Tag Archives: Cellular

Business, Technology

Adjustable Data Quota Limits on Member’s of Family/Shared Data Plans

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A cap on the amount of shared data each person in the plan is allowed to use should be adjustable at any point in the billing cycle. Good Use Case:  my kids are on my family plan, and I want to limit their data usage.  They always use more than my wife and I.

Another possible use case, from a small business perspective, if you add a few lines on your plan, then you may allocate to specific type of employees, such as sales reps., specific amounts of data.  There are several types of widgets can be used, such as a pie chart, and the total pie represents the total data package, and each slice represents an allocation to each member of the shared plan.

Update: I stand corrected, and do see an AT&T Smart Limits for 4.99 USD per month:

Mobility, Technology

Mandatory Service for Your Smartphone: Change the Oil Please

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As a way to continue to sell into their existing channel, as well as retain their existing customer base, I might try a sales/marketing strategy if I was a wireless carrier, which would bring in existing customers every six months into the store.

Analogous to an oil change for your car, or mandatory service, I would require existing customer base into a participating wireless carrier partner to perform the following on the existing user’s smartphone:

  •  Check the performance of the smartphone upon existing ‘idle conditions’, and determine if there are any application [services] are required to run by querying the user, and uninstalling any currently unused applications.
  • Check the performance of the smartphone upon start up, and see if there are any performance enhancement tools can be installed to the smartphone to help curb the usage of the memory and CPU cycles.  Company may advocate new third party products for the smartphone platform.
  • Depending upon the timing and the available deals, company may advocate any third party peripheral products, such as a car charger,or an male to male jack to plug the sound into your car to play music; a Bluetooth headset, or help connect your phone to your cars existing Bluetooth system.
  • Depending upon the timing and the available deals, company may advocate for an upgrade to the existing smartphone, either the Operating System or the hardware.
  • The company may try to sell another line into the package; i.e. sell additional lines, or new features that may be available at the current time, or conversion from a single to a family / multiple line package.
Business, Mobility, Technology

O2’s Tu Go Gives a Power Play to Mobile and Land Line Companies

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BBC News – O2’s Tu Go aims to challenge Skype and other Voip apps.

Tu Go’s technology is an intriguing approach:

  • Mobile Co. Benefit: VoIP Data Transfer runs down your mobile provider minutes.  It is unclear if it runs down both the data and the minutes; however, it is implied.
  • Consumer Attractor, According to Company: Phone number goes with you where ever you go, and rings on smartphones, and computers that have the application launched.
  • As an expansion to O2’s Tu Go there is an interesting opportunity where mobile companies that are also under the same umbrella company, like Verizon Wireless, and Verizon FiOS, can also ring your home phone .  AT&T  as a secondary example, may also may take advantage of this opportunity as they have both a wireless unit and ‘land line’ phones, through U-verse. I may be over thinking this idea, as Tu Go may be able to as easily link the number in your home to your ‘portable’ number, to ring them in parallel.
  • Consumer potential detractor: Typically, the quality of VoIP is less, so other than the article stated consumer attractors, I am unsure the overwhelming benefit, even if the minutes are used instead of the data plan. The consumer can use their mobile phone in lieu of the the Tu Go application.