We routinely receive inquiries about the usefulness of land-lines and whether one should keep theirs.  More and more people these days are ditching their fixed phone and opting to stay in touch with friends and family via mobile phones or VoIP software such as Skype (Etilities Forum).  As far as we can tell working with our customers, the people opting to keep landlines tend to include families with young children, and elder individuals who need that quick and easy way to call 911 or other numbers during emergencies.  For my family, we primarily want to make sure there is always a phone line available for the babysitter to call us if something comes up.

For the rest of you who are willing to trade land-line for an alternative but find that your domicile lacks appropriate coverage to toss the fixed phone away, Verizon (Etilities Forum) just gave you one more reason to do so.  The company recently started offering a book-sized device to enhance and boost your wireless coverage indoors. This type of device is generally known as ‘femtocell’, and is being called the “Network Extender” by Verizon. It will run about $250 and, unlike competitor Sprint (Etilities Forum), Verizon will not charge a monthly fee for the use of the device.  Once plugged into to your local network, the booster enhances your signal around the house and gives you one more reason to save money.  For more information, see Verizon’s page on the Network Extender.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Predominance in the wireless market has become a top priority of almost every communications provider. As technology as a whole evolves to encourage digital streaming content over hard media, the missing piece of the profitability puzzle becomes allowing users to stay connected whenever they go at high speed. We’ve recently seen evidence of this with AT&T (Etilities Forum) expanding its wireless footprint and Cox Communications (Etilities Forum) purchasing wireless licenses.

Sprint (Etilities Forum) is also working hard on the same issue. It announced yesterday that in three days, on December 21st, it will start selling a dual 3G and 4G USB wireless modem. Although Sprint already rolled out a 4G network in Baltimore in September, it’s safe to say that the 4G capability is mostly for publicity, at least for now. Although many major cities now have 3G coverage, the rest of the country is still behind. It will be a while until 4G is a widely available network.

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©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cable company Cox Communications (Etilities Forum) announced today that it plans to have its own wireless network operational in 2009. Cox had previously shown interest in the market by investing more than $500 million in wireless licenses from the FCC. According to an article published by the Associated Press, the licenses that Cox purchased will allow them to provide coverage in Atlanta, New Orleans, San Diego, Omaha (Nebraska), Las Vegas, and much of Kansas and southern New Mexico. Roaming coverage would be provided outside those areas by Sprint.

With this move, Cox hopes to provide content to its customers across multiple platforms. The idea would be that you’d be able to use your cell phone to watch the TV stations that you’ve subscribed to in your cable plan, access saved content, or program your DVR remotely. Basically, it would allow you to take your content with you without the hassle of syncing your devices. You can think of it as a content cloud accessible anywhere.

Cox is well positioned to achieve this, with a strong fiber footprint in the areas it plans to service as well as previous experience with cellular technology development since it previously built an operated a cell network in Las Vegas and Southern California in the 1990s that was later sold to Sprint (Etilities Forum). We will definitely be monitoring their progress throughout this endeavour.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Many of you have experienced dissatisfaction with you cell phone carrier, and in many cases tried to change only to realize that you have to pay termination fees on your plan.  The main catch is when you try to add a feature, change a cell phone or made a general change to your plan, these events often carry a renewal of the minimum contract period which can extend one, two years or sometimes event longer contracts.  

Some providers such a Verizon (Etilities Forum) prorate their fee.  For example, for every month you are under their plan, the termination fee is reduced by $5.  Other providers such as AT&T (Etilities Forum), Sprint (Etilities Forum) do not (Though AT&T has announced that they might).  

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.