On the Public Knowledge blog, Harold Feld writes:
The essence of comedy is timing. So I suppose it is fittng that AT&T, whose wireless network has been the punch line for Jon Stewart and other late night comics of late displayed rare comic timing by announcing it’s latest change in policy the day after the FCC issued a Public Notice asking the public to file comments on how to measure wireless broadband performance and coverage.
Read the whole piece here.
Ryan Kim writes at SF Gate:
The era of unlimited mobile data is coming to an end. Say hello to tiered pricing and monthly usage caps.
AT&T is announcing that it is ending its unlimited plans for new smart phones as well as the iPad and replacing it with tiered pricing plans that will be cheaper for most users but will cost more for a small number of power users. Tethering plans are also covered by the changes and will come to the iPhone this summer with the new iPhone 4.0 update.
Starting June 7, if you buy a new smart phone data plan, you have the choice of paying $15 a month for 200 megabytes a month or $25 a month for 2 gigabytes. These replace the existing $30 a month unlimited plan, which AT&T customers can keep if they have an account prior to June 7. June 7, by the way, is the day Apple is expected to unveil the next generation iPhone.
At Blown to Bits, Harry Lewis writes:
Is it really a threat to our national security that people can pay cash for prepaid cell phones? That is the thought behind federal legislation that has been introduced in the Senate by Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican John Cornyn. To buy a phone you would have to provide identification and the retailer would have to retain the information for 18 months.
Read the whole piece here.
At Crunch Gear, Lars Erik Holmquist writes:
The rate of innovation in mobile services is just about to take a quantum leap. We are going from a divergent and messy ecosystem, where every new concept has to be made into a specialized ”app” that works only on a small sub-set of mobile handsets (even the mighty iPhone only has around 3% of the global mobile phone market), to an environment much more like the web. Today, new services can easily be composed out of existing components and run on a common platform – the browser. We are entering an age where the creation of a new mobile service – taking advantage of such features as the user’s location, social network, personal data, and even phone-specific functions such as the camera and accelerometer – can be mashed-up and put on-line just as easily as Web 2.0 services have been for several years already.
Read the whole piece here.
