Clueless AT&T versus clued-in MobilityPass

By Kristin Zhivago

Here I am again, a buyer. Money in hand. Ready. Eager. Wanting to get what I need, fast, and go back to work. What do I want to buy? International wireless broadband, using a data SIM card that I can plug into a variety of cellular devices and work, on land and at sea. I want to get the right solution, but I also have deadlines - so I don't want to spend a lot of time on this.

Clue #1. Your buyer is BUSY. She is NOT sipping a cup of Java with her feet up, watching your fancy demo. She wants to buy what she needs, now.

AT&T is an option for me; I'm already using one of their voice/data SIM cards in my smartphone, and will continue to use it there. But I needed another SIM card for my PC and other devices. The data service is a bit pricey, but it's been reliable, so I went to AT&T at the beginning of my buying process.

I quickly found myself on a site listing the "wireless modem card" options. That's good.

I clicked on "View the LaptopConnect interactive demo." Not good.

It's not a demo, and it's not interactive. Within seconds, I slid the window over to my secondary monitor and started looking for other solutions on my main monitor. Why? Because the demo convinced me that AT&T is completely clueless about what I'm trying to do. If they are this clueless about me trying to buy their solution, they are going to be just as clueless about providing a solution that I want.

See how dangerous it is if you're clueless about your buyer's situation? Your busy buyer can tell, in seconds, if you are in sync with them or not. If you're not, they're done. Gone. Off to another site.

I would have shut down the demo right then - just to stop the stupid music, at the very least - except 1) I realized that it was a perfect example of seller cluelessness, and decided to watch it for the purposes of this article, and 2) I wondered if the demo was ever going to stop describing why I wanted to buy this type of product, and would actually tell me what I wanted to know about the product.

No such luck. The whole thing was devoid of any useful content.

When it ends, there are a few options listed. They must think "interactive" means there's a link in there somewhere. There are four links on the last page.

I can "Learn How," which leads to a datasheet type of web page; "Buy Now," which is ridiculous, because this demo has not taken me one inch farther in my buying process; "Have a Sales Expert Contact You" which only makes me sigh and shake my head (why on earth would I want to prolong the agony?); and "Replay," which makes me laugh out loud.

Clue #2: Your buyer is not interested in your corporate messages and your partner network. She is interested in knowing, NOW, how your product works, so she can decide if she wants to...gasp...buy it!

I bet the people at AT&T loved this "interactive demo." I can just see the meeting where the vendor brought in the final result. "Great! Good use of the logo, and love the orange stripe running through, connecting all our branding messages: 'Here, there, everywhere.' 'Workflow speed,' 'Workflow reach,' 'Streamline workflow,' 'An ecosystem of leading application and service partners.' The VP will love it."

Who on earth do they think they're selling to? Imagine who would actually think this is great. Forrest Gump? Homer Simpson? Certainly not this buyer, or anyone else who is seriously trying to solve a problem and get back to work.

Now for the clued-in, buyer-friendly version.

Further searching took me to MobilityPass. Ahhhh.

Right away, I see that they understand what I want to do. Everything I want to know - or a way to find out what I want to know, quickly - is right here. My important questions are answered, immediately. "No contract, pay as you go." "No membership or setup fee." "Billing per second of use." "Instant activation."

There is a big red button that leads to the end of the purchasing process, if I want to go there immediately: "Get my MobilityPass Account." But just to the right and left of that, in case I'm not ready (and I'm not), are the options which answer the buyer's next questions: "Rates & Coverage," and "How it works."

The demo for MobilityPass is an actual demo. Go to this page and click on turquoise View Demo button at the bottom of the middle column, if you want to see an example of a great demo.

This is a no-nonsense demo. Just what you want to see. The announcer describes the steps as the fingers zip around an iPhone and show how everything is done. The demo answers the Big Question: "What's going to happen to me after I buy?" Note how cleverly they answered the "partner" question, and "operating platform" question, unobtrusively, under the demo movie. My only criticism: These icons/logos are not clickable. They should be.

How buyer-friendly is your site? Do you have a product demo? Does it actually show how the customer would use the product? How much of your site simply describes the customer's need, rather than what your product or service will do to solve that need?

Clue #3: The company that answers the customer's questions makes the sale.

I signed up for MobilityPass. If it works as hoped, I will cut back on the services I get from AT&T. [Postscript: I did receive the SIM card and modem, and so far it looks like it will meet my needs very nicely.]

Because they were clueless, AT&T failed to capitalize on a current customer willing to buy more services. Because they facilitated my buying process, MobilityPass got my business and pulled even more business away from AT&T.

MobilityPass answered my questions - what their service provides, how it works, how much it costs - all on their home page or just one click away from the home page.

AT&T didn't even begin to answer my questions. I'm sure they don't even know what the real buyer questions are. Instead, their "demo" told me what I could do with wireless data access. Duh. I've been accessing the Web wirelessly for years. I know what I can do with it.

Of course, AT&T can't say "no contract, pay as you go," because there's always a contract. As soon as I knew MobilityPass had an alternative, I was interested.

Most CEOs and entrepreneurs imagine that they have to convince their buyer to buy. But what if your buyer is ready to buy? What if they only have a couple of questions? What if you're two seconds away from "ka-ching," if you answer those questions immediately?

What would your site look like if you thought this way?

Google Introduces Real-Time Search

By Ryan Singel


MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Google said Monday it will begin indexing much of the web in real time, and marry those results with its relevance-ranking technology to make sense of the torrents of information being published via Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

The announcement, at a news conference at the Computer History Museum here, signals an aggressive push by Google to maintain its mantle as search-innovation leader amid unaccustomed pressure from rivals. Microsoft effectively beat Google to the real-time punch, announcing Facebook and Twitter partnerships for its Bing search engine at the Web 2.0 Summit in October.

“Google Real Time search is Google’s relevance technology meeting the real-time web,” said Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “There is so much information being generated that relevance is the key to any product, and that’s where Google comes in.”

Monday’s announcement aims to address a major perceived shortcoming in Google’s technology, which has drawn criticism lately for not keeping up with the flood of short status updates on social networks, which some see as creating a new information revolution defined by instantaneous, or “real time,” distribution of information.

Google’s results page will now include a scrolling box of links that update constantly even as you scan through the other results. Clicking through takes one to a page of real-time scrolling updates.

In addition to including Facebook and Twitter in its stream, Google said it’s the first search company to partner with MySpace for real-time search.

Google said its real-time search offers not just a stream of data, but an organized stream filtered of spam and other irrelevant information. The key to keeping the updates relevant is that Google judges “author quality,” “probability of relevance” and “query hotness,” according to Singhal. “That’s what real-time search is all about,” he said.

In what seemed an almost-defensive move in light of recent press given to Bing and Yahoo search, Google’s VP for search Marissa Mayer started the event by telling reporters that Google is constantly innovating, and that it launched “33 different search innovations in 67 days,” a list that ranged from Google’s cool new music search to holiday logos.

Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo’s search team have been pushing the idea for more than a year that search is more than just about the best links, and that what people really want are answers, not links. That’s a none-too-subtle dig at Google’s paradigm-changing search innovation — PageRank — that actually made links useful.

Google, which still commands 70 percent of the U.S. search market, has been slow to change its simple interface, but Mayer made it clear Monday that Google understands that there are many ways to return information to searchers, including answers that are personalized — a nod to a little-noticed announcement last Friday that Google would personalize all results, using cookies in a browser — even for those who don’t have Google accounts.

“Our search results have to mirror the [internet's] richness,” Mayer said. “It’s not just about 10 blue links. It’s about the best answers.

“We don’t know what search will look like 30 years from now, but what we do know is that they will be more personalized,” Mayer said.

Mayer was followed on stage by Vic Gundotra who quickly demoed how good Google’s search by voice on mobile phones has gotten. He spoke, “Pictures of Barack Obama with the French president at the G8 summit,” into his phone, which then returned exactly those results in seconds. Gundotra then demoed how voice works in Mandarin, and announced that it would now work with Japanese as well.

Gundotra said the future of search on phones involves search using microphones as the ears, the camera as eyes, the GPS chip as the location, and the speaker as a voice.

Gundotra also showed off a demo of an automatic translator that lets you speak English into your phone and then have it translated into Spanish which is then spoken. For instance, Gundotra said, “My name is Dick. Please show me to the nearest hospital.” In seconds a woman’s voice said this in perfect Spanish. The app is expected to be released in 2010 in many languages, Gundotra said.

Google also showed off customized Google Suggest that uses location. For instance, starting a query “RE” in Boston suggest the Red Sox, while the same start of query in San Francisco suggests the outdoor store REI, one of the city’s most popular retailers.

Google Local has a button called “Near Me Now” right now that lets you see the surrounding local businesses — and their online ratings. That same feature is now available in a new version of Google Maps for Android, which sends your latitude and longitude from your phone to Google and returns a list of what’s nearby and good.

Finally, Google Goggles lets you take a picture using your phone and send it to your phone, which scans it for text and searches for it. It can also take a picture of a famous landmark such as the Itsukushima Shrine and actually tell you what it is, and show you pages about it.

By Ryan Singel

Top 7 Disruptions of the Year

By Epicenter Staff

Technology is like a dog; each year of it seems like the equivalent of seven human years — at least when you get to the end of it and realize it’s only been 12 months since that now indispensable service first launched.

We spent 2009 documenting technology’s disruption of how we live, entertain ourselves and do business. Looking back on the year from the comfortable perch of December, here are the seven most disruptive developments of 2009.

Google Stack

It’s been a running joke for the last few years that Google knows everything you do online, but 2009 might be the year that Google became a full-scale technology platform — with technologies that layer on top of one another to create the “Google Stack.” From your smartphone through to your enterprise’s document-creation software, Google now has you covered, with promises of more to come. That means the list of companies whose revenues Google plans to undermine continues to grow (We’re thinking about you, AT&T, Skype and Microsoft.)

2009 saw Google start to land in users’ pockets, thanks to the the Android OS showing up on the coolest phones from three of the four dominant U.S. carriers. In July, Google announced the Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system that runs web services like Gmail and Google Calendar with a speed comparable to pesky installable software. Your Chrome browser will need to know how to get Google Apps, so it will use Google DNS (new for ‘09 too, just like Chrome for Mac).

When your friends want to reach you, they’ll call your Google Voice number or they’ll add a message to the right Google Wave. Or they’ll visit your website hosted on Google Sites, click on the Google AdSense ads, which will fund the dinner you just added to you Google Calendar and will write about on your Google Blogger blog. And almost all of that is free so you won’t need Google Checkout to pay for their services. And if there’s a service missing from that stack (say photo sharing via Picasa), you can always use a search engine called Google to find it.

Mobile App Stores

Before Apple disrupted the mobile-phone market by granting thousands of software developers access to the iPhone through the App Store, cell carriers used to allow only a handful of companies to make stuff for their phones. Consumers and developers put up with it because we had no choice, but the App Store changed that.

Apple still exerts some control over which apps are sold in its store, but had approved over 100,000 apps as of November — an astonishing number no matter how you slice it. Google’s Android app store now includes over 20,000 apps, and the concept is spreading to other platforms. Carriers now view third-party-designed apps as a way to augment their offerings and sell bigger data plans, rather than viewing them as an unconscionable loss of control. The app store phenomenon made the cellphone more like the personal computer, and we’re all the better for it.

But as disruptive as the app stores are, they may not exist in five years, thanks to the next item on our list.

HTML5

Web protocols aren’t as sexy as the iPhone, but they could soon replace the app store as mobile web browsers improve to run Javascript and HTML5, allowing developers to create what they make as apps today as mobile web pages tomorrow. Rather than developing a different app for every type of phone, they’ll be able to write the code once and have it run everywhere.

Apps are everywhere right now — whatever you’re looking for, there’s an app for that, as the commercial says. But as the president of Mozilla’s mobile division said, “Over time, the web will win, because it always does.” Gmail’s Mobile website already leans hard on HTML5 and is nearly as snappy as a native app. Still doubt that HTML5 can make Apple’s apps obsolete? The same thing happened with applications that run on computers (see Google Stack), much to Microsoft’s chagrin.

A New FCC

The FCC, under the leadership of Obama’s law school classmate Julius Genachowski, is taking its job as the guardian of the nation’s airwaves seriously again. The agency is talking about the politically controversial step of taking back spectrum from over-the-air TV broadcasters and making it available for wireless users.

Then this summer, the agency stuck their noses into Apple’s app store to see why the Google Voice application was rejected — forcing AT&T to declare it would let VoIP applications on all their phones. They are setting formal ‘net neutrality’ rules and in the face of strong opposition from the wireless industry, plan to apply them to wireless, satellite, cable and DSL providers alike. It’s trying to break the cable company’s monopoly on set-top boxes, so you can buy one that actually does cool stuff.

And all the while, it’s been hard at work composing the country’s first-ever national broadband plan, which is due in February (though all signals are the plan will be pragmatic, rather than revolutionary). That’s a far cry from the Bush era, where the agency took two years and a public roadshow before it ordered Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer file sharing.

Streaming Music

This was the year streaming really took off, and Pandora and YouTube were the big winners in the music space — YouTube’s video service allows it to stream on-demand music that music-only services can’t afford.

Google’s searches now link directly to on-demand music streaming services (see screenshot), which puts the phenomenon squarely in the mainstream. And more of us are listening to cloud-based music than ever before, through websites, MP3 blogs, MP3 blog aggregators, streaming software and mobile apps.

We’re finishing the year with less diversity in the music space than we started with; Apple acquired Lala, and MySpace bought iLike and imeem. But these acquisitions are a sign that the big players recognize that the future belongs not to iTunes and iPods, but to web-based services and connected devices.

The Real-Time Web

Twitter is mostly just a protocol for publishing short little messages to the web, but in 2009, the little startup continued its shakeup of the net’s landscape, and is on track to become what its leaked internal documents show it hopes to be: the “pulse of the planet.” It’s not quite that yet, despite becoming a player in the battle over Iran’s future. But it has launched the notion of a real-time web, where netizens are constantly and instantaneously updated — even if it’s just about the funny billboard your friend just walked by.

Add to that location services like foursquare and loopt — which report where you are — and the unproven concept of reporting to everyone what you bought via Blippy.com, and you’ve come up with a recipe for a net that values headlines over nut graphs, narcissism over thoughtfulness, and speed over deliberation.

But the notion was powerful enough to send Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all racing to add Twitter and Facebook posts to their search results, regardless of the utility. And Facebook got envious, re-doing its entire approach to social networking by pushing all of its users to post publicly in an attempt to become the net’s vanity press. The upshot of it all: Add “get a prescription to Provigil” to your list of New Year’s resolutions if you hope to keep up.

Augmented Reality

This year the world got its first real taste of mobile augmented-reality apps, which overlay digital information on top of analog reality. The idea is to let you see restaurant ratings floating over restaurants, peoples’ tweets appear over their heads, what song they’re listening to and so on.

Augmented reality is still a work-in-progress as developers iron out kinks such as the floating tag problem, and as consumers get used to the idea. But in a sense, it’s already here — from geotagged photos to phones with compasses and maps in them, the internet already intersects with the world at specific locations, letting us access data where it’s most relevant.

Upside for Entertainment Devices with Wi-Fi

by David H. Deans

Wi-Fi wireless connectivity has taken the entertainment device market by storm, with cameras, gaming devices (handheld and consoles), and various personal media players (PMPs) incorporating the technology to date.

Wi-Fi-enabled entertainment device shipments will increase from 108.8 million in 2009 to 177.3 million in 2013, according the latest market study by In-Stat.

"While a growing number of entertainment devices have Wi-Fi embedded, most product categories only have a few players -- often with a single company dominating the market," says Victoria Fodale, In-Stat analyst.

For gaming consoles and gaming devices, Nintendo dominates the market, selling 79 percent of Wi-Fi-enabled consoles and 87 percent of Wi-Fi-enabled handheld devices in 2009.

In-Stat's market study found the following:

- Although the Apple iPod Touch clearly has the dominant Wi-Fi-enabled PMP market share, many vendors now have offerings in the space.

- Nikon shipped 91 percent of Wi-Fi-enabled digital cameras in H1 2009.

- For the past several years all gaming consoles have had Wi-Fi embedded, which is a trend that will continue throughout the forecast period.

- The most significant variance in handhelds will be the type of Wi-Fi embedded.

- Beginning in 2010, these devices will begin shipping with 802.11n, while previously all devices were being shipped with the 802.11b standard.

Africa sees massive growth in mobile web usage

by Richard Wray

Having swept America and conquered Europe, social networking site Facebook is now spreading rapidly through Africa.

From the deserts of Libya to the plains of Tanzania•Facebook is fast becoming the continent's most visited mobile site as Africans use their phones to access the internet, according to a new report.

Even micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter is making an impact, appearing as the ninth most visited mobile internet site in South Africa and Kenya, according to a study by Oslo-based mobile software developer Opera of the top ten 'mobile web' countries in Africa.

The most popular African destination on the mobile web, is Facebook. The social networking site is visited by users of Opera's mobile web browser in six out of the 10 countries surveyed by the company . Google is either number one or two in every African state except Kenya where Yahoo dominates.

Email services such as Hotmail and Gmail are also popular as is YouTube. The online video site has its highest rankings in Egypt, at number three, and Libya, at number four.

Among news sources, the BBC figures strongly in the top ten most visited sites in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia. CNN features prominently in the top ten in Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia. They are the only two western news sources among the most popular mobile internet destinations across the ten African countries analysed by the Opera survey.

Sport features strongly with French sports newspaper L'Équipe the sixth most visited mobile web site in Ivory Coast. Egyptian mobile phone users flock to Arabic language sports portal Filgoal.com and Libyans prefer rival Koora.com.

Mobile usage is ballooning across the continent and the African mobile phone market – at more than 400 million subscribers – is now larger than in North America. Some countries, such as South Africa, have 'mobile penetration levels' - the number of handsets compared with size of population – close to those of Western Europe.

For many people in Africa, mobile telephones are the only way that they will ever get access to the internet because of the poor quality, and often complete lack, of fixed-line networks. Fierce competition has pushed mobile prices down for consumers while many of the latest crop of handsets available in Africa allow easy access to the mobile internet. Web browsers can also be installed on older phones.

The mobile web browser developed by Opera is the most popular in Africa, accounting for more than half the market, and in its latest State of the Mobile Web report, Opera estimates that the number of handsets using its browser across the top ten African states has leapt 177% in the past year. The report looks at South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia. Opera refuses to give overall customer numbers for Africa, but in its largest market – South Africa – it had 1.5 million 'unique users' in October.

Internet-enabled handsets are being used to access ever more mobile web sites, with page views shooting up 374% between November 2008 and last month. In some countries such as Kenya and Zambia, hundreds of pages are being accessed each month as handsets are often used by more than one person to get online. Across the continent roadside kiosks proliferate where people 'rent out' mobile phones. At first the devices were little more than a replacement for public phone boxes, allowing people to call friends and family, but increasingly they are being hired out as computers, allowing those who cannot afford a device of their own, to access the internet on a regular basis.

Opera's mobile phone internet browser is the most popular worldwide, used by almost 27% of all mobile internet users. The iPhone is in second place with Nokia's web browser in third, between them the top three account for nearly 70% of the market, according to data from StatCounter. Opera estimates that it has more than 41.7 million users worldwide, up from about 16.4 million in November last year, helped in part by the pre-installed browser in many recent models of smartphones.

Mobile internet to eat world, apparently

By Chris Mellor

Morgan Stanley has issued a set of reports asserting that the mobile internet will be much bigger than the desktop internet: "Regarding pace of change, we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years."

There are five converging trends: 3G, social networking, video, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and improving mobile internet devices (MIDs). The report claims that Apple's iPhone and iTouch ecosystem are exhibiting the fastest user growth in consumer technology history. It says that the number of MIDs, from smartphones to games consoles, rumoured tablets and netbooks, will vastly outgrow the number of desktop PCs and talks of more than ten billion units. What does this imply for storage?

Morgan Stanley asks: "The high-level riddle is - will the next stage of mobile Internet develop in a fragmented/open way (a la desktop Internet) or will it develop with leading/closed platforms as the mainframe, minicomputer and PC era did?" A closed MID device market will restrict selling opportunities for MID storage component suppliers.

It should mean that MID form factor storage shipments will be on a huge growth curve, suggesting good news is coming for MID NAND flash shippers. That should certainly benefit Samsung but other NAND foundry owners, such as Toshiba/SanDisk, could also benefit as billions of megabytes of the stuff will be needed for the billions of MID devices coming.

On the hard drive front Seagate's single platter Momentus Thin looks well-placed with its thinness combined with 2-5-inch capacity. Toshiba also looks well-positioned with its dogged perseverance in producing 1.8-inch format drives.

Consumers may also need local backup of their devices with support for cable-free connections. "PCs (along with the cloud) are becoming home media servers, storing/backing up and providing content to / from smartphones," says Morgan Stanley. Maybe a combined backup-battery recharge facility will be developed. A big driver for MID proliferation is video and local storage and the ability to replay on connected video devices like TVs and PCs will surely become useful.

The MID network pipes will need storage caches to keep their pipes full and their customers happy. The other big market for storage in a MID-mad world will be petabyte-class storage farms for the cloud service providers used by the MID owners, things such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Microsoft Azure (possibly), Twitter and other social networking and consumer cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies that have sprung up.

Morgan Stanley mentions three very well-positioned service suppliers: "We believe Facebook has the potential to serve as a communications platform/engine of one-to-one, one-to-some and one-to-many (and visa versa) [sic] for the mobileInternet… Additional platform companies that appear to be well positioned for the rapid changes related to the evolution of the mobile Internet include Tencent and Skype."

Growth rates and user numbers can be astounding, with the reports saying Facebook has 430 million users and more than 137 per cent year-on-year user count growth. YouTube is identified as having 466 million users with 35 per cent year-on-year growth. Skype has 521 million registered users, a number which is growing by more than 40 per cent year on year.

The reports assert that mobile data traffic will rise 66-fold by 2013, a 131 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). How long will it be before the biggest MID service suppliers find themselves needing exabyte-capacity storage facilities?

Not every large cloud supplier will go the Google DIY route. They won't be buying FAS 6000, EVA 6000, DS 6000, CLARiiON-type arrays. Such facilities have needs that will dwarf the high-performance computing (HPC), video rendering media environments. The Isilons, BlueArcs and DataDirects will have to change their game if they want to sell to these customers.

Just suppose a Facebook-type customer issued an RFP for 500PB of storage over the next three years; how would suppliers respond? Such a RFP would specify highly-reliable, fast and very scalable storage that is cheap to buy and cheap to run.

Dell perhaps has an edge here with its contract to supply customised storage boxes for Microsoft's Azure cloud data centres. EMC's Atmos is designed for such uses. Which other suppliers have the kit that could do this job?

The report identifies Samsung as being well-positioned because of its DRAM and NAND with MCP (Multi-Chip Package) capability. Storage companies with unclear positioning are listed as HP, and Western Digital and Seagate for unclear SSD intentions. The big storage winners are the ones supplying device-level storage, network storage and cloud data centre arrays. Who they will be is yet to be seen, but Samsung and Dell apear to be in the right places at the right time. ®

Did you get stuck in the "Blizzard of '09"?

Thousands of travelers have been stuck in the Eastern United States due to a freak blizzard that hit the East coast this weekend. People traveling via planes were stranded for hours in airports, while flight after flight was canceled due to the stormy weather.
I just hope that all of those unlucky people, were fortunate enough to have a good cell phone and mobile internet provider, so that they would at least be able to keep in touch with the loved ones they were trying to get home to. MobilityPass

Become an International Mobile Operator!

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Increase your margins by offering MobilityPass products and services. By capitalizing on market trends and differentiating your service offers, MobilityPass gives you the winning edge over your competitors.

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On the road

Being on the road as much as I am, I meet a lot of people. I have the pleasure of hearing all about how much they hate their wireless providers' service. When I get the opportunity to meet someone who has the MobilityPass service, I am greeted with smiles and happy stories. This lets me know that we are doing what we promise, and we have a wonderful service that you will be very pleased with.
What have you got to lose? Unlike those other providers, we don't require a contract. We are confident in our service, so we don't feel like we need to trap you, in order to keep you as a client. MobilityPass

What is 3g?

I know you've been hearing a lot about "3g" networks, and you maybe wondering exactly what all of the hype is about....... In this article posted on MobilityPass, we go into very clear, precise details, and you will no longer feel like you are in the dark when everyone around is talking about 3g.

What is 3G and How does it Work?

Networks classified as 3G networks operate on the IEEE 802.11 protocols and were primarily developed for the use of data transmission over wireless networks. 3G is the third generation of telecommunications specifications laid down by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). At its most basic core, 3G enables network operators a vast range of services and technologies to improve services and allow for higher capacities on networks. This is achieved through spectral efficiency; spectral efficiency defines how a particular bandwidth or frequency is used in the transmission of data in the form of voice, video telephony and general data transmissions like that of the Internet. The IEEE 802.11 networks are primarily short range and high bandwidth for data transmission and can also be used for telephone calls and video calls.

3G provides an improved speed of transmission: the average speed has not yet been standardized. Many users will be quoted different speeds according to the service provider's documentation. As a general rule of thumb, a 3G user in a stationary position will be able to transfer at a minimum of 2 Mbit/s to a maximum of 14.4 Mbit/s. These rates change as the user moves through varying cellular towers and access points via the 3G network. At a walking pace users can expect to have a maximum transfer of: 384 kbit/s or in a moving car at 128 kbit/s. 3G also incorporates the use of HSPA for fast transmissions; HSPA is a combination of two separate mobile telephone protocols. One is for the uplink transfer (HSUPA) and the other for downlink (HSDPA) transfers.

MobilityPass 3G mobile Internet access delivers up to 7.2 Mbit/s transfer rates using the HSDPA protocol for increased speed and reliability. MobilityPass includes in every mobile Internet package privacy and confidentiality of all customer information as well as increased security for access to the mobile Internet. The beauty of the MobilityPass packages is that if the Internet is not used the customer is not billed unlike most of the competition that bills the customer regardless of usage and transfers. This makes MobilityPass a logical choice for business people around the world especially since MobilityPass has access in over 75 countries.

The standard for 3G has fallen into the UMTS or W-CDMA specification and is used in most 3G networks in one form or another. There are five other interfaces for the technologies governing the wireless Internet and telephone industries, although many are only used in remote locations that have not yet upgraded to the 3G network. The upgrade process is a long arduous one as the pre-3G technologies needed to be almost completely replaced. In many areas and countries the radio frequencies used for 3G and UMTS are completely different than those used for previous technologies. Licensing needs to obtained on these new radio frequencies which has been a problem for some companies and countries as the costs can be staggering.

While new networks need to be built and designed in areas lacking the available technology to build on, 3G has taken a decent portion of the world's data services.

Looking for a hotspot in Morocco?

With your MobilityPass account you can use all our services with a single login name and password. You will only pay for what you use. There is no setup fee, monthly fee, or maintenance fee. From Albania to Lichtenstein, and from Lithuania to Zimbabwe, we’ve got you covered! Anywhere you are going to be in the world, you can always check the MobilityPass site, but you can almost always rest assured that we will be there for you

What do you get from your provider?

Does your wireless provider give you everything you need, or do you seem to have more troubles with it, than not? Are you on the phone with tech support more than you are with your friends and family? Do you sometimes feel like you are working for them, instead of them working for you?

Maybe it's time you moved away from the service providers that your teenage children use, and go with a provider for business people, like yourself, who also have a life outside of business. We are not your bubblegum wireless service providers; we want to be sure that you are connected no matter where you are in the world. We mean business! MOBILITYPASS

Do you have more than one acct for your communication needs?

Don't you think it's time you consolidate those plans into one, easy to manage account? MobilityPass is considered the “Swiss Knife” in Global communication. Our product serves mainly frequent travelers and we are talking about business and pleasure in this case. Under one membership there is a big variety of products that take care of Global communication, easy to use and very affordable for everyone who travels frequently. Always one account wherever you are, one phone number and the ability to connect Globally. Also a main thing for our customers is the safety issue, we can guarantee complete safety when using Mobilitypass´s services. Complete with our own VPN we can assure every member that his or her data is being treated with the full privacy package. MOBILITYPASS

Do you hate talking to machines?

One of my biggest pet peeves, is when I am in the middle of what I consider to be a crisis, and I call the tech support, and all I can get is a machine to talk to! I absolutely hate it! "If you are having this problem, press 1, for banking, press 2........... If you are about to poke your eye out from frustration, press 8..............." I simply hate it. Luckily, with MobilityPass, we have 24-7 customer support, and we are talking, a ”human being” support team that is dedicated to take care of our members personally .

So no matter where you are in the world, always know that we are here, awake, and ready to help you! MOBILITYPASS

Do you travel a lot, and have more than one phone?

Do you have to carry more than one phone because of how much you travel? Or perhaps, simply have separate sim cards that you switch out, depending on what country you are in? As luck would have it, I have a solution for you!

By using the MobilityPass global SIM system, you can receive incoming calls for free in more than 75 countries and make calls at local rates to more than 223 countries. Always the same number wherever you are.
The unique MobilityPass dual number Sim comes by default with a UK and US mobile number on the same Sim and the best of all is that you can add as many numbers as you like from 60 countries. Doing so you insure your global presence and offer a convenient and friendly low cost local call to your contacts.
When it comes to connecting to the Internet internationally, the 120 countries 3G MobilityPass coverage with the 100.000 wifi hotspots and the global dialup will connect any Laptop, Iphone, blackberry or smartphone worldwide securely and economically.
The no contract policy, average savings on yearly roaming call and/or data charges up to 50-80% makes MobilityPass the perfect communication partner.

Wi-Fi for Dummies: What You Need to Know

Are you confused by what exactly Wi-Fi is? Well you are not alone, this article posted on the MobilityPass website, helps to clear up some of the confusion............

Wi-Fi for Dummies: What You Need to Know

Wi-Fi is the general term used to describe any wireless Internet connection or network in a home or office. Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, enables a computer or laptop user to access the Internet from the comfort of their patio, deck, bedroom or kitchen without the need for expensive and extensive hardware and cabling. Wi-Fi applies to any device that can access the Internet wirelessly and in some cases, like that of PDAs and cellular phones; it is the only way for a device to access the Internet. Wi-Fi works by transmitting data in the form of microwave radio waves that can be interpreted by receivers attached to laptops, computers and internal antennas on cellular phones.

A wireless router or tower, in the case of PDAs and cell phones, transmits a radio signal that has data encoded on a harmonic of the radio wave. This simply means that the data is attached to the radio wave to be decoded by the receiver. Protocols and advanced mathematical calculations are used in the encoding and decoding process. This information is interpreted by an internal PCI/PCI-e card or USB card in the case of laptops or desktop computers as well. Cellular phones and PDAs use the same internal antenna for Internet access as for phone calls. After decoding the data is presented in the web browser, a PDF viewer or similar program can be used for accessing documents and data.

Being able to access data wirelessly frees users form being confined to a specific location, but in the case of a home wireless network there are a few limitations on the area of transmission. Most wireless routers have a range of about 150 feet indoors and 300 feet outdoors; however, walls and furniture will inhibit some of the strength of the signal as it passes through the house or building. A simple solution to the transmission strength and area is to have a completely wireless broadband Internet connection for the computers in the home. MobilityPass offers wireless broadband Internet service with absolutely no contracts. An end user just pays for the data transmissions they use and has nothing to do with the time of day they are online.

MobilityPass enables a user to access the Internet anywhere from over 160 countries worldwide. In addition they provide security, privacy and confidentiality to every costumer. The company also offers an international SIM card for mobile phone users as part of their package. The beauty of Wi-Fi is that it is far simpler and less expensive than wired networking and wired Internet access. More often than not the wireless cards come standard on computers and laptops with no need for the end user to set up or configure the card. Most users will need to set up an access account for their Internet connection or access the wireless router. Accessing the Internet is as simple as entering the username and password provided by the ISP when logging on to the Internet. A password and username are set by the end user when preparing the home router for use.

Are you always surprised by how much your bill is?

With our service, you will be happy to find that you have access to online centralized billing of all services, never mind the countries, allows you to control your daily usage and assure you that you only pay for what you use.
Corporate & small businesses can manage all international communication & internet access of mobile employees. No investment, instant activation, minimum overhead and knowledge required.
One single login worldwide for all your communication from 3G to Mobile call, Fax, etc., no more need to provide your id, credit card, or to maintain several accounts for each service or each country you go, putting at risk your security & privacy.

Check us out, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you find. MOBILITY PASS

What do you get someone who has everything?

How about the gift of communication? You could set your loved ones up with a communications service that they will be able to stay in contact with you around the world!

A Secure Mobile Office, your passport to international privacy and confidentiality

Value added service; MobilityPass does not only provide the access and communication it also takes care of your privacy and security providing a complete essential encrypted tool to be used when connecting from anywhere
As a simple example of the MobilityPass value added service: If you connect with a regular local provider in China, most of the time you will not be able to send your emails using your current email account. With MobilityPass there is no problem, you can use your email as usual and on the top of that your email will be locally protected by encryption. MobilityPass protects your emails, Sms, VOIP, Fax and Backup files the same way anywhere in the world.
MobilityPass has its own private VPN and all communications are encrypted therefore protecting you from any external local access .

Behind this incredible technology there is a "human being" support team that is dedicated to take care of our members personally .

Call support in 5 continents, available in 6 languages, and 24 hour online support.

So you see, no matter where your loved ones are, you can still be just a phone call away!

How much are you paying now?

How much are you paying for roaming while you are traveling? I'll bet it's almost as much, or more than your actual monthly bill. Isn't it time you stop paying for the extra time you need, and start using a service that moves with you?

Drop your roaming bill, save time and be more efficient in today's competitive world: The MobilityPass technology provides you with global Internet & communication services while traveling in 120 countries all in one account. And best of all: is there is no set up fee or a long term binding contract. Whether you are an individual or business traveler, you can now avoid being confronted with overpriced global roaming charges.

By using the MobilityPass global SIM system, you can receive incoming calls for free in more than 75 countries and make calls at local rates to more than 223 countries. Always the same number wherever you are.
The unique MobilityPass dual number Sim comes by default with a UK and US mobile number on the same Sim and the best of all is that you can add as many numbers as you like from 60 countries. Doing so, you insure your global presence and offer a convenient and friendly low cost local call to your contacts.
When it comes to connecting to the Internet internationally, the 120 countries 3G MobilityPass coverage with the 100.000 wifi hotspots and the global dialup will connect any Laptop, Iphone, blackberry or smartphone worldwide securely and economically.
The no contract policy, average savings on yearly roaming call and/or data charges up to 50-80% makes MobilityPass the perfect communication partner.

Looking for the right wireless company?

In today's busy world, it is very important to be connected, no matter where you are. With MobilityPass, you no longer have to worry about being connected, because we make sure that you can receive incoming calls for free in more than 75 countries and make calls at local rates to more than 223 countries. You will always have the same number wherever you are.

The unique MobilityPass dual number Sim comes by default with a UK and US mobile number on the same Sim and the best of all is that you can add as many numbers as you like from 60 countries. Doing so, you insure your global presence and offer a convenient and friendly low cost local call to your contacts.

As you can see, we've got you covered! Travel on!! MOBILITYPASS

Holiday travel?

Are you planning on doing a lot of holiday traveling during the upcoming season? Maybe you are going to be visiting several countries, and will need to be in contact in each. Will you choose to have a separate phone number and possibly even a separate phone for each country? Of course not! What you are going to need is the service provided by MOBILITYPASS.COM.
The MobilityPass technology provides you with global Internet & communication services while traveling in 120 countries all in one account. And best of all: is there is no set up fee or a long term binding contract. Whether you are an individual or business traveler, you can now avoid being confronted with overpriced global roaming charges.