MobHappy

Last time out, I went over (with graphs!) operators’ rhetoric about needing to raise data prices to discourage usage, since their networks can’t keep up with demand. Today, we’ll look at what’s behind the data traffic increase, and what (other than raising rates) operators can do about it.
I closed that last post by saying the [...]

There’s been quite a bit of talk lately about how mobile networks are creaking under the strain of increased data usage. The CTO of Verizon in the US says that flat-rate data plans aren’t sustainable, echoing similar comments from the head of AT&T Wireless; over in the UK, O2’s head honcho says smartphones are bogging [...]

“If the mobile internet turns into the general internet, then shame on us” — says Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer, Jim Ryan, in an interview with MocoNews’ Tricia Duryee.
Yeah, I mean, shame on us if the mobile internet actually became something useful, enriching, ubiquitous and valuable, supporting a plethora of business models on an [...]

Verizon Wireless has put the word out that it’s going to start charging 3 cents for every mobile-terminated text message that goes across its network starting November 1, on top of the existing fees it already charges.
That “poof!” sound you just heard was the SMS content and marketing business in the US vanishing in a [...]

Vodafone UK upped the competitive stakes today when it announced that its pay monthly customers will now get 500 MB of mobile data free each month as a part of their tariff. That’s awesome, and it will be interesting to see what impact this has in the market and on mobile data usage in the [...]

Sometimes it’s hard to grind out posts for the ol’ blog here. Conversely, sometimes they really do write themselves, like this morning.
From Vero at Taptu and James Whatley at SMS Text News comes word that O2 in the UK is capping downstream 3G speeds for most of its users at 128 Kbps.
Oh, but it [...]

Today’s FT has a review of a new book about customer service, called The Best Service is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs. Whoo, a book about customer service — I know what you’re thinking. But this one actually sounds pretty worthwhile, especially for the [...]

More on the flap over US operator Sprint’s recent launch of a transcoder that uses a fake user-agent and breaks developers’ attempts to automatically serve up mobile-friendly content:
First, Ed Moore from Openwave, the vendor of the Sprint transcoder, stops by in the comments to say that the company is working to “get the exclusion lists [...]

It’s still early in the year, but I think my prediction about “open” being the buzzword for 2008 is going to score me a point in our annual review. And, as I also predicted, a lot of it’s BS. First, you’ve got Sprint’s new transcoder, called “OpenWeb” (from OpenWave, natch). As Techype says, “A thoroughly [...]

I pointed out on Monday how Dennis at Wap Review had discovered that Sprint has rolled out a lovely transcoder — a la Vodafone — that sends a dummy user agent to web sites, instead of the proper user agent of their customers’ handsets. The latest update was that people could ask for their sites [...]