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There are just shy of a dozen companies which try to offer satellite Internet via LEO or MEO constellations. Of course, you can get satellite Internet today already, using geostationary satellites, but the latency is high.

I dunno man. I watched the John Legere video and he seems very trustworthy to me and not at all a slimy, coked up sales twat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Funny thing is the FCC said Binge On was fine. Despite that T Mobile scrapped it anyway and instead introduced an 'all unlimited' service, which instead throttles all video to 480p - you can upgrade from that for $25 a month. If Net Neutrality had stayed and the FCC had ruled that throttling video violated the principles even though zero rating did not, T Mobile would be in deep shit

https://www.fiercewireless.com...

But, as Recon Analytics' Roger Entner points out, a 6 GB plan on T-Mobile with all zero-rated streaming is a "de facto unlimited plan," and one that costs less than T-Mobile One, which starts at $70 per month. Without the $50 intro tier that got so many customers through T-Mobile's doors, Entner fears that the "entry level breaks away" for T-Mobile.

Entner said this could become even more problematic considering that Sprint just introduced its own unlimited plan that undercuts T-Mobile's plan by $20/month for two lines.

But the real potential red flag for T-Mobile One is the $25 upcharge to upgrade video quality from T-Mobile's standard 480p resolution to HD video.

With Binge On, 480p video was positioned as a more than acceptable resolution for smaller screens. Now, with T-Mobile One, 480p resolution looks more like an entry level option that can be upgraded.

"You're treating different traffic differently. If AT&T or Verizon did this, the FCC would slap them down in a heartbeat," said Entner. "I think carriers should be able to do what T-Mobile is doing. But all of them should be able to do it."

Indeed, while FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised to keep a close watch on sponsored data programs from AT&T and Verizon, he's praised T-Mobile offerings like Binge On as "innovative."

But if Wheeler changes his tune in light of T-Mobile's new plan, it could be problematic for the Uncarrier.

"If the FCC says you can't force people onto 480p, [T-Mobile] is in trouble," said Entner. "Because the data usage will go through the roof."

If T-Mobile customers could suddenly access HD or even 4K video and not worry about data usage, that could result in data consumption on the network going five-fold for HD or even 12-fold for 4K.

"It would bring the network to its knees," said Entner.

The problem I see it is fat, bovine consumers demanding their videos all be in 1080p on their mobile phone where even 360p is fune and data usage be uncapped. They're the sort of people who eat themselves into a Porterhouse Blue at a 'all you can eat' buffet in order to assert their absolute right to unlimited stuff for a fixed price.

All T Mobile are doing now is making people use small plates so they don't take as much food per trip to the buffet and thus don't drive T Mobile into bankruptcy. If you had Net Neutrality the FCC might denounce small plates as being contrary to the Holy Principles Of Net Neutrality and demand that T Mobile go bust.

And yet what does Net Neutrality even mean, if selectively zero rating some providers is OK but throttling all video equally regardless of provider may not be?

Luckily for T Mobile net Neutrality was something that went away when Wheeler stopped being head of the FCC.

I used to use the T Mobile Walmart plan when I was in the US, but it seems like they've stopped it

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Shame really, $30 a month for 4GB of 4G data and then unlimited 2G data was way more than I needed. It didn't have many included minutes but you could use VOIP for calls.

Exactly this. Verizon owns all of the old analog TV spectrum also. Sitting on it to prevent startup competition.

Er, no they don't. Verizon sold that 700 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile for $2.4 billion in 2014. T-Mobile is buying even more of what they already own. It's called LTE Band 12, and it's supported by the Nexus 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6, among others. They've put up dozens of towers that use that spectrum, mostly in California and the northeast, but also Minnesota, Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, east Texas, and the southern tip of Florida.

T-Mobile's network actually IS getting better, specifically because of this spectrum, but of course it's a painfully slow process. Siting and constructing a cellular tower is difficult, especially when the country is littered with lunatics so bored they have to invent psychosomatic allergies to radio waves.

Credo Mobile MVNO dumps Sprint for Verizon

Don't expect this to be fixed anytime soon. Ookla Speedtest has been exempt from data caps since 2014, and free speedtests are an official feature of T-Mobile data plans.

Confirmed: T-Mobile exempting speed-testing data from monthly data allotments

Speedtest servers are hosted by volunteers, and as can been seen from the installation instructions, Ookla Speedtest is fairly hard to exempt without exempting everything under /speedtest

Installing HTTP Legacy Fallback

Speedtest servers are located everywhere. T-Mobile could conceivably limit exemptions to only servers on the Speedtest.net server list, but the exemption list would require continual synchronization to keep it up to date.

Speedtest.net server list

The trouble is if the exemption list ever becomes out of date, then T-Mobile customers would complain bitterly about being charged for speedtests until the exemption list is updated, and presumably T-Mobile would prefer to avoid complaints about speedtests using data.

I don't think this made the Slashdot front page but Intel bought VIA's CDMA modem design and license about a year ago. Intel's modems currently only support GSM & LTE, whereas VIA never updated their CDMA modems to be LTE capable. It likely will take a couple years for Intel to integrate VIA's CDMA implementation with their LTE design, but once its done, Intel's modems will be just as capable as Qualcomm's.

CMDA isn't only important for the US Verizon/Sprint market, the much more important reason to implement CDMA is China Telecom. Either way, the iPhone 7S will likely mark the return of all iPhones being universally supported by all carriers... regardless of whether there is an Intel or Qualcomm modem inside it.

Something has gone wrong then. They were supposed to be finished over a year ago. That's why I thought it might be some third party tower.

The story here, is that cellular providers are leaving you to die alone...

The feds have been pushing for more advanced cellular locator technology for many years now. That would include things like altimeters/pressure sensors in all new cell phones, so that in a high rise building they can at least tell which floor you are on. Or U-TDOA high-accuracy triangulating receivers on cell towers. Or even an E-911 location for cell phones on file, so emergency services will at least know your exact home address.

The big-4 cellular service providers pushed back hard against any such requirements, refusing on the grounds of making cell service slightly more expensive. Their excuses being that things like this WiFi location service will be an adequate alternative, and so FCC rules continue to get watered down. "T-Mobile said, is that the FCC should not require wireless carriers to meet the proposed guidelines, and that the agency should instead seek other ways to locate indoor 911 callers."

There are innumerable stories of people who died because emergency services couldn't get an accurate enough location to reach the victim in time. Numerous wrenching horror stories where operators listed to someone die over the phone while they waited around several minutes for an accurate enough GPS location to even find the right building. Never-mind locating the correct floor, let alone the exact apartment/condo/office/car/etc.

"an http://msmagazine.com/blog/201...>estimated 10,000 Americans who will die this year because wireless companies donâ(TM)t transmit precise enough location data to 9-1-1 operators"

God help you if you are incapacitated by an emergency in such a location, and there doesn't happen to be any WiFi APs around to help Google and the first-responders locate you. Thanks to your service provider, the paramedics have much lower odds of finding you.

The story here, is that cellular providers are leaving you to die alone...

The feds have been pushing for more advanced cellular locator technology for many years now. That would include things like altimeters/pressure sensors in all new cell phones, so that in a high rise building they can at least tell which floor you are on. Or U-TDOA high-accuracy triangulating receivers on cell towers. Or even an E-911 location for cell phones on file, so emergency services will at least know your exact home address.

The big-4 cellular service providers pushed back hard against any such requirements, refusing on the grounds of making cell service slightly more expensive. Their excuses being that things like this WiFi location service will be an adequate alternative, and so FCC rules continue to get watered down. "T-Mobile said, is that the FCC should not require wireless carriers to meet the proposed guidelines, and that the agency should instead seek other ways to locate indoor 911 callers."

There are innumerable stories of people who died because emergency services couldn't get an accurate enough location to reach the victim in time. Numerous wrenching horror stories where operators listed to someone die over the phone while they waited around several minutes for an accurate enough GPS location to even find the right building. Never-mind locating the correct floor, let alone the exact apartment/condo/office/car/etc.

"an http://msmagazine.com/blog/201...>estimated 10,000 Americans who will die this year because wireless companies donâ(TM)t transmit precise enough location data to 9-1-1 operators"

God help you if you are incapacitated by an emergency in such a location, and there doesn't happen to be any WiFi APs around to help Google and the first-responders locate you. Thanks to your service provider, the paramedics have much lower odds of finding you.

It is true it is relative, and a "power user" so to speak will always use more. The average in Q1 2015 was 2.5GB/month but as we all know, streaming will cause that value to sky rocket. In that same link, Cisco estimates it'll be 11GB/month in 2019. My plan is 15GB/month (with rollover) for 6 people. However, as I'm sure everyone is aware, these values are somewhat bogus because these cell phone data users mostly also use wired/wifi (non-phone network data plans). If they have no wifi, what is the usage? My contention would be that those people who can only afford one service (not two), as my original post suggests, would find a way to reduce data usage over the phone network to stay within the cap. They would go to cafes, or hang out near free service hotels, or Denny's, crap like that. Moreover, regarding speed, they will choose based on price, not necessarily service. And, I have found that at least in our area, phone data service is sufficient for all normal uses (e.g., games, streaming). However, I don't have an HD device connected to phone data service, so I would defer to someone with more experience in that. However, I will also point out that people with less money to spend are far more forgiving to bad service. So, comments like "they won't stand for buffering issues" are false, I think they will suffer through a lot if it means they pay less, because they really have no choice. (sorry for the long-winded reply)

3.5 GHz http://www.fiercewireless.com/... http://www.fiercewireless.com/...

3.5 GHz http://www.fiercewireless.com/... http://www.fiercewireless.com/...

technically Sprint was the first carrier with VoLTE (or VoIP). They inked a deal with Google several years back where your Sprint phone number became your Google Voice number

Obviously that's not VoLTE, and I expect T-Mobile's widespread deployment of VoIP on their handsets predates that, anyhow.

Even Sprint never mentioned that, in relation to their VoLTE plans:

http://www.fiercewireless.com/...

http://telecoms.com/304831/spr...

Turns out, high up in the stratosphere the winds are predictable and have just the patterns they need. They did simulations using real-world wind data and found it was quite feasible to navigate balloons effectively to maintain coverage using only prevailing winds.

Since 2012 they've been trialling in New Zealand, Brazil and other places, they've increased balloon flight times from 50 days to over 6 months (despite expert scepticism), and now they're close to ready to roll out a commercial service. Pretty sure they've done their research by now.

... the distant third and fourth place competitors in a four-horse market.

1 - Verizon Wireless - 125.3M subscribers
2 - AT&T Mobility - 118.7M subscribers
3 - Sprint Corporation - 54.8M subscribers
4 - T-Mobile US - 52.9M subscribers

The upper two are about 2x larger than the smaller two. Significant, but I wouldn't call it "distant". Distant to me would be something like a 10x difference. The market is about 1/3, 1/3, 1/6, 1/6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

http://www.fiercewireless.com/...

You could definitely get cheaper UNLIMITED DATA elsewhere. But would you be happy with the COVERAGE? At some point you may want new EQUIPMENT, to which Verizon will tell you that your new phone isn't compatible with the "grandfathered" rate plans. The real questions to ask are "am I happy with the coverage" and "Will I be happy with this phone forever?" If the unlimited data works for you now, keep it for now. But at some point, you'll be forced to make a decision. All the other arguments about "unlimited" data are irrelevant. There are much better UNLIMITED deals elsewhere for the money.

I have gotten comments and run into situations where my T-mobile data and voice coverage in major metropolitan areas are better than Verizon. If you're in a big city or dense areas, it's not clear to me that Verizon is better. T-mobile has also been looking to improve their non-metro coverage [1]. And they've purchased 700Mhz spectrum from Verizon also good for non-dense coverage [2]. Finally, T-mobile "uncarrier" push is constantly striving to improve customer features and services. They are setting the pace with which other carriers follow.

I currently very rarely go outside of big metros so T-Mobile is a great choice for me - and I've had HD Voice for the past year and absolutely love it. Welcome to the club, ATT/VZ - glad you are finally rolling that out.

There is at least one carrier making it their focus to improve their coverage both voice and data significantly over the past 2 years, and T-mobile is definitely on that list.

[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/...
[2] http://www.telecompetitor.com/...

Seriously? You're getting upvoted on slashdot with that trash? Android has supported both voice over wifi as well as VoLTE for damn near TWO YEARS.

They never thought of ending roaming charges as a way to _make_ money

Except for Three UK who have already ended call roaming charges in eleven foreign countries - including the USA.

And for certain packages they've removed data roaming charges too (subject to limits.)

Incidentally 97 percent of their network traffic is data.

Don't forget that the Motorola Moto X has the best LTE connectivity of any smatphone on the market by a wide margin. It's fairly symmetric about all azimuths, too. The Moto X is best at doing what phones are arguably supposed to do best--be a phone. A bigger, faster phone is no good if it can't even connect to Google Maps, or if its radios take 30 seconds to a minute to switch between 3G/4G/Wi-Fi.

there's a very strange thing going on. Mobile web traffic has iOS using TWICE the amount of data over Android. Or, put another way, 1 iOS user consumes as much data as 8 Android users.

Only in your mind.

Or maybe if you're still living in 2008. Android data usage overtook iOS in mid-2011 and is currently sitting at a little over double Apple's usage numbers. Looking at actual recent US carrier data suggests that there's little difference between the two, and owners of both OSs consume roughly comparable amounts of data.

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2011/android-leads-u-s-in-smartphone-market-share-and-data-usage.html
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Android-users-were-responsible-for-more-than-40-of-global-mobile-data-usage-in-December_id50847
http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/average-android-ios-smartphone-data-use-across-tier-1-wireless-carriers-thr-1

Acatel-Lucent did mortgage its patents to Goldman-Sachs. One need a long fork when having diner with the devil, and I am not sure their is long enough.

having dual CEO's was a pretty stupid move
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/analysts-criticize-rims-dual-ceo-structure-product-uncertainty/2011-06-06

Or perhaps Sprint just figured all that customers really care about is that it has the 4g sticker on it, an assumption they now still make. One of the big problems with their wimax implementation was that it is at a higher frequency, so penetration is crap. Much in the same, they now maintain an LTE network with the lowest reliability, highest number of dead spots, and slowest data rates (mainly due to a crappy backhaul.)

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprints-lte-rollout-hampered-lack-backhaul-and-network-vision-issues/2013-07-24

Once again, their current strategy is hoping that the customers notice the "4g" sticker and don't realize how bad the service is before getting locked in. Or rather, that is part of it. The other part is doing whatever they can to make existing contract subscribers pay more - the SEC filings themselves even state that as being their plan for keeping revenues up in fact.

There's some sort of charity for retired law enforcement officers and their widow(er)s.

AT&T evidently has an Additional CEO Compensation Fund.

Well, Sprint does make an effort in advertising to say that it's truly unlimited. They do require you to pay extra for tethering.

But Sprint's service is only unlimited in that there is no data shutoff. They do throttle speeds when certain bandwidth thresholds are met. They're even doing it now on the "entry service" they bought -- Boost Mobile http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprints-boost-mobile-start-smartphone-throttling-january/2012-12-19

Not true. See links below: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-clocks-average-real-world-lte-speeds-13-mbps-opensignal-survey-finds/2013-02-14 http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/21/iphone-5-speed-test-verizon-4g-lte/

Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.

Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?

Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.

http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft

And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:

http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)

Picking up some loyal users who seem to like it :
http://wmpoweruser.com/pcmag-readers-choice-awards-2013-windows-phone-wins-mobile-os-category/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/01/customer-satisfaction-of-windows-phone-on-the-rise-according-to-survey/

And winning some awards
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-920-struts-its-stuff-and-takes-prestigious-innovative-handset-award-2013
http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-lumia-920-wins-engadget-smartphone-of-2012-user-vote/

And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.

The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.

Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7

Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/

I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease

Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.

Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?

Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.

http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft

And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp

And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:

http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)

And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.

The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.

Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7

Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/

I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease

This place was always anti-MS but reasonable and informative comments used to get modded up a few years ago, not anymore.There are enough things to bash Microsoft with, why make up lies and spread FUD?

Of course, the real blame is on moderators for modding up these kind of posts and marking others rebutting replies to them as troll and flamebait.

Last one out, switch off lights.

I still mostly like Nokia hardware, except for some minor quibbles. Unfortunately it got itself hitched to one platform. The current CEO should get voted out.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/nokias-elop-hints-more-lumia-windows-phones-verizon/2012-12-18

Its half off-topic, but I was watching cnbc "Ballmer another Mcicrosoft Fail" http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000136311&play=1 and interesting right at the end it Ed Maguire says "ther have been discussions of stephen elop as a successor. ". I spat me coffee.

When that happens, then maybe it really will be the year of the linux on the desktop!

I still mostly like Nokia hardware, except for some minor quibbles. Unfortunately it got itself hitched to one platform. The current CEO should get voted out.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/nokias-elop-hints-more-lumia-windows-phones-verizon/2012-12-18

Its half off-topic, but I was watching cnbc "Ballmer another Mcicrosoft Fail" http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000136311&play=1 and interesting right at the end it Ed Maguire says "ther have been discussions of stephen elop as a successor. ". I spat me coffee.

I still mostly like Nokia hardware, except for some minor quibbles. Unfortunately it got itself hitched to one platform. The current CEO should get voted out. http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/nokias-elop-hints-more-lumia-windows-phones-verizon/2012-12-18

I know it's important to anti-Googlers because it's pretty much the closest the company has come so far to being evil

Far from it. Google's "most evil" act so far I'd say was joining with Verizon to kill wireless net-neutrality.

What I'd love to see is a PTT app available on any android phone.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/ctialive/story/sprint-planning-direct-connect-android-app-promises-ptt-renaissance/2012-05-09

Not ANY Android phone, but any SPRINT Android.

False. To start with, the blackberry platform has been audited, tested & certified by NATO & many governments that are not part of Echelon, such as Austria & Turkey:

http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

Here is a citation for France. And here is a citation for Germany doing the same. And even Sweden and the EU issued the same warnings (although perhaps this was done just informally, as I can't seem to find the citations for those).

You made two exaggerations in your response. You shouldn't have said "many governments that are not part of Echelon". You should have said "_two_ governments that are not part of Echelon". Two governments doesn't make "many".

Also assuming Turkey and Austria were not coerced/pressured by the US/UK/Anglo coalition in their audits (an assumption I'm not willing to concede yet, because I've seen such coercions take place), it's not the "blackberry platform" which was audited by those "many" non-Echelon governments, it's just the "Blackberry Enterprise Solution" that was. This distinction is important because it's also common wisdom among high level people to keep two different phones, one for Enterprise use and one for personal use.

A European non-UK blackberry phone for personal use would not be going through company servers, but it would be going through the private BBM network in the UK (there is no way to opt out of that as per my understanding) and it would only give the user a false sense of security about being able to share personal sensitive information through it (when all of its text transmissions were indexed and analyzed through the Echelon program).

There are many governments that have threatened to ban blackberries, but none have threatened to ban iphone/android. Think about it.

"The German ministry was first advised to avoid using BlackBerry and iPhone devices in November 2009" (emphasis mine). Think about what? Your logic is flawed. Like you said yourself, some countries like the UA Emirates were upset because they couldn't view the traffic, but nothing of that means that RIM doesn't share its de-encrypted data with the Echelon program (and the country RIM originally originated from, Canada, which is indeed part of that Echelon program).

For example, given the volume of text messages, a mobile carrier in Hungary would notice if millions of messages are being routed outside the country instead of directly to their destination down the hall.

Yes, I do work and talk with some of those people. This is _my_ industry. And this is what some of those people have told me. The fact that I could back up my claims with articles from places like the BBC was sheer googling luck on my part.

And if you want to keep something secret, sending it in an unencrypted text message is a bad idea.

If you want to keep something secret, sending it as a message to anyone is a bad idea. But putting general platitudes aside, there is only one thing worse than using a knowingly unsecure communication channel, and that's the idea that you might be using an unsecure channel unknowingly (because then you'd be mislead and you simply wouldn't know to keep your mouth shut because of that false sense of security).

After all, it wouldn't take much to compromise high level people in an international negotiation. All you'd need to know is that one or two of the negotiators had used their personal Blackberry device to commit fraud, commit insider trading, or to coordinate a hot affair with their bosse's wife.

False. To start with, the blackberry platform has been audited, tested & certified by NATO & many governments that are not part of Echelon, such as Austria & Turkey:

http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

Here is a citation for France. And here is a citation for Germany doing the same. And even Sweden and the EU issued the same warnings (although perhaps this was done just informally, as I can't seem to find the citations for those).

You made two exaggerations in your response. You shouldn't have said "many governments that are not part of Echelon". You should have said "_two_ governments that are not part of Echelon". Two governments doesn't make "many".

Also assuming Turkey and Austria were not coerced/pressured by the US/UK/Anglo coalition in their audits (an assumption I'm not willing to concede yet, because I've seen such coercions take place), it's not the "blackberry platform" which was audited by those "many" non-Echelon governments, it's just the "Blackberry Enterprise Solution" that was. This distinction is important because it's also common wisdom among high level people to keep two different phones, one for Enterprise use and one for personal use.

A European non-UK blackberry phone for personal use would not be going through company servers, but it would be going through the private BBM network in the UK (there is no way to opt out of that as per my understanding) and it would only give the user a false sense of security about being able to share personal sensitive information through it (when all of its text transmissions were indexed and analyzed through the Echelon program).

There are many governments that have threatened to ban blackberries, but none have threatened to ban iphone/android. Think about it.

"The German ministry was first advised to avoid using BlackBerry and iPhone devices in November 2009" (emphasis mine). Think about what? Your logic is flawed. Like you said yourself, some countries like the UA Emirates were upset because they couldn't view the traffic, but nothing of that means that RIM doesn't share its de-encrypted data with the Echelon program (and the country RIM originally originated from, Canada, which is indeed part of that Echelon program).

For example, given the volume of text messages, a mobile carrier in Hungary would notice if millions of messages are being routed outside the country instead of directly to their destination down the hall.

Yes, I do work and talk with some of those people. This is _my_ industry. And this is what some of those people have told me. The fact that I could back up my claims with articles from places like the BBC was sheer googling luck on my part.

And if you want to keep something secret, sending it in an unencrypted text message is a bad idea.

If you want to keep something secret, sending it as a message to anyone is a bad idea. But putting general platitudes aside, there is only one thing worse than using a knowingly unsecure communication channel, and that's the idea that you might be using an unsecure channel unknowingly (because then you'd be mislead and you simply wouldn't know to keep your mouth shut because of that false sense of security).

After all, it wouldn't take much to compromise high level people in an international negotiation. All you'd need to know is that one or two of the negotiators had used their personal Blackberry device to commit fraud, commit insider trading, or to coordinate a hot affair with their bosse's wife.

Got me thinking about nextwave, the guys that bid on a ton of spectrum, then filed for bankruptcy.. looks like they are still spectrum squaters (but not as big as they were)

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/nextwave-cavalier-highlight-shadowy-world-spectrum-speculators/2010-08-18

"You're forgetting ZTE and Huawei"

Wow $19.4 Million for ZTE.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/zte-posts-16-jump-q1-profit-bolstered-device-sales/2011-04-19

And as far as Huawei, they are a private conglomerate and I couldn't find quarterly profits.

"And instead of ever bothering to address my assertion that this legal fight is too late to help derail Android, you still keep harping on about profits, which, by your reckoning would seem to imply that Apple doesn't even need to worry about Android at all, because Android is for losers. Funny how Apple seems fixated on it, then."

Well, according to Motorola's CEO, it seems like all Apple has to do to derail Android is to actually allow a carrier to sell the iPhone.....

Also [allegedly] stole IP from Motorola: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/motorola-stings-huawei-lawsuit-alleges-theft-trade-secrets/2010-07-21 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/616d2b34-953d-11df-b2e1-00144feab49a.html

PS the article says texts are "40 cents each, only four times the piece rate for cell phone." That's way too much, just as 10 cents for a regular text is a complete ripoff. 40 cents each works out to around $3000/MB, whereas (non-texting) satellite data on the same phone costs $5/MB. It really makes me wonder how they come up with these prices.

I can't find anything yet that actually gives N900 or Maemo sales figures. Your link does not - I am all ears if you have something. Something tells me that Nokia isn't anywhere remotely near selling 21 million devices truly comparable to iphone or android in Q4. "Converged mobile device volumes" is very carefully worded and my guess, careful weasel wording is the only way the can come up with a number so impressive-sounding.

Apple has only shipped 75 million iphone and ipod touch devices combined worldwide, and something like 8.7 million iphones in Q4. So if Nokia "true" smartphones were outselling Apple smartphones by such a margin, in any way shape or form, I think that would be bigger news, no?

I think this confusion comes from Nokia labelling any $50 gadet of theirs with a dime-store web browser and a music player as a "converged mobile device." But even in this case I should have qualified my remarks as referring to smartphones, rather than just "mobile."

This is just a patent battle. RIM fired the first shot by accusing Motorola of violating its patents. Motorola is countering by saying "Oh, yeah, not only are you violating our patents, but you shouldn't be allowed to import your stuff until all this gets resolved".

Bottom line, they are both just posturing. In the end they will sign some sort of cross licensing agreement that will allow each other to user each other's patents and more importantly, cut everyone else out (its the startups that aren't part of this that will loose in the end).

All this over patents that are probably little more than: "A phone, that can display information on a screen".

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/motorola-vs.-rim-patent-war-begins/2008-02-19

BTW, Last time I used 'Good Technologies" push software it totally screwed up my phone. If an email came through while you were on the phone, you got disconnected. Yes, they are fighting over that piece of crap.

According to Motorola CEO Greg Brown, Net Neutrality is, in principle, a good thing.

So I was surprised to see them in the list of supporters of this letter. It makes no sense for Motorola to allow the carriers to arbitrarily exclude devices from their networks. For those who don't know, Motorola has a love-hate relationship with the carriers. We can't just sell phones to a given carrier's customers - we must first sell it to the carrier, who then decides key things:

1. How much they will pay us for each phone sold, and
2. How much they will charge the customer for each phone sold.
3. What features their customers will get, and how much they will pay for them.

As an employee of Motorola, it constantly frustrates me that the carriers have the ability to make or break a phone, regardless of it's technical merits or feature set. If the carrier doesn't want a compelling feature to work on their network, it doesn't. It makes no difference if we make the best camera phone in the business if the carrier decides the user has to pay for each picture taken with the phone. It makes no difference if we have the best phone games on the market if the carrier decides those games won't ship on phones bought by their customers. You get the point - the carriers get in the way of Motorola's business model.

I hate posting anonymously, but I'm paranoid about the repercussions this might cause at work.

If you are talking about the US, there is no law I am aware of that REQUIRES the carrier to unlock the phone after the contract has been fulfilled. AT&T has a 90 day policy where they will provide the unlock code for customers in good standing that need the code (traveling overseas), but the iPhone is specifically exempt from that.

The closest thing we have in the US to a requirement is that the copyright office ruled that unlocking phones is not against the law.

• Will, as you ask, people switch to Cingular? Well, with number portability one issue goes away. Another potential issue is that Sprint is a much bigger business carrier than is Cingular -- some business users will only have Sprint phones as an option. But we do see that most carriers have about 2% churn annually, and Cingular did gain 2.4mm new subscribers in just 4Q '06, so there's precedent for an inflow of customers
• Is the price too high? I think it seems high, but the bigger iPods sell reasonably well too, and they're pretty pricey. There are also a lot of smartphones in the $399-$699 range without rebate, and most of these started out with pretty small rebates and long contracts. The iPhone is selling through the same, proven channel with the same, proven incentives.
• Is the iPhone a toy? This is related to the question "will not being available on Sprint and Verizon doom the product with businesspeople?" All of the things the iPhone does are things that people pay RIM and Palm big money to do right now. If the iPhone can do them better -- and assuming they need to be done better -- then it's not a toy, it's a productivity tool, and how many executives are going to accept their IT guy's objection that "we don't have an account with Cingular"? Oh, and because it looks sexy, the iPhone is also a toy, and can compete in the toy market with the Sidekick. How big is that market? 1.1 million units last year. The Blackberry Pearl sold a bunch of units at the end of the year too -- maybe 500,000? That's a good sized market, and a very fashion-conscious one, that should be very receptive to the iPhone.
• Is the iPhone really just "about as good as" other smartphones? That's the big question. Apple's history in designing similar devices suggests that the iPhone should be substantially better, but, if it's not, then it's true that success outside a small niche is going to be impossible. Apple's banking a lot on its ability to design a better interface, we'll have to see how the iPhone holds up over time.
• 
  
  
  Add it all up, and I think you get about 3mm shipments in the iPhone's first year on the market -- a lot less than 5, but a start.

And in each case the matter has been settled without a verdict or in Apple's favor (concerning Apple records)

Apple owns trademarks for the iPhone in a dozen countries - check here