mobile broadband

FCC crowdsourcing mobile broadband measurements

20 December 2012 by Steve Blum
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Can y’all hear me now?

Via Jim Warner, U.C. Santa Cruz network engineer and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will ask the public to download an app and take mobile broadband coverage measurements…

The FCC and its contractor SamKnows will soon be announcing a program to collect crowd source data on mobile broadband performance. A program will trigger tests like iperf and ping and report the results along with handset and location information to a central database.

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Cellular sites have no impact on property values

Noise level does not equate to economic impact. Cellular tower opponents talk a lot (including on their mobile phones – go figure) and can be extremely disruptive at public meetings. Not to mention the damage they do to broadband improvement efforts. But their bark has no bite in the Silicon Valley real estate market.

Joint Venture Silicon Valley has completed a study of the impact of cellular sites on property values in Palo Alto, Redwood City, Saratoga and San Jose.… More

Oh, you mean a Maxwell Smart home

“Chaos is an opportunity for people like me,” said Tom Kadlec, one of the founders of The Homeworks Group. They do the hard work of integrating and managing home automation systems for about a thousand subscribers. Both he and his partner have electrical engineering degrees, which is great for them but not so good for the home handyman who majored in, say, political science.

Come quick, 99. I’m surrounded by ARMed phones.

Protocol agnostic and easy to use: home automation needs heavy helpings of both if it’s to ever find its secret sauce.… More

Mobile carriers' broadband coverage claims challenged by ISPs

Availability maps submitted by mobile telephone carriers are a problem for local Internet companies trying to expand and improve broadband service in California’s central coast region.

Representatives from six Internet service providers – Central Coast Internet, Charter, Cruzio, Razzolink, Redshift and Surfnet – participated in a workshop yesterday organized by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC). A number of concerns were discussed, including construction permits, funding, and coordination with other utility and local government projects.… More

Mobile could claim half of online spending in 2013

“Fifty percent of e-commerce happens on mobile devices in 2013,” said Scott Raney, a partner at Redpoint Ventures, when asked to go out on a limb and predict next year’s big surprise in mobile telecoms at the annual Wireless Communications Alliance’s venture capital evening. His fellow panelist didn’t cut off the limb, though. Quite the contrary.

“A large e-commerce player will get to 50% in 2013,” said Kevin Talbot, co-founder and managing partner of Relay Ventures.… More

RIM ends the game with Zip

11 November 2012 by Steve Blum
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Remember the Iomega Zip drive? Back when laptops had 80 meg hard drives and a gig was just a dream, the 100 MB Zip super floppy was hot. But Iomega couldn’t push it beyond 750 MB.

ZipdriveI retired mine in 1997, and Iomega gradually moved it to the back of their catalog. Slowly. Even in the 2005 time frame, they still had Zip customers. Government agencies, mostly. Isolated from competitive pressures and soaked in a culture that often enshrines blame and ignores achievement, public sector IT life cycles are glacial.

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Qualcomm's consumer services business going to the dogs

Tagg is a mobile pet tracker and promising veterinary diagnostic tool, offered by Snaptracs, a Qualcomm subsidiary. The hardware costs $100, with ongoing service at $8 per month for the first pet and and $1 for each additional one.

Tagg on a not-so-lively dog

That eight bucks gets you a text message whenever your dog strays from home, with GPS feeds to help you find him. Or your cat, if it’s one of the few big enough to handle the weight and tolerant enough to wear it.… More

Gizmo updates from MobileCon

Escort’s macho Smokey and the Bandit-style crowd sourcing platform is finding its feminine side. Their flagship 9500 model is sporting a pearl white finish with pink trim, all in support of the Susan G. Koman Foundation. Carrie would approve.

A company spokesman wouldn’t divulge subscriber numbers except to say growth is “huge”, with some interesting channel partners in the pipeline.

DeviceAnywhere, which offers developers online test-bed access to a long list of mobile devices and operating systems, was acquired a year ago by Keynote.… More

We've got to get moving: FCC commissioner vs. DoD on freeing up government spectrum

12 October 2012 by Steve Blum
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FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wants government agencies to clear spectrum and auction it off to the mobile telecoms industry. Now. That puts him on a collision course with federal agencies, particularly the Departments of Commerce and Defense.

In his MobileCon keynote, Robert Wheeler, a USAF major general and DoD information infrastructure honcho, said that the current goal of freeing up 300 MHz of government spectrum for civilian use by 2015 and 500 MHz by 2015 is “tougher than you think” and said the people working on it are shifting focus to sharing rather than just clearing spectrum and auctioning it.

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California cities upsetting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai

“It was Milton Friedman who recognized years ago that the market provides a better way,” said Ajit Pai, who became an FCC commissioner in May as a Republican nominee. “Our deregulatory approach to wireless has been a success.”

Speaking to MobileCon attendees this afternoon, Pai focused on roadblocks that government can create for telecommunications development, contrasting the lightly regulated wireless sector with the more intrusive approach to wireline carriers taken by the FCC and the 50 states.… More