AT&T Shakes Up Data Plans, But At What Cost?

In the first significant shake-up of the mobile data market, AT&T has revamped data plan offers for smartphones and tablets. The general impact of the changes (to be launched on Sunday) is to increase the general bucket sizes that customers must purchase (with a price increase to go along with it).

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CES 2012: The Empires Strike Back

Last year’s CES saw an invasion of mobile converged devices. With smartphone launches spurred by the introduction of Verizon’s LTE network (and joined by HSPA+ expansion by AT&T and T-Mobile) and a wall’s worth of tablets seeking to head off the iPad 2, it seemed as though consumer electronics were tied to the state of the slate.
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HSN Showcases Digital And Women In Tech Success Story

Beyond all of the “cloud chatter” and plethora of device announcements at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), HSN talked-up their “boundary less” retail strategy; digital efforts (driven in part by mobile gaming veteran and their EVP of Digital, Jill Braff); and offered sell-through proof points driven by their largely female audience (85 percent).
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CES 2012: Cloud-Made Handcuffs

In the past, carriers and Internet service providers had multiple tools to ensure that I remained a loyal citizen of their domain. In the early days of the Internet, the easiest way to get an email address was from my service provider, and once I began to use and distribute this email address, the thought of moving to an alternative broadband provider was delayed by the thought of how painful it would be to switch my email address.
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CES 2012: Smartphone Apps to Help and Hinder Retail

Retail shopping solutions are making their presence felt at CES as either a cooperative offering, or in competition with the brick and mortar stores. Following a holiday period where Amazon (and others) began actively pushing smartphone-based price comparison tools, the timing is opportune for retailers – and consumers – to begin considering how the connected device will aid next generation shopping experiences.
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Dish Overcomes The Broadband Stumbling Block—To A Point At CES 2012

In announcing a new name, new direction, and new marketing strategy that puts more emphasis on services and content and less on low price, Dish did a remarkably good job of obscuring a salient point; the digital divide still exists, and because it does a less-than-enthralling broadband offer looks like it should have legs.
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CES 2012: Procrastination, Products, and Person-Based Pricing

For years, mobile carriers have recognized the need to create new plans that revolve around people rather than devices, but it was easy to procrastinate in a world where the idea of consumers owning multiple wireless broadband devices was a far-off future scenario. Indeed, holistic (and flat-rate) service pricing was one of the original ideas behind Xohm, the first incarnation of 4G service from Sprint. But it, like the rest of Xohm, vanished into the clear.
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Verizon Wireless Launches LTE Mi-Fi at CES 2012

Verizon Wireless used the first day of CES to launch two new Mi-Fi products (from ZTE and Novatel) that both support LTE and – significantly – international roaming. The roaming supports both EDGE (quad band) and HSPA, ensuring that a wide range of networks can be supported (although EDGE connectivity is unlikely to provide a satisfactory experience). Both the ZTE and Novatel devices support up to 10 Wi-Fi connections, providing ample connectivity for the average globe-trotting, tech-toting business user.
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Embracing Digital Publishing Brings Revenue Challenges

Connected Intelligence’s recently published “Content Adoption Report,” highlights both the good and bad news for publishers resulting from the impact of digital. The bad news for book publishers, nearly 40 percent of consumers who read e-content say that they are buying fewer books. The good news, more than one third of consumers say that they are filling the physical book gap with digital e-book content.
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Verizon Takes a Step Towards IPTV with Xbox

Verizon’s holiday headline that it will deliver 26 channels of FiOS TV to qualified Microsoft Xbox gamers shows that the big telco—like its cable counterparts—is interested in IPTV but not ready to commit full resources or subscribers to delivering it.
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