM to gather apples-to-apples comparisons for each of the new bits they install. Kudos, GM, for being smart this time.

Related posts:

1. GM’s Fuel-Cell Program Soldiers On
2. Toyota Expands Fuel-Cell Program with 100 FCHV-adv Prototypes for U.S.
3. Pump It Up: We Refuel a Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle

Looking expand its virtual payments operator more deeply into mobile apps, Offerpal Media is buying ad net mediator Tapjoy. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Last summer, Palo Alto-based Tapjoy, along with other mobile ad net optimizers like AdWhirl, found itself threatened with being cut off from AdMob’s network, after the mobile ad net cited “glitches” related to ads served by companies that had been handling unsold inventory across its system. Aside from working with mobile ad nets, Tapjoy has also been venturing into the virtual goods business that Fremont, CA.-based Offerpal is focused on. Offerpal has raised $19.6 million since its founding three years ago from D.E. Shaw Ventures, which led its $15 million second round in December, as well as InterWest Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Release

Related

• Offerpal Adds RockYou Vet As New Chief Revenue Officer
• Offerpal Media Raises $15 Million For In-Game, Social Media Ads

I really enjoy shifting gears manually. I also enjoy shifting gears manually without using the clutch. It absolutely blows the minds of pre-teen grandchildren. A car that will forever stand at the top of my Automotive Pantheon is a Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France. It belonged to a friend named Bill Pearce who was in the automotive film business, doing training films, promotional films, and the occasional commercial. Bill asked if I’d like to drive the TdF for a weekend in 1960. One thing led to another and I drove that car more or less regularly for more than a year. It was crude and noisy and it had a triangular fake-ivory shift knob with an equally fake jewel in its center, and every hour spent driving it was a preview of heaven.

Now Ferrari has spoken sotto voce to trusted journalists and friends-of-the-firm that manual transmissions are declared obsolete and future Ferraris will all feature automatics. The Ferrari California will be their last car with a clutch and a shift lever. There is something wrong with this picture. Could it be that as Ferrari has worked harder and harder to produce two-passenger parade floats for fat-ass fop non-enthusiasts, the percentage of greaseballs in that target market who actually know how to shift gears has slipped below acceptable levels?

Thank God there’s still Porsche.

Related posts:

1. David E.’s Take: What Luxury Should Be
2. David E.’s Take: Why Toyota Should Think Small Again
3. David E.’s Take: GoDaddy Goes Badly

Huawei today demonstrated the next-generation Long Term Evolution network technology in trials that reached speed of 1.2 Gbps. That’s faster than most wireline networks, but it’s delivered via a cellular network. With such speeds you could download an HD movie in 30 seconds.

But before you dump your FiOS wireline subscription, be aware that the LTE Advanced network technology is years away. When I ask folks at Verizon Wireless or AT&T about LTE Advanced I’m been told that no one is thinking about it today.

Plus, even with it far off (the standard won’t even be set until 2011), the test speeds bear little relationship to the actual speeds. For proof, check out the LTE demo I saw back in 2008 showing speeds of 150 Mbps down and the anticipated speeds of 5-12 Mbps down that Verizon is telling users to expect on its network. I explain why there’s such a disconnect in this post.

There’s also a matter of finding enough spectrum to deliver peak speeds using LTE-Advanced. For the fastest speeds carriers will need wide swaths of spectrum — the 3GPP standard-setting group says 70 MHz. Currently Verizon expects to use 10 MHz bands to deploy its LTE in the 700 MHz block, so we’re talking a huge increase. Cobbling together that many airwaves will suck up the spectrum that the FCC wants to deliver as part of its National Broadband Plan.

Still, 1 gigabit wireless is an exciting milestone that I couldn’t bear to pass up, especially given that our wired networks are hoping to hit a mere 100 Mbps by 2020, according to the National Broadband Plan goals. Also of note is Huawei’s continued advancement in the equipment business. It was also working with Verizon last year to deliver 10 Gbps to homes via fiber and has deployed nine commercial LTE networks.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is adding two search apps to its iPhone roster: A new ‘Sketch-a-Search’ app lets users find local businesses close to a certain location simply by drawing a boundary on a map, while the Yahoo Search app lets users search Yahoo on their phones (There are some extras too, like voice search).

The new apps come as Yahoo has been adding iPhone apps for many of its properties. In September, the company introduced iPhone apps for Yahoo Finance, Flickr, and Fantasy Football. And just last week it bought Citizen Sports, a startup that owns several sports-related iPhone apps.

A year ago, when Yahoo rolled out a new mobile homepage the company said it was hoping to eliminate “app fatigue”—which it described as the experience of going into and out of several applications. That goal, however, now seems to be kaput—and executives have said the company is making a bigger investment in building apps for high-end devices, as well as in the mobile browser.

Yahoo announced the new search apps at CTIA, which my colleague Tricia Duryee is covering. She’s meeting with Yahoo representatives this afternoon and should have more then.

Related

• Yahoo Launches Apps For Fantasy Football, Flickr and Finance
• Yahoo Favors Aggregation For Mobile And Online, Sees ‘App Fatigue’ Coming

Billing firm Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) has bought up mobile payments and messaging firm MX Telecom for $104 million in cash, the companies announced at CTIA today. Amdocs says the acquisiton will bulk up its Open Market business, which calls itself the “largest mobile transaction hub” in the U.S and provides services like SMS advertising and content delivery to phones. In addition to the U.S., MX Telecom has operations in Europe and Australia, and Amdocs says the deal “accelerates (its) plans for global expansion into key markets.”

Amdocs has made several other sizeable acquisitions over the years, including buying up mobile ad and search firm Changing Worlds for $60 million a year-and-a-half ago, as well as Qpass for $275 million in 2006.

Here’s the announcement.

Related

• Amdocs To Acquire Changing Worlds For $60 Million In Cash

At CTIA last year, Motricity’s Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Ryan grabbed headlines when he said, “Shame on us…My hope is that the mobile internet does not go down the path of re-creating the internet.”

Unlike with the internet, he believes users should pay for content and services they access on mobile devices—and the carrier should get a cut of the revenues. Fast forward six months, and Ryan says that he’s still getting grief for making those comments, but now he can fully explain what he met. Today, Motricity is taking the wraps off a three-part overhaul of its carrier offerings that attempts to bring them up to speed in the areas of applications, advertising and social networking.

To be sure, carriers are looking for the silver bullet, however, it remains to be seen whether these efforts are too late, and consumers are already programmed to go elsewhere for their needs. Motricity will also have to compete against all the noise in the space, which has a decibel of at least 38 app stores. Clearly, Motricity, which is seeking $250 million in an IPO, is banking on it.

Motricity works with carriers, including AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless, to provide storefront infrastructure that allows them to sell games and other mobile content to subscribers. However, as the trends shifted toward smartphones, carriers were edged out as handset makers and mobile-OS companies, like Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), BlackBerry and Palm (NSDQ: PALM), got into the business of selling applications and providing high-end internet browsers to consumers.

Motricity’s new services focus on the carrier regaining some ground in the smartphone market, by helping carriers roll out new storefronts and social networking services across all of their entire portfolio of phones, ranging from low-end to high-end devices. While the move makes sense, and carriers are looking for a solution, Motricity has a tough job in front of it. It will have to sell carriers on the idea and also lure developers to its platform, which is getting increasingly difficult as the number of platforms multiply.

—Motricity’s mCore Marketplace: The app store will aggregate carrier content, carrier services like additional minutes, applications and even hard goods. Motricity will manage all aspects of it for the carrier from content management to uploading additional content, merchandising and billing. A carrier can also use demographics, location, prior activities and purchases to customize the experience. It will be cross-platform, running on Wap, Java, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, laptops, netbooks, eReaders and operating systems including Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile and Palm webOS. No carrier partners are being announced today.

—mCore Connect: Motricity has had a number of social-networking aggregation tools for carriers in the past, but this one is more on par with what Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is doing with its Blur technology. The application will integrate all the top sites, like Facebook, mySpace and Twitter, along with e-mail sites like Gmail, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), MSN and AOL (NYSE: AOL) Mail. But rather than making the user click each one to see if they have any updates, Ryan said they will be alerted to any updates or new emails right within the user interface. In addition to saving the user time, Ryan said it also uses less network bandwidth. Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) will be the first carrier to the service in the UK.

—Campaign Manager: This tool provides marketers with a simple means to create and manage mobile marketing campaigns. A&E has implemented Campaign Manager to integrate mobile messaging programs into live broadcast TV events. Motricity previously was in the business of delivering the messages, but did not help the agencies create the campaigns. Now, a marketing department can create the campaigns themselves.

The annual CTIA Wireless conference officially kicked off in Las Vegas today, and so far, company announcements are being dominated by those related to the mobile operating system. Among the headlines so far:

• Mozilla has ceased development of a mobile version of its Firefox browser for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Mozilla’s decision follows similar moves by Skype and Adobe, both of which opted to abandon the lame duck platform last month. For both developers and consumers, the message is clear: Windows Mobile is suddenly an obsolete mobile operating system. Invest your resources elsewhere.
• Qualcomm said it will package Opera Software’s Mini and Mobile browsers with its Brew OS. A platform for feature phones and a few low-end smartphones, Brew is often overlooked amid all the buzz surrounding smartphone platforms like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Qualcomm has begun touting Brew as a kind of mass-market alternative to more advanced operating systems, and AT&T recently committed to using Brew for all non-smartphones. (Verizon Wireless has long used the Brew platform.) The message: Brew, it’s not dead yet!
• Opera also submitted its popular Mini browser to Apple for inclusion in the App Store. Opera said it believes the browser will be approved by Apple because Mini will be up to six times faster than the Safari browser, but many onlookers believe Apple will spike Mini because it violates Apple’s policy for apps that “duplicate existing functionality” of the iPhone’s built-in software. Regardless, the move sets up an interesting showdown between mobile’s most iconic device and its most popular third-party browser.

These moves highlight the increasing importance operating systems play in today’s mobile industry, and help illuminate the strategies being employed by some high-profile developers. Opera’s move to support Brew underscores the platform’s massive footprint in the U.S., for instance — a fact often is lost in the hype surrounding more powerful operating systems. And Mozilla’s decision to abandon WinMo puts one more nail in the coffin of a platform that Microsoft has left to rot. Look for more of these types of announcements as the show plays out this week.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

Image courtesy Flickr user connectologist.

Clearwire said today that it would expand its WiMAX network to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis this year. In its effort to cover 120 million people before the end of the year, these cities will join previously announced network buildouts in 2010 in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., Denver, Minneapolis and Kansas City.

Sprint, which is a Clearwire partner, will provide the 3G coverage to supplement Clearwire’s 4G coverage in the regions. The two companies are in a race to sign up mobile broadband subscribers before the cellular operators launch their own 4G networks, based on the Long Term Evolution standard. For consumers, WiMAX and LTE mean faster mobile broadband speeds and eventually VoIP phone calls and superfast phones.

For those of you who are just unimpressed with sub-4G speeds on your iPhones (or those who do not wish to upgrade to a new device), consider the Sierra Wireless Overdrive 4G WiFi hotspot by Sprint. Though coverage is not the best at the moment, Sprint continues to make inroads in expanding its network and the device is an interesting alternative to those who are frustrated with AT&T’s congested network.

Basically, this is a mobile router that taps into Sprint’s network and creates a local Wi-Fi hotspot for your device, thereby surpassing the technical limitations of the 3G chipset (or lack there of if you happen to have an older iPhone). The tradeoff is that you would still need an AT&T plan for phone features as the Wi-Fi merely supplements the data side. It’s also pricey, weighing in at $99.99 after $250 in discounts and rebates. The monthly plan at $59.99 per month includes unlimited 4G usage (with an ever increasing network) and 3G coverage at 5GB per month.

It’s also interesting to note that Sprint’s iteration of 4G is based on WiMax, which translates to a peak download speed of 10 megabits per second and an average speed of 3-6 megabits per second.

The great news is that this technology is also compatible with the iPad. Though it’s still a $30 premium over AT&T’s unlimited data plan (theirs at $29.99 a month), the speed difference may be of enough value to users. The Overdrive Mobile Hotspot also supports up to five simultaneous users, providing additional benefit and potential cost savings to users with multiple devices.

Look below for a commercial of Sprint advertising this as a great way to get 4G on the iPhone. Had a chance to check it out? Would you prefer Sprint over AT&T? Do you think these companies charge too much for subpar service?

We all know by now that people treat their mobile broadband connections like they treat their wireline connections — downloading as much data and expecting the same rapid performance. But Sandvine (you may remember it as the company that helped Comcast block P2P files) has released data showing exactly how much people use mobile broadband — and concluded that for carriers, such use is neither sustainable nor profitable (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d).

Since the carriers are positioning themselves for the implementation of usage-based pricing schemes for mobile broadband, Sandvine is merely telling its future customers what they want to hear. But Sandvine’s data also paints a very clear picture (one we’ve been painting for at least a year) about the economics of mobile broadband demand and use (GigaOM Pro). From its report:

While significant, these numbers are dwarfed by projections suggesting between 1 billion and 2 billion users by 2014, and revenues well in excess of $100 billion. And therein is one of the points of concern for wireless providers – while the number of users is expected to triple or even quadruple in the next five years, revenue is predicted to only double.

Sandvine offers several charts showing why this is the case, starting with the quality of our phones in the U.S. (the report also covers Europe and Latin America, but I took only U.S. charts):

In other words, the proliferation of high-end phones that can handle bigger applications and deliver faster speeds when it comes to downloading photos or watching video changes the types of things one can do on the mobile network (even when folks aren’t on a computer). Check out the top applications that Sandvine sees being used during peak times on U.S. mobile networks:

So what does this mean for consumers? It means many of us will end up paying more for mobile broadband that we do under unlimited plans. Sandvine’s software offers carriers the ability to look at data usage on the network and set pricing tiers to ensure that, for example, only a certain percentage of users will fall into a basic tier (or be subject to overage charges). We’ve written about the downsides of having tiers as opposed to metering, but in the end we are going to pay for the convenience of being mobile. I can only hope that myriad hotspots and competition from Clearwire’s WiMAX network can keep the big cellular carriers competitive.