Tag Archives: Wireless

Business, Economy, Media, Mobility, Technology

Free Nights and Weekends Makes a Comeback

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Remember when you could make free mobile calls after 9:30 PM weeknights, and all weekend? For awhile the mobile carriers competed on the time when “off-peak” started, from 10 PM to 8:30 PM. A whole hour and a half! These days we have unlimited domestic calling all the time.

So, now we have varying degrees of data plans, such as AT&T Wireless 3 GB, 9 GB, or unlimited per month, but there are caps where after 22 GB data transfer speeds are slowed down.  22 gigs seem like a lot until you have kids using Snapchat and TikTok.

When you think about it, data peak is when you may not be in a hot spot. At night, you’re at home using your own WiFi, or at an establishment with their complimentary WiFi. Weekends and weekdays are a bit scattered. Your work may have WiFi, but weekdays “on peak” are mostly commuting times, the “rush hour(s)”,

Can wireless carriers bring back on and off-peak for data?  The simplest approach:  “turn off the meter” during off-peak data periods.  Maybe on-peak the consumer can elect 5G, when available, and off-peak at 4G LTE? Our Smartphones can identify low consuming bandwidth opportunities, e.g. when the phone is locked, text messages without graphics and email are semi-passive states. Maybe users are able to prioritize their apps data usage? What about those “chatty” apps that you rarely use? Smartphone settings may show you those apps bandwidth consumption as opportunities to prioritize them lower than your priority apps.

Skeptic, and think there are no Peak or Off-Peak periods with data?  Check the business analytics.  I’m sure wireless carriers have a depth of understanding for their own business intelligence (BI).

Augmented Reality, Technology

Bose AR, Audio Augmented Reality – Use Cases

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I’ve been enamored with Bose products for well over a decade. However,  we’ve seen quality brands enter the hi-fidelity audio market over that time.  Beyond quality design in their classic audio products, can Bose Augmented Reality (Bose AR) be the market differentiator?

Bose: Using a Bose-AR-equipped wearable, a smartphone, and an app-enabled with Bose AR, the new platform lets you hear what you see.

It sounds like Bose may come up with an initial design, sunglasses, but turn to 3rd party hardware manufacturers of all sorts to integrate Bose AR into other wearable products.

Bose Augmented Reality isn’t just about audio. The devices will use sensors to track head motions for gesture controls and work with GPS from a paired smartphone to track location.  The company also aspires to combine visual information with the Bose AR platform.

Bose AR Use Cases

  • Bose Augmented Reality device reenact historical events or speeches from landmarks and statues as you visit them.
  • The Bose and NFL partnership could be leveraged to get these AR units into the football player’s helmets.  Audio queues from the on-field lead, quarterback, and dynamically replayed/relayed at the appropriate time of required action by the receiver.
  • Audio directions to your gate when your GPS detects that you’ve arrived at the airport, or any other destination from your calendar.  Audio queues would be richer the more inclusive you are to the access to Calendars, To Do lists, etc.
  • Combine visual information with the Bose AR platform, too, so you could hear a translation of a sign you’re looking at.

  • Hear the history of a painting in a museum.

Time until it’s in consumer’s hands?  TBD.  Bose objective is to have the developer kit, including a pair of glasses, available later this year.

When I was on vacation in Athens, Greece, I created a post which had Greek actors running tours in their ancient, native garb.  The Bose AR could be a complementary offering to the tour, which includes live, greek local actors portraying out scenes in ancient ruins.  Record the scenes, and interact with them while walking through the Greek ruins in your Bose AR (Augmented Reality) glasses.

Greece, Prosperity, and Taxes: The World Will Come See You in AR

Please take a moment to prioritize the use cases, or add your own.

Takeaway

I’m a cheerleader for Bose, among several others in this space, but I question a Bose AR headset that produces a high fidelity sound. Most of the use cases listed should be able to “get along OK” with an average quality sound.  Maybe high definition AR games with a high level of realism might benefit from the high-quality sound. However, their site reads like Bose is positioning themselves as a component to be integrated into other AR headsets, i.e. “Bose-AR-equipped wearable“

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Law, Legal, Media, Mobility, Technology

Wireless Data Plans, Packet Protocols, Granular Reporting

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6 Days Left of my Billing Cycle: 0.3 GB Left (out of 10 GB)

Are you kidding me?! I login to AT&T’s Wireless, myAT&T portal to dive into where is all our data going?  I am able to see quite easily what mobile phone number is eating up our plan, but no additional granular information.  AT&T has a great site with lots of good information to help their customers manage their plans.

However, it seems wireless providers leave it up to the handset manufacturers to interpret the usage of the phones. Makes some sense on an individual level, but as multi line / family wireless plans continue to evolve, the growth of wireless services management portals should be spent on providing consumers transparency into their usage, aggregated and granular.

Packets of [wireless] data, bits of information, have a ‘signature’ as they travel through the Internet ether.  Packet protocol defines where the data/information originates, and it’s destination, as well as any other required information by the application sending / receiving the data.  Wireless carriers’, services management portal should allow consumers to slice and drill down to see how data is being used. For example,

Wireless plans of 10 GB is not a lot with teenagers.  You may want to target areas to curtail usage so you aren’t ‘bleeding data’.  At this time, there is not enough transparency on how data is being used from the wireless provider’s usage platform. The provider should be able to parse data packets to quantify how data is being used, and provide reports, e.g.

June 2015 Snapshot for 212-555-1212

231 songs streamed from ABC, N MB; 23 videos watched on YouTube, 2.3 GB; 34 streamed videos from Netflix, 3.2 GB; 345 emails downloaded, 90 MB;

DAM on wireless services:  Application data packet objects may have visibility through Digital Asset Management (DAM), all objects that can be managed, phone calls to chats from Facebook (except where encrypted).

Now take a piece of paper, write privacy on it, then rip it in half and toss it in the garbage.

Business, Mobility, Technology

Where is My .fon Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD)? .tel doesn’t cut it.

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Every phone number in the world should have an IP address and a domain name associated with it, hence the gTLD proposal for .fon for every phone number.  Things like us.emergency.fon = 911 would be possible.   In addition, a group of cloud vendors would be awarded management of sections of these domains, which may be aligned to the phone number carrier, or if they don’t have the capability, they can ‘sell’ or ‘lease’ out the resource to a third party Internet Provider and Cloud Vendor, similar to the way we sell mortgages, or the mortgage companies sell off our mortgage.

Not only would the service of management of the domain name correlated to an IP address and a phone number, but each IP would have a virtual image managed in the cloud, which could provide to the consumer, cloud storage for storing public and private documents, as well as a ‘home page’, cloud computing cycles for the consumers public and private applications, as well as enabling the services: VoIP, text and email messaging.

These services may be provided free for some basic subset, and the extended subset would charge the customer, e.g. for additional cloud storage space.  In addition, the client may choose to move their service to another provider.  A public index.html home page, and a private index.html home page could be created, so a person may design their own portal, e.g. containing widgets, frequently used numbers, news widgets, etc.  These pages scale downward to a mobile device or up to a high resolution image, e.g. addressable HD television.

Business, Science, Technology

Hotspot Companies Sell Smartphones and Data Plans, use Affiliate Networking to fill Gaps

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I’m using my Samsung S3, which I throughly enjoy, but I am eyeing the new Nokia Lumina 920 with Windows 8, and not to mention my old fling with the iPhone 5, and I see an article that AT&T is now the largest hotspot provider.  I’m also eyeing the prices of these phones without a contract, and don’t want to take out a 4th mortgage.  Alternatives?  Why aren’t the Wireless Carriers, and even cable companies that offer currently free hotspots add or change their business models, where we can sign up for two year agreements for data only plans, and sell subsidized smartphones and WiFi only usage?  Even cable companies that give away their hotspot coverage, start charging $20, $30 a month depending on GB usage plans and even $40 per month for unlimited.  Are the cable and wireless companies worried about coverage?  Treat it like toll charges and chargeback to the provider.  The consumer gets relatively seamless transition with an app that handles the switch between WiFi spots.  Even more wild, have any business or residence with a wireless router that wants to sign up to have the ability to sign up to be an ‘affiliate WiFi provider’, and they too can get a toll chargeback, given they are approved, e.g. running upgraded software on their router for handling transitions between WiFi hotspots and security.  The consumer can receive a credit on their monthly cable or wireless statement for their shared bandwidth chargeback usage.  Its like when people charge for their surplus of their energy from their solar panels.  It’s ok to charge a cancellation fee of $400 or prorated based on months of usage if the smartphone user exits the contract early.Get those cool devices in the hands of consumers, and you’re now able to pay for the WiFi infrastructure you’re built up, and your giving incentives to consumers with WiFI routers.   I like this technology because the Cable, and Cell Phone companies can even lease this to the consumer, and the consumer can get a charge back from usage.

The technology is primarily available, the business model is required to implement:

Note from Wikipedia: Femtocell

In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. A broader term which is more widespread in the industry is small cell, with femtocell as a subset. It connects to the service provider’s network via broadband (such as DSLor cable); current designs typically support two to four active mobile phones in a residential setting, and eight to 16 active mobile phones in enterprise settings. A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors or at the cell edge, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Although much attention is focused on WCDMA, the concept is applicable to all standards, including GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WiMAXand LTE solutions.