Category Archives: Sprint

Verizon’s stingy 4G Internet pricing and other downers of the week

1 Reply

I had a really busy week at work and I’m just catching up on some of the tech news of the week. None of the stories are positive developments for we the denizens of Internet nation, sadly.

Headline A that caught my attention was Verizon Wireless announcing pricing for its new super-fast, fourth-generation mobile broadband service. I’ve long been a customer of Verizon’s current 3G service, which is more dependable and widespread than the service I get either from AT&T (with my iPhone) or Sprint (with an Overdrive). But for 4G, Verizon has decided to go with data limits that make the service’s super-fast speeds practically useless. They are going to charge $50 a month for 5 gigabytes of data or $80 for 10 gigabytes. As a headline from PC Magazine noted, you can blow through your month’s data allocation in 32 minutes!

I’m slightly surprised by the news, since my 4G-capable Sprint Overdrive costs $59.99 a month for unlimited 4G downloads (though it carries a 5 gigabyte cap when it defaults down to 3G speeds). Supposedly one part of the appeal of mobile 4G networks was relief from overcrowding that hampered 3G networks and required all these onerous bandwidth caps in the first place.

Of course, the Journal’s spin was more upbeat, as they noted that the new 5 gigabyte cap was priced $10 a month less than the old Verizon 3G plans with the same data limits. But since the whole point of getting on a faster 4G plan is to download more, to me, the fact that the cap is the same is a killer. It reminds me of that line from the movie You’ve Got Mail that the purpose of a VCR is to record TV when you leave the house but the whole point of leaving the house is to skip out on watching TV. The reason to get a 4G connection is to download more data but the reason for Verizon’s stingy cap is to prevent you from downloading more.

Things became clearer when the paper explained some of the thinking behind the pricing.

Verizon Wireless is able to offer the five-gigabyte plan at a lower rate than its 3G plan because it costs less to deliver that wireless traffic on 4G, Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone said. But he expects most people to sign up for the high-capacity $80 plan because the higher speeds will lead to more usage.

I don’t know if they’re serious but the market for people who are willing to pay $80 a month for mobile Internet service can probably fit in the front pocket of Tinkerbell’s blouse. I mean, really. The fact that 4G is fast enough to replace wired home broadband connections for many people — like those millions sold by Verizon — might explain some of the pricing strategy.

Another downer this week came from broadband provider Level 3. The company just grabbed the contract to send Netflix customers streamed movies and TV shows. But Comcast, which is now the largest retail broadband provider, is demanding some mega-payments to allow Level 3 to send Netflix streams to Netflix customers who use Comcast.

The debate quickly descends into some pretty technical historical details of the connections among different kinds of Internet and broadband service providers. But suffice it to say that if Comcast can price Level 3′s Netflix customers away from NetFlix, they’ve gone a long way to protect their lucrative cable television franchise. Hmm, sensing a theme yet?

The back and forth prompted law professor Susan Crawford to cut through the crap and get to the point with some painfully pointy rhetorical questions.

The takeaway from today: No market forces are constraining Comcast – or any of the other major cable distributors, none of which compete with each other. How will consumers and innovation be protected from their machinations? The FCC is currently facing two defining moments in US telecommunications policy, and it’s unclear what the Commission is going to do in either case. Will the FCC act to relabel high-speed Internet transmission services, reversing the radical Bush-era deregulatory turn? Will the FCC block the Comcast/NBCU merger? Can we expect that anything will happen (at all) to ensure that local monopoly control over communications transport isn’t leveraged into adjacent markets for devices and content?

What will the legacy of the FCC be, as the looming cable monopoly stops looming and starts muscling levers into place?

Finally, whatever you think about Wikileaks and its controversial founder Julian Assange, the way big Internet companies have reacted scares some free speech and civil rights advocates. Dan Gillmor, writing for Slate, warns that online, the censors are scoring big wins. Internet hosting and address companies booted Wikileaks out so quickly and so cavalierly that Gillmor worries for the future when we all depend more and more on information stored in the “cloud.”

The WikiLeaks affair is highlighting the Internet’s soft underbelly: the intermediaries on which we all rely to store our information and make it available. We are learning, to our dismay, that we cannot trust them. Combine that with increasing government intervention, we’re also learning that the Internet is somewhat easier to censor than we’d assumed.

This should worry anyone who believes that we’re going to move our data and online lives into the fabled “cloud” — the diffused online array of hardware and services where, proponents say, we can do our online work, play and commerce without the need for storing data on our own personal computers. Trusting the cloud is becoming an act of faith, and it’s time to question that faith.

And that’s it for GravitationalPull dot net today. Hopefully, cheerier postings ahead.

True report: AT&T just doubled mobile data prices

4 Replies

(Updated 6/3) As I’m sure you’ve read all over today, AT&T announced major changes to its wireless data plans. But, I think because AT&T’s iPhone plan differed from other plans it offered, the reporting of these changes has been a little wacky. AT&T may have eliminated its “unlimited” data plan for the iPhone but it did not have unlimited plans for other devices. Those with non-iPhone devices and phones faced a cap of 5 gigabytes a month, similar to limits imposed by Sprint and Verizon on virtually all of their customers.

Under the new plan, which applies to the iPhone and all other AT&T phones, the maximum offering is 2 gigabytes for $25 a month with $10 charged for each extra gigabyte of data. Compared to the typical 5 GB offering, the price would be $25 plus $30 or $55 a month. iPad customers really get the shaft, as they were getting 5 GB per month for $30 and now that much data is $55.

The other option is $15 for 200 megabytes with $15 charged for each additional 200 MB. I checked my iPhone data usage over the past six months and darn it if the average wasn’t 221 MB. Right back to $30 a month. Hmm.

Among other implication for heavy data users or people with both an iPhone and an iPad, the strategy of Internet smarty Rex Hammock to pair a mobile wifi hot spot like Sprint’s Overdrive with other portable devices looks a little smarter.

One of the few sharp analysis pieces I read on today’s move was Dan Frommer’s observation: AT&T Just Put A Bullet In Mobile TV. I suspect that the future of mobile broadband-delivered video will be a return to the wireless carrier’s anti-innovation, walled garden strategy. Verizon already offers its V-CAST 10-channel/$15 a month service. AT&T’s less advanced (or maybe just less publicized) service called Mobile TV costs $10/month for a smattering of shows from seven networks.

Just a couple of week ago, the Federal Communications Commission in its annual assessment of wireless phone industry reported a decline in competition due to consolidation. Now we can test the accuracy of that verdict. Will Verizon and Sprint cut back 5 GB plans to 2 GB? Let’s hope not.

Addendum: Speaking the night before the price hike was announced, Apple CEO Steve Jobs cryptically said he expected the problem of congestion on AT&T’s wireless network would get worse before it got better. Maybe he was implying that the new 2 GB limit will only last until AT&T gets its network in order. Fourth generation wireless broadband is already available in some places from Sprint and coming “real soon now” from AT&T and Verizon. Hopefully, data allowances will rise again.

UPDATE: Uber Mac blogger John Gruber offers his own analysis and he is particularly peeved about the new $20 charge for tethering (which lets you use your iPhone as a 3G modem for your laptop). The extra 20 bucks doesn’t come with any extra data — you’re still stuck using up the same 2 gigabytes.

There’s a small blind spot in Gruber’s analysis of the Hammock Mifi/iPad strategy, however. With a 3G iPad, you’re stuck with AT&T’s generally horrific network. With a Mifi, you can get online via Verizon. So the trade-off of longer login time and shorter battery life may be more than offset for many folks who can’t rely on AT&T’s network.

Early impressions and mini-review of Sprint’s 4G Overdrive hotspot

1 Reply


In my continuing quest to keep up with the latest and greatest mobile Internet stuff, I’m trying out the new Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive, pictured above. Made by Sierra Wireless and slightly more portly than first generation mobile hotspots like my Verizon Mifi 2200, the Overdrive retains the same basic yet great feature set of its predecessors. It’s a mobile broadband modem combined with a wifi router. So you can take it almost anywhere, link up to the mobile network and then up to five devices can get online via wifi — laptops, iPhones, Nintendo DS’s, whatever. Sprint is even advertising it as a way to get your iPhone online at 4G speed!

This post isn’t a full-blown review as I’ve just had the Overdrive for a few days. But I can tell you already that the Overdrive provides several improvements over the Mifi and its peers — at least in theory. It can connect not just to 3G wireless broadband but also to Sprint’s newly rolling out and faster 4G service. Sprint says download speeds at 2 to 10 times faster than 3G while upload speeds are up to 3 times faster. The Overdrive also has a built-in GPS sensor that can be accessed via your web browser. And, although it’s much chubbier than the mifi, it has a small screen that displays a variety of useful information.

It costs $99 after rebate and with a 2-year contract. Broadband service is the same price and terms as Verizon — $60/month for 5 GB of 3G service, though 4G service has no usage caps. That’s actually kind of irrelevant for me so far because Sprint hasn’t extended its 4G service to the Boston area yet. It’s promised real soon now, or at least by the end of the year.

It seems like the Overdrive gets a stronger signal in several places where the Verizon Mifi had problems, like the neighborhood around my office in Boston. That could because of the device or the Sprint/Verizon difference. I’m not sure.

Here’s a couple of comparison pictures of the Overdrive and the Mifi:

I am also impressed with the little status display screen on the top of the Overdrive. It shows signal and battery strength, number of connections via wifi, length of online session and amount of data transferred, among other indicators. With the Mifi, you were always left guessing about how much time was left on your battery and whether a poor a connection was due to weak 3G signals or some other reason.

And that’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll post a more in-depth review at some point but if you have any questions, fire away in the comments.

Sony Reader adds some brilliant features, 3 years late

4 Replies

image-thumb192Almost three years ago, Sony unveiled the first version of its electronic book reader, dubbed, excitingly enough, the Reader. As I predicted at the time (Short-tailed Sony reader needs a much longer one), the device bombed because it was a product in search of a need.

The Reader didn’t offer enough (if any) advantages over reading books the old-fashioned way. You had to go on your computer, buy the books online, download them, link the Reader to your computer and fill it up. Sony had a tiny selection of ebooks for sale priced at about the same level as print books. And the selection was mainly best-sellers. There was no connection to the Internet or blogs or harder-to-find books. There was no search, no online access, no keyboard at all. The only “advantage” was that you could carry a book shelf’s worth of books around. So what.

Amazon’s Kindle, released a year later, got it right, by contrast. The addition of wireless made buying ebooks quick and easy, even on the go. Vastly more ebooks were for sale at low prices that could not be beat. And the ebookstore was open to new additions, uploaded by anyone who wanted to engage, allowing for a blossoming of free or 99 cent ebooks of out-of-copyright classics. The Kindle store included magazines, newspapers and offline-readable blogs. The device bundled a free wireless Internet connection for accessing a wide array of other textual online resources. And, despite what some cranky luddites say, the Kindle’s been a huge success that’s caught the attention of a lot of other companies that now want to play in the ebook market.

Today, hopefully not too late to have a major influence on the evolving ebook ecosystem, Sony has finally come up with a much better reader and a host of innovative features (tip o’ the cap for the news and generally for great ebook coverage to the Teleread blog). The new “Reader Daily Edition” has a 7″ electronic ink, touch-sensitive screen and a wireless connection that works over AT&T’s cell phone network. That’s matching or exceeding some of Kindle’s best features but I’m more excited about the innovations. You’ll be able to use your Sony Reader to borrow ebooks from thousands of libraries like the New York Public Library. You’ll be able to buy ebooks from major independent vendors like Powells.com. And, of course, as I wished for 3 years ago, you can read the million or so out-of-copyright (and permissioned) books Google has scanned into its vast databases.

Sony is also stepping away somewhat from locking content to its line of devices. Sure, Sony’s ebooks will still be locked down with proprietary digital rights management, or DRM, software but at least Sony has switched to Adobe’s somewhat (arguably) more broadly used DRM instead of keeping its own. That means that ebooks bought for the Sony Reader will — we hope — be readable on any other program or device that also licenses the Adobe software. There’s been some confusion, fostered by a misleading New York Times story, that the Sony is selling “open” or unrestricted books. That’s not the case but this is still a big step in the right direction. If Sony got out of the ebook business altogether, other Adobe-licensed reader devices could still access the ebooks (again — we think/hope).

For a while it seemed like Sony was becoming irrelevent in the ebook market, what with the rapid advances from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, Apple iPhone app store participants and so on. Now Sony has shown it’s still in the hunt. Of course, we’ll have to wait and hear from users and reviewers whether all these features work as advertised and if there are any hidden gotchas (the library feature says you must have a card from each particular library, it sounds like). But for now, it’s a bright, shiny day for ebook fans. We can only wait to see what moves Amazon and Barnes & Noble make to react.

Prior coverage:

Yes, Virginia, the Barnes & Noble ebookstore is a Good Thing (7/22/2009)

Amazon Kindle competitor EReader slashes ebook prices (7/5/2009)

Apple gives stage to overpriced ebook developer Scrollmotion (6/9/2009)

Sony ereader seeking wide open wireless (10/3/2008)

Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close (8/20/2008)

History and Uses of Amazon Kindle for People Living in Caves

7 Replies

I used to kind of like author Nicholson Baker. I think the first time I encountered his writing was a long essay in The Atlantic (going on memory here) about his quest to preserve huge collections of old newspapers that libraries were rapidly tossing out. As a guy who used to spend hours in the mid-1980s at the Columbia Journalism School’s library reading editorials from dozens of papers around the country just for kicks, I could relate. Apropos of today’s blog post, I seem to remember him complaining ad nauseam about the evils of microfiche. Later, I read and kind of liked his novel A Box of Matches, about a man waking every morning before dawn and lighting a match.

But then, last year, came his absolutely off-the-rails, downright dangerous mis-history of World War II called Human Smoke. The book has been demolished by any number of historians (for example). Suffice it to say that Baker abused the historical record in a bizarre attempt to blame the war on the Allies, even going so far as to argue that the holocaust would not have happened had Hitler’s enemies (!!) been less bellicose.

Today, Baker’s got a long (long, long, long) essay in The New Yorker titled “Kindle and the Future of Reading.” My alternate title for this 6,210 word missed opportunity is: “A history and uses of the Kindle for people who spent the last two years living in a cave.” When I finally finished reading it, I felt a mild sense of relief. At least it wasn’t any kind of poisonous, demented pseudo history (though his insinuation that Kindle 1 only became popular after Oprah’s endorsement is off-base). But it sure was a missed chance to thoughtfully ponder the future of the book for an audience that would be highly interested in the topic.

Instead, and I’m elaborating on some comments I left on the excellent Teleread blog earlier, Baker’s essay is more of a beautifully-written, long-winded, whiny complaint about shortcomings of the Kindle that have been extremely well-aired by now. The Kindle doesn’t do a good job with color illustrations. It doesn’t include the back list of every great writer of the 20th century. Some people don’t like the button layout. Oy. A few tidbits:

The Kindle Store offers “The Cheese Lover’s Cookbook and Guide,” from Simon & Schuster. “The picture of the Ricotta Pancakes with Banana-Pecan Syrup may just inspire you enough to make it the first recipe you want to try,” one happy Amazon reviewer writes. She’s referring to the recipe in the print edition, the description of which is reused in the Kindle Store—there’s no pancake picture in the Kindle version.

[Later] Despite its smoother design, the Kindle 2 is, some say, harder to read than the Kindle 1. “I immediately noticed that the contrast was worse on the K2 than on my K1,” a reviewer named T. Ford wrote. One Kindler, Elizabeth Glass, began an online petition, asking Amazon to fix the contrast. “Like reading a wet newspaper,” according to petition-signer Louise Potter.

[Even more niggling] Three pieces from the July 8, 2009, print edition of the Times—Adam Nagourney on Sarah Palin’s resignation, Alessandra Stanley on Michael Jackson’s funeral, and David Johnston on the civil rights of detainees—were missing from the Kindle edition, or at least I haven’t managed to find them (they’re available free on the Times Web site); the July 9th Kindle issue lacked the print edition’s reporting on interracial college roommates and the infectivity rates of abortion pills.

Baker spills endless verbiage describing Amazon’s Kindle advertising, the box it came in, the capital-raising history of the company that makes the screen technology, quotes from two-year old negative reviews of the Kindle 1, and on and on. It’s just positively weird that 2 years after the Kindle came out, it’s worth publishing in The New Yorker that there are no page numbers or that the black on gray screen isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Blech, blech and triple blech! It was like some kind of narcissistic spoof of a great New Yorker article.

Not to mention, it’s a supremely lost opportunity to consider the new possibilities of ebooks: the formerly invisible public domain works now available, the indexing and note-taking capabilities, the ways that the addition of simple and free web connectivity enhances reading of historical non-fiction, the opportunities for unknown authors to bypass the whole publishing industry and on and on. Too bad.

Previous coverage:

Despite complaints and DRM, Kindle is a good value (6/30/2009)

Reading Infinite Jest on the Kindle versus dead tree pulp (4/17/2009)

The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers (6/20/2008)

Ignore that cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine (11/29/2007)

Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading (11/24/2007)

Too many black boxes, too many power cords

2 Replies

powercd-1

Heading off for the holiday weekend, I grabbed a bunch of gadgets and junk to stuff in my bag. Amazon Kindle reader – check. Multiple iPods and headphones for the kids – check. Blackberry – check. New Verizon Mifi to test in the boonies – check. Macbook Pro – check. Canon camera – check. They joined the usual assortment of odds and ends that live in my Crumpler Bag of Considerable Embarrassment (actual name) full time.

Of course, with all those gadgets come the required power cords. What a mess. At least the totally awesome  yet horribly named Belkin “Mini Surge Protector with USB” allowed me to forgo most of the bulkier plug-in cords since it can power any gadget using just a USB cord connection. For example, instead of carrying an iPod wall charger, I can just plug in an iPod syncing cable to the Belkin’s powered USB port.

By Monday, the Mifi was out of juice so it was time for a charge. But what’s this? The Mifi can’t use the standard mini-USB to USB connector that works for Blackberries and a few of my other gadgets. It actually has a micro-USB port. What the hey? It’s just like the mini-USB port only — wait for it — smaller. I couldn’t find that cord in the bag so the Internet connection ended early. On such a beautiful day by the shore, no great loss. But can’t the world standardize a bit more? The Kindle and iPods all have their own weird charger connections. I guess it’s too much to hope for everyone to get on the same page to benefit the consumer.

Unpacking it all today, I noticed there’s been a proliferation of little black boxes in my bag of late. Starting from the top left side in the picture below (click through for a bigger photo):

  • a Sony digital recorder
  • a Miquelrius paper notebook
  • a Sandisk Cruzer memory stick sitting on top of the still wicked cool Kensington portable battery pack (mini-USB to power up/any regular USB to power out)
  • a crazy-useful miniature Atech compact flash to USB port reader
  • Sandisk’s handy MobileMate that reads seven kinds of memory cards and goes into a USB port sitting on top of the aforementioned Mifi
  • (Now on the bottom row) An iPod Touch
  • a Blackberry
  • the Belkin power strip
  • the Sprint Novatel cellular modem, soon to be gone

toomny-1

And what did I find smooshed way down in a corner pocket? Why the Mifi’s micro-USB to USB adapter of course. Next time I’ll have to look harder.

For some further good advice about what to carry, Dan Frakes has been writing a fabulous series of columns at MacWorld. The other day he had some good advice on cable selection and Friday he reviewed some miniature gadgets you might want to carry.

Verizon Mifi connects laptops, iPods, whatever to broadband

15 Replies

mifi-1After a couple of days wait, my new mobile hotspot, the Verizon Mifi 2200 made by Novatel, arrived today. Out of the box, the battery needed a charge but once the Mifi had sat plugged into the wall for a bit, it was ready to go. Simple as plugging into my Mac via the included micro mini USB to USB port cord (more on USB power cord confusion, if you’re curious). It appeared on the desktop as a CD with the Verizon VZAccess Manager program available to install. A double click there got that bit installed and running, which was required to activiate the Mifi. After the initial activation, no cords are needed to use the Mifi.

Within seconds, the Mifi was connected to the Internet over Verizon’s cellular EVDO mobile broadband network and, simultaneously, acting as a Wifi hotspot for any Wifi-enabled devices in the area. Sweet.

Mifi worked great connecting my laptop and my iPod Touch. The tiny Mifi runs an encrypted wifi network, so only someone who knows the password (listed on a sticker on its base) can join. There aren’t many buttons — just one that turns the power on and off. It’s also quite tiny and featherweight. In addition to the USB cord, there’s a power adapter and a felt-like carrying case. Very simple.

mifi-jpUpload and download speeds were excellent, as measured by Speakeasy’s speed test. The Mifi downloaded at 2,467 kilobits per second and uploaded at 464 kbps. The download rate easily beat my existing Sprint Novatel U720 modem, which averaged a download speed of 1,186 kbps. The Sprint modem (which connects via a USB port) uploaded at 505 kbps, slightly faster than the Mifi. Neither mobile broadband solution can match my home FIOS connection over 5 GHz Wifi. FIOS hit 6,253 kbps on downloads and uploaded at the astounding rate of 3,657 kbps.

So the bottom line is that the Verizon Mifi 2200 is a great mobile broadband solution for laptops and provides the added benefit of letting all sorts of other devices you may have — from iPods to Nintendo DS’s — get online, too. That’s a gamechanger for me. My iPod Touch becomes so much more valuable on the go now that it’s got its own mobile wifi hotspot to go along.

The one downside, of course, is Verizon’s download cap of 5 gigabytes per month under the $59.99 plan (after that, it’s 5 cents a megabyte – ouch). Sprint has the same deal but it stinks if you’re planning to rely heavily on a Mifi.

Prior Coverage:

Oh Verizon Mifi, why can you not delight like Apple? (5/17/2009)

Sprint USB Modem Smacks Down Verizon (3/27/2007)

Oh Verizon Mifi, why can you not delight like Apple?

1 Reply

mifi_promoOk, say you’re a big technology company and you have a hot new product. You put out a press release enumerating the many amazing features and announcing a release date several weeks hence. Even better, one of the most-read tech columnists on the planet, the New York Times‘ David Pogue, raves about your new product in print, on the web and on television. You are really psyched now. Then it turns out that even though a competitor will be offering the same product for the same basic price, you’ve got a two-week jump on availability.

So when your release day finally hits, what’s your strategy at the hundreds of retail outlets you own all over the county?

Did anybody answer act like any other day and don’t even stock the hot new product? Because that was the answer from Verizon Wireless when I went in to order their new mobile wifi hotspot, the Mifi 2200. “Sorry, we don’t have them in stock today – they’ve got plenty at our warehouse and we can order it for you and send it to your house,” a helpful Verizon clerk tells me. They’ve got plenty in stock but none at any of the stores in the Boston area, he tells me.

That’s fine – it’s fine – but really, is that the best customer service? Is that any way to delight your customers? Just imagine the interest and word of mouth that might be drummed up if they had the Mifi’s in stock and activated them at the store in front of all of the customers on a busy Sunday afternoon. Opportunity lost. When it comes to selling and promoting new tech products, it’s still Apple at the top and everyone else trailing far behind.

p.s. when I actually get my mitts on the new Mifi, which is replacing a Sprint mobile broadband USB stick (the Novatel U720), I’ll post Here’s my full review of the Mifi 2200. Surprise – it’s a rave.

Sprint’s old U720 gets GPS functionality on Macs with upgrade

4 Replies

The other day, for no apparent reason, something went kablooey with my trusty Sprint wireless modem. Maybe it was the OS X 10.5.4 update, but who knows? For the past year plus, when I plugged the modem (it’s a Novatel Ovation U720) into a USB port on my MacBook pro, a little signal strength meter popped onto my menu bar. The meter had a drop down menu letting me connect and disconnect to the Internet.

But starting a few days ago, the menu bar meter stopped appearing when the modem was plugged in. I tried all the usual fixes — apply the 10.5.4 combo updater, zap my PRAM, fix permissions — but nothing helped. Eventually, I discovered that I could still connect to the Internet by using the networking control preference. That was kind of a pain and it lacked the signal strength measure to boot. I posted on a few forums but got no answers.

Then today, I was checking out the usual blogs and I came across a Dave Winer post about getting a wireless modem. One of the models he was considering was the U720. Someone posted a comment about its GPS capabilities. So I responded with a comment about how I love mine but that it had no discernible GPS functions, at least under the Mac. A few Google searches even turned up an official looking Sprint page saying “there is currently no support” for GPS on the U720. But on some forums it seemed like people were getting location information out of the modem.

So I dug a little deeper and discovered that at some point since I purchased the U720 from Sprint, the company has posted additional drivers and support software. I downloaded the most current driver (dated November 2007) and the latest connection manager software (dated March 2008). I followed the brightly-colored, three-page list of directions and installed the upgraded driver and then the software (called “Sprint SmartView” for some reason).

When I finally turned off my wifi connection, plugged in the U720 and started up the SmartView program I got a jolt of electricity. Sure enough, there was a whole shelf of GPS functionality. Click a button and get your current location shown on Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest. Other buttons summoned the locations of nearby coffee shops, banks, Sprint stores, restaurants, hotels and gas stations. The software is also NMEA compatible. I can barely tell you what that means but it seems to be a standard which allows the modem to feed location information to third-party hardware and software. The SmartView program window also shows signal strength, current location and upload and download speeds:

Sprint\'s smartview program for wireless modems on the mac

It’s all wicked cool and I feel like I got a brand new, upgraded modem for free. And it all came from the typical mixed-up, wacky cross-pollination of blogs, bulletin board posts and generally goofing around web surfing.

Android, iPhone and the push for a real mobile Internet

2 Replies

Logo for Google's android mobile operating systemPlenty of “news” today about the mobile Internet, prompted by this Wall Street Journal piece on Google’s Android mobile phone operating system.  The Journal’s story is chock full of details of the internal struggles of Android developers and carriers that may support Android phone. While Google had said phones running Android would be available in the “second half” of 2008, now it looks the first phone will be available in the fourth quarter. Seems like a lot of sound and fury signifying not much.

There’s also a nice profile of Android lead dude Andy Rubin in the July issue of Wired magazine (not yet online – blech). Aside from a few goofy factual errors (Cut and paste among different mobile apps has been available on Palm for ages and probably on Windows Mobile, too), the Rubin story gets much closer to the important big picture underlying a lot of the coverage of Android and other mobile platforms like the iPhone.

The bigger story, the meta-story, if you will, remains the same as it has been since the Internet first went mobile. The carriers want to keep everything locked down with all profits flowing their way. That’s why mobile music sales remain in a quagmire — gotta give the carriers their cut and protect $2.99 sales of ring tones. It’s about as un-Internet a business model as you can get. Thus, with Android, you have handset makers not wanting to anger carriers and carriers delaying things to “customize” Android for their particular networks. Dana Blankenhorn has it right in his blog post this morning: “These problems would not exist if the government simply set standards for hardware and opened up the spectrum to competition.”

The two biggest carriers, AT&T and Verizon, say they aren’t supporting Android as of yet. I can’t figure out how that squares with their prior claims that they had opened their networks to any compatible phone. In December, AT&T was telling anyone who’d listen that you could use “any handset on our network you want…We don’t prohibit it, or even police it.” Verizon used a bit more legalize but declared that customers would get the option to use “wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company.” Said devices would have to abide by a “minimum technical standard” and pass tests at Verizon’s own testing lab.

But Google has a long-term plan that may route around all this nonsense and foot dragging. The company convinced the Federal Communications Commission to impose open access requirements on the new swath of spectrum auctioned last year in the 700 Mhz frequency range. Ultimately, Verizon bought the license. Assuming regulators stick to their guns, Android devices should gain free rein once the 700 Mhz offering comes online in a couple of years.

Too much of the coverage, however, pits Google’s efforts against Apple’s iPhone. In the real world, both are moving the industry in the right direction. From an Internet user’s point of view, they are complementary not contradictory. Just as with the iTunes music store, Steve Jobs got incredible concessions from the cellular powers that be to improve the situation for ordinary consumers. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot (I still can’t get over that the iPhone’s bluetooth implementation is more crippled and limited than the one in my Verizon Treo). But it’s progress that will grow more powerful as the iPhone becomes more and more popular.

In a sense, this struggle is much the same as the battle over broadband when cable and telephone companies first started rolling out high-speed connections back in the 1990s. There was the distinct possibility that the owners of those fat pipes were going to mess with content, filter web sites or restrict usage. After millions of dollars spent by all sides lobbying, the industry chose to go down a (mostly) open path. Let’s hope mobile can go the same way. The emergence of the next Facebook, eBay and Google depend on it.