This week in etilities: mobile phone practices are under close scrutiny in the public arena, AT&T tries to catch up to Apple, and lagging US broadband penetration is underlined.

Mobile phone practices under scrutiny

Competition between providers benefits consumers in the form of lower prices, better service, and more features. Unsurprisingly, wireless carriers tend to do whatever they can to either land exclusive deals or be on a level playing field with each other. The FCC, at the request of four US senators, is launching a probe investigating the AT&T / iPhone exclusivity deal while the Senate Judiciary Committee is exploring whether Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are colluding to set the price of SMS messages outrageously high. AT&T and Verizon claim that this is not the case.

AT&T is playing catch-up with the iPhone 3GS

The partnership between AT&T and Apple is proving quite a headache for the wireless carrier indeed. There has been much coverage about how the carrier is not yet ready to handle some of the new features of the iPhone 3GS, most notably SMS and Tethering. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the information out there is little more than hearsay. AT&T denied rumors that they were going to offer tethering for $55 a month and announced that multimedia messaging (MMS) capability will be included as part of the existing SMS bundles at no additional cost.

As for the iPhone 3GS early upgrade controversy, AT&T has announced that more 3G owners who are currently locked mid-contract will be eligible for the upgrade price of $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model as opposed to $399 and $499, respectively. There are several criteria for determining eligibility, including whether you’re a big spender with AT&T, and not everyone will benefit.

US broadband penetration needs a lot of work

Ars Technica published an article last week dicussing a topic dear to our hearts: broadband penetration. According to the survey, which measures per household broadband penetration rather than per capita penetration, the US ranks 20th, with 60% of households connected by broadband as opposed to 95% in South Korea, the top country on that list.
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

As cloud services develop, the obvious remaining gap is that we cannot yet access the cloud everwhere we go, or at least, not conveniently. Sure you can go to coffee shops or use your smart-phones, but they’re hardly ideal for serious work that requires you to stay connected. And while Tethering may soon become a widespread means to this end, we’re not quite there yet.

It looks like Verizon (Etilities Forum) is working on its own solutions to the problem: the New York Times reports that the wireless provider will, in a few weeks, start offering a service that allows you to take your Wi-Fi with you via a device called a ‘MiFi’, manufactured by Novatel Wireless. Essentially, the device taps into the Verizon 3G network and broadcasts it as a wi-fi signal which you can password protect and take with you.

The catch here is the price: $270 for the device (or $100 with a 2-year contract), and a monthly fee of $40 to $60. If you are more of an infrequent user, you can buy a 1-day pass for $15.

Personally, I’ll probably just wait for the iPhone 3.0’s tethering capability, but it is regardless good to know that there are options out there, and that the providers are trying to come up with new and innovative ideas to help you stay connected to the cloud always and everywhere.

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

We all know about and likely have suffered from the long term contracts we sign with our cell providers.  When we walk into cell phone stores, we may come out with a working cell phone and a contract committing us to a relationship with the carrier for often two years or more.  One of the main reasons for these long term contracts is that the providers of services such as Verizon (Etilities Forum), AT&T (Etilities Forum), T-Mobile (Etilities Forum), and others subsidize cell phones from manufacturers like BlackBerry, Apple, or even Google.  As such, carriers need the security of having long term contracts to ensure they recover their subsidy of the cell phones themselves.  Within the technology world, this model has primarily applied only to cell phones, but that appears to be about to change.

Laptop costs have been diminishing drastically, some to as low as a few hundred dollars.  In order to adapt, Verizon is rumored to be partnering with HP to build a similar subsidy model for laptops.  In this model, Verizon would offer its Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) – commonly known as cellular broadband – to transfer data and provide access to the internet.  In doing so, Verizon would subsidize the cost of the laptop to a yet undetermined but attractive price.  This model is likely to fundamentally change the way we look at computers: as the industry increasingly turns to Software-as-a-Service models, this will tend to completely eliminate the product being the middle man in between the consumer and the service.

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

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Verizon (Etilities Forum) is looking to compensate for the loss of some of its customers by offering a phone line dubbed the “safety” or “piece of mind” line, which would allow incoming calls, but only outgoing calls to 911 services.  This line might give you an alternative to your current landline which you don’t use and is likely to compete against the low-end line of Vonage (Etilities Forum)  at $17.99 per month.

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

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.

There has been a debate brewing for decades about the importance and the role of networks who provide content and that of those who transmit it to end-users.  Each side, of course, supports its own self-interest.  Over the past few days, several fairly heated discussions have occurred between companies on both sides.  Most notably, Viacom recently threatened to pull some programming from Time Warner Cable.  In light of these problems, the news of CBS and Time Warner Cable reaching a fresh broadcasting deal without major fireworks led to a large sigh of relief from the industry and all of us as consumers.  

Cable companies have also been increasing their rates, a move parallel and related to these discussions.  As we’ve mentioned, Comcast (Etilities Forum) is planning to raise rates in February, and today Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) announced a planned increase in fees as well.  A spokesperson for the company explained that the move is required in order to overcome higher fees from programmers: “The programmers, we are wholesaler distributors of them, we have to purchase their product, biggest expense”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Which technology services made a significant, positive impact on you as an individual in 2008? Which most impacted the market as you see it? We performed an in-depth evaluation of the services we covered this year and combined it with your feedback to compile a list of the cream of the crop.

Vonage: VoIP has taken the market by storm. Switching to Vonage (Etilities Forum) can result in amazing monthly cost savings, and the provider shines amidst the competition thanks its features, price and reliability.

Netflix: Implementing the first mainstream DVD-by-mail model was impressive enough, but Netflix (Etilities Forum) did not rest on its deserved laurels.  It is constantly working on new ways to deliver content to your TV set – as well as the other screens in your home.  It has formed an impressive number of partnerships this year to to improve their video-on-demand offerings.

Read the rest of this entry »
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.