1)  [...]]]>

This week, word came out that Verizon is pulling the plug on its Hub media phone and VoIP service — all the more ironic given a report out this week saying media phones will be big business in the future. In retrospect, Verizon’s Hub product was doomed from its launch for three reasons.

1)  Hub was neither fish nor fowl — it was a broadband service being sold through Verizon Wireless stores/outlets because Verizon (wireline) had no consumer outlets.  There was no real champion for the concept and you didn’t see it get the (advertising) airwaves that the stock Verizon Wireless service did week after week.

Sure, it had some whistles that allowed it to access Verizon Wireless services, but you could get those through any vanilla web browser.

2) Priced to fail – You needed a two year contract for the Verizon Hub AND pay for the hardware. Oh yes, let me run to the store, pay $35 per month for an (overpriced) VoIP service and then shell out another $200 bucks for the hardware.

It’s the same sort of “Let’s charge more” strategy that has kept femtocells on the backburner at wireless carriers. Which leads me to the final point..

3) It wasn’t anything Really Special.  People will pay more for better service, but Hub was a glorified cheap tablet PC with a vanilla VoIP contract anchoring it.  I could be catty and say it would have been better with HD voice, but that’s an apples and oranges comparison — HD would have been a superior service to vanilla VoIP.

I was a little shocked when I first saw the Best Buy Sunday ad flier — I thought that there had [...]]]>

Best Buy is offering Sprint bundle deal offering a netbook for 99 cents (yes, under a dollar) with a two year contract commitment. Dan Hesse, are you crazy, or crazy like a fox?

I was a little shocked when I first saw the Best Buy Sunday ad flier — I thought that there had been a mistake on the price, especially since AT&T and Verizon wanted a couple hundred dollars AND a two year commitment for the same machine — a Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX netbook with embedded 3G connectivity and listing for $389 without a contract.

The actual netbook ain’t all that great actually; given  it has a 10.1 inch screen and only a 3 cell battery, it is a little pricey for what you get with the exception of the built-in connectivity.

So how does Sprint manage to eat $200 relative to AT&T and Verizon? Subsidy deals are no big deal in the cellular industry, and the 99 cent notebook seems to be Sprint’s latest gambit to grab market share.

Compare $390 list for the netbook to the list price of the spankin’ new Palm Pre – $850.  The price drops to $200 after you buy at Best Buy and sign a two year contract with Sprint so the delta is $650 or so if everyone is paying list price. The Samsung Instinct, listed at $600, goes down to $100 after a two year contract, so there’s $500 of magic math difference.

Some phones are already effectively “free,” so seeing a netbook at “free” in exchange for a two year commitment isn’t surprising.

Be interesting to see if AT&T or Verizon have to respond.  Will they go 99 cents, $99 dollars, or $149.99?

DT T-Mobile customers in Germany will shell out a surcharge starting at 9.95 euros per month to use VoIP [...]]]>

Deutsche Telekom (DT) has said it won’t ban VoIP on its mobile networks in Germany, but customers will have to pay extra for the service.   Can’t wait to see this get taking to the EU.

DT T-Mobile customers in Germany will shell out a surcharge starting at 9.95 euros per month to use VoIP services; the phone company is justifying the gouging by sayng it has to make “significant investments” in in its networks and IP addresses to offer the customer the option to use VoIP within its mobile network. However, the spokesperson would not elaborate futher on how this “necessary investment” differs from vanilla data services already running across its network to iPhones, G1 Android phones or windows Mobile phones.

At the end of 2008, T-Mobile had sold more than 330,000 iPhones; it wasn’t talking about the number of Android phones it had running.

So for $14 and loose change per month, DT will charge extra to “allow” the use of such apps. No details if this extra charge will include a quality of service guarantee for the “investment.”  Can’t wait to hear about how DT will charge extra for the app, yet not guarantee QoS for it.

Skype is going to have a field day with this announcement, beating its chest about how this illustrates the need for net neutrality and open networks, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Source: Wall Street Journal

HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) 7.2 technology is the central part of today’s upgrade announcement, and will give a speed boost to AT&T’s favorite child, the iPhone.  In [...]]]>

On Wednesday, AT&T announced how it plans to upgrade its 3G network to deliver faster speeds, including LTE trials in 2010 and deployments starting in 2011.

HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) 7.2 technology is the central part of today’s upgrade announcement, and will give a speed boost to AT&T’s favorite child, the iPhone.  In theory, HSPA 7.2 will deliver up to 7.2 Mbps, but there are a lot of issues in the real world which will knock that back to something less on a typical day for a typical user.

Better than EVDO Rev A or B? Interesting questions, since Rev A can burst up to 3.1 Mbps.  Rev B can do 4.9 Mbps per carrier and use multiple channels for speeds up to 14.7 Mbps, but Verizon is going straight to LTE and Sprint has WiMAX to promote.

AT&T will also be doubling the spectrum dedicated to 3G in most cities to provide both stronger in-building reception and more overall capacity, adding new backhaul connections to support higher data rates for HSPA 7.2 and LTE; yes, fiber and additional capacity to “thousands” of cell sites across the country this year.   It is also adding a whopping 2,100 new cell cites around the country.

Capital investments fit into AT&T’s previously stated capital spending this year, around $17 billion to $18 billion.

If you want to read between the lines, AT&T is playing catchup with Verizon’s planned investment in LTE and backhaul.  AT&T has been publicly flogged by Om Malik for having a sub-standard network, but the carrier isn’t doing this to make him and the rest of the blog-o-sphere happy.

Verizon has a robust network and a long-term technology vision that it has articulated to Wall Street.  Analysts weren’t keen on FiOS, but since it is now making money, they are paying closer attention when it comes to early deployment of LTE in the U.S.

A Verizon two year data plan will [...]]]>

Verizon Wireless is rolling out its 3G netbook bundle, but does it make financial sense? On Sunday, you will be able to purchase an HP Mini 1151NR Netbook for only $199.99 after a $50 dollar mail-in rebate in combination with a two year Verizon Wireless service agreement.

A Verizon two year data plan will cost $40 a month with a whopping 250 MB of downloading per month. Overage charges after that are 10 cents per megabyte.  Going up to $60 give you a 5 GB cap and only 5 cents per megabyte for overage; down from 25 cents per megabyte.

Occasional users get a $15 a day “Mobile Broadband DayPass” for $15, giving users 24 hour access to the Internet for any Verizon-certified mobile device purchased at full retail price without a monthly service plan.  If I used 3G for less than three days a month, this might make sense; it also sounds like a Xerox out of Sprint/ClearWire’s WiMAX playbook.  But then you have to factor in the retail list price through Verizon for the HP netbook of $519.99, so the payback on that is…not worth the time to pull up the Excel spreadsheet to say “Ugh!”

I’ve been running around with an Acer Aspire One netbook since the fall (XP/hard drive load, list price $350 at Best Buy when purchased, now around $300 through Walmart) and simply tethering it (Phone as modem) through a USB connection to my Sprint phone (PAM plan around $40/month with 5GB cap, if memory serves; need to check my phone bill).

The HP netbook has a bigger screen (10.1 inches vs. 8.9 for the Aspire), but otherwise they come up pretty equal.

If you were a heavy 3G CDMA user/traveler, this might be your thing, especially if you didn’t want to dork around with WiFi roaming and irregularities – that’s why I went 3G a couple of year ago.  I suspect the “fleet”/business offerings on this product are going to be where Verizon Wireless really makes some cash. Average user?  Not so much.

Sourcing CNet blog.