My friends at the CTIA–otherwise known as the firm that represents the interests of the wireless operators in North America–have posted their 50 Wireless Quick Facts. These facts, at least on the face of them, sound impressive and even reasonable. Reasoning through a few of the facts along with the realities of how service is offered in the US and you get a somewhat different picture.

One of the things the CTIA likes to remind us regularly is how competitive our market is compared to the rest of the world. They tout the fact that among the 26 OECD countries, our market is the only one not classified as “highly concentrated.” It may be true that most of the country has a choice from at least 4 facilities-based providers–over 70% have access to 5 or more–but I don’t see how that paints an entirely accurate picture given the other facts.

Another thing the CTIA likes to bring up is how many choices we have as consumers. Choices in handsets (More than 630 different handsets and devices are manufactured by more than 32 companies for the U.S. market), Choices in operators (both facilities and non-facilities based), choices in rate plans (providers offer lots of rate plans and options, both pre and post paid).

The number of choices–when taken in aggregate–are overwhelming. No question. I can’t even keep track of all the choices there are so many. Unfortunately, when you start actually making choices in one area (say, a handset), that reduces the number of remaining choices substantially–to the point where it looks like you have no choice at all.

Let’s say I want an iPhone. Because the iPhone is only offered on AT&T, it may not be a feasible choice for you (e.g. because of coverage). It also locks you into a rateplan of at least $55 (before taxes and surcharges) and a two year contract. Even after you’re paid up, you can’t even unlock the handset and take it to T-Mobile.

Another example: let’s say I want Verizon because their network is the best. That means I can’t get the iPhone, though I could just as easily get a Droid X or similar device. It’s not an iPhone. This requires a rateplan of at least $70 before taxes and surcharges.

What if I want one of these high-end phones on any carrier and not have a dataplan? Not possible as I have to pay for a data plan of some sort (pricing varies depending on the phone), even if I have no intention of using the data plan. What if I want to use these high-end phones on prepaid? Sure, voice minutes are downright reasonable, but try and find reasonable prepaid data pricing that is tied to a mobile phone. And let’s not even talk about the fact it’s impossible to get any smartphone without a voice plan of some sort.

So yes, there are choices, but your choices can be summed up this way:

1. The phone you want on the network you want and a rateplan you can live with
2. The phone you want on the network you don’t and/or a too-expensive rateplan
3. A phone you don’t want on the network and/or rateplan you do want

How many people can honestly say they have the phone they want on the network they want and a rateplan they can live with? I’d be willing to bet: not many, though I’d be happy to be proven wrong. And yes, I know that CTIA says “92% of cell phone users are very or somewhat satisfied with their cell phone service overall,” but I doubt they asked about the combination of phone, network, and rate plan.

Honestly, when the vast majority of customers can get the handset they want on the network they want with a rateplan they can live with, only then will I believe there are choices. Until then, all we’ve got are compromises.

I recently chatted with a local reporter about my smartphone usage, which was featured in this Kitsap Sun piece on how Kitsap-area residents use their smartphones. Of course, we talked about a lot of things other than what got featured in this story.

For me, the smartphone has been an indispensable tool for years now. It has served as my camera, my GPS, my source of information and entertainment, and so much more–instantly, from almost anywhere. While the iPhone and Android devices are the “gold standard” today, there were plenty of other devices that predated these from Nokia that could serve a lot of the same functions, and did for me.

The Rise of the Smartphone

Despite smartphones having been around for a while now–heck I had a smartphone back in the early 2000s in the form of a Nokia Communicator 9290–I think I understood why smartphones finally started becoming popular (in the mainstream sense0 after I bought my iPhone 3GS last year. It’s the user experience. Apple improved it. Substantially.

Clearly when the iPhone launched, it could barely be called a Smartphone. It was an over glorified feature phone at best, but it had a pretty user interface. The iPhone didn’t really become a smartphone (in my mind, anyway) until you could install applications.

In addition to redefining the user experience for phones–smart or otherwise–Apple made normal people aware of what these phones could do. The other phone makers, including my employer at the time Nokia, were quick to point out that they, too, could do all these clever things along with all the other things the iPhone could not do.

This, along with the rise of Android, has catapulted the smartphone into the mainstream. Every day I go out into the real world, I see people using their smartphones for more than just making calls. Clearly not everyone is using it, yet, but enough that I don’t consider it uncommon anymore.

But At What Cost?

Over the years, I’ve been extremely lucky to have had access to a lot of great devices (at least when I worked at Nokia) and paid-for service to use with them. This makes using these devices a complete no-brainer–even if I have to buy the handset myself, which I did with the iPhone 3GS last year.

Meanwhile, my wife has wanted an iPhone for a while now. The problem is: it costs too much. Not for the handset itself, but for the recurring monthly cost. The cheapest plan we could get from AT&T is about $65, and that’s with the 200MB data plan (which I suspect even she will exceed). Our current mobile phone cost? About $10/mo thanks to T-Mobile prepaid.

Is there $55/mo of value in having an all-capable smartphone at her beck and call? Not really. There’s also a lot of extra hassle involved in keeping the battery charged on a daily basis, though for me it’s more like twice a day.

Despite the increased costs and additional overhead of having a smartphone, clearly more and more people are using them for a variety of reasons. It’s not uncommon for me to see people checking into Facebook (or some other social network) from their mobile phone.

What Are The Social Implications?

A comment on the Kitsap Sun article I appeared in raises an interesting question:

This just shows how sad we’ve become when people can’t survive or go through withdrawls when they lose or forget their phone. The constant need to twitter/facebook, myspace etc…. shows how narcisistic we’ve become as a society.

This speaks to the potential for this kind of connectivity being addictive–like crack. Of course, even before most people knew what smartphones were, mobile phones became essential items you left the house with. It’s especially important in today’s world where finding a payphone is increasingly more difficult. Thus it seems likely that as more people get smartphones, more people will be carrying them with them.

One of the qualities of being addicted to something is not being able to do without it. It certainly seemed that way for one person I observed trying to post a Facebook update in an airplane–while the plane was taxing for takeoff–but I think that’s more of an exception than the norm.

The more pertinent question for anyone carrying a smartphone is–when is using it in a social situation ok? When is it not? I think it depends on whether or not the people you are with are also smartphone users.

That said, I think everyone can–and should–put down the smartphone sometimes. There’s a whole world going on around you. If you’re looking at your smartphone all the time, you might miss something.

While I am sympathetic to people who would like some of the functionality that jailbreaking your iPhone provides–heck, I wouldn’t mind some of it myself–anyone who is calling upon Apple to “call off the dogs” on jailbreakers clearly doesn’t understand what they are asking Apple to do.

Jailbreaking is a process by which you can run programs on the iPhone that did not come from the App Store–apps that are not Steve Jobs approved, so to speak. Seems fairly straightforward, right? I mean, who is Apple to tell me what I can run on my phone, right?

The problem is: every single one of these jailbreaks is performed by exploiting a security vulnerability in the phone’s software. Every single one. The most recent example of this was the Jailbreak Me website that, by simply visiting a web page and sliding a slider, would trigger an exploit in your phone that would cause it to execute the necessary code to jailbreak the device.

Of course, if the jailbreakers can cause your phone to execute arbitrary code, so can a bad guy. And that’s the point behind Apple “stopping” the jailbreakers. It’s not really to stop them, it’s to stop the bad guys who can use the same vulnerabilities to do worse things.

Instead of being critical to Apple for stopping jailbreakers, how about we be critical to Apple for not allowing us to run software of our choosing on our own device, even if Apple doesn’t approve of it? That’s the real problem, and that’s what we should be focusing on.

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In my last post, I told people how to turn off your friend’s ability to check you in via Facebook Places, the new location-based feature that Facebook made available this week. Of course, in typical Facebook fashion, they left the default settings wide open, potentially exposing users to potential privacy violations! In practical terms, this means:

• When you check in some place via Facebook Places, your friends will see it in their Facebook timeline.
• Your checkins at this location are logged and can be seen by people checking in there later on.
• Friends can check you in places if they are at or near that place.
• Third party Facebook applications your friends might use can access places you (or your friends) check you into.

This begs the question: how can you (or your friend) check into a location on Facebook? Right now, checkins are limited to mobile phones with GPS and you must be physically near the location that you check into (or your friend must be). So I can’t, for instance, check my friends into someplace near their hometown unless I happen to be in their hometown near the location in question. Knowing Facebook, though, they could change this later on.

You probably don’t want your friends checking you in places. Or maybe you don’t want to use Facebook Places at all. Here how to adjust your settings for Facebook Places so you can stay as off the grid as you’d like. Note you can click on each image to get a full-size version.

First off, go to Account > Privacy Settings in Facebook:

From the next screen, choose Customize Settings:

First look under Things I Share:

If you want to opt out of Facebook Places. set Places I check In To to Only Me”and uncheck the Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in. Otherwise, adjust these settings as you see fit. If you want to prevent people from checking you into places (whether or not you want to opt out), look under Things Others Share. Set the Friends can check me into Places option to Disabled.

You may also need to go back and prevent third party applications from accessing your Facebook Places checkin data. Click on the Back to Privacy button on top and then click on the Edit your settings link under Applications and Websites.

Make sure to uncheck the Places I check in to option (and any other ones you want to uncheck) and click Save Changes.

If you have set these options to their most restrictive setting, congratulations, you have opted out of Facebook Places (as much as you can, anyway).

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Go to Account > Privacy Settings, click Customize Settings. Under “Things others share”, set “Friends can check me in to Places” to Disabled. Otherwise, your less scrupulous friends can check you into potentially embarrassing locations.

Optionally, under “Things I share”, adjust the “Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in” and “Places I check in to” settings accordingly.

Update: you should see my more complete guide to changing your Facebook Places settings.

Every time I see an article on Net Neutrality, I cringe. Mostly because it’s the same old arguments repeated over and over again. The pro-net neutrality types are concerned that some content will be preferred over others and that you’ll have to pay more money for less choices, less bandwidth, and less content choices as providers will have to “pay” for preferential treatment. There are plenty of pro net-neutrality pieces, including one in USA Today.

The anti-net neutrality types–mobile network operators–say “their network is different.” In order to provide the best quality of service for everyone, they say, they need to have the freedom to manage a scarce resource. Net neutrality rules would prevent that. Again, there are plenty of anti net-neutrality rhetoric out there, including a piece in USA Today written by Steve Largent, President of the CTIA (otherwise known as the lobbying firm for the US mobile network operators).

I agree with both sides. Unlike what the staunch pro-net neutrality advocates say, wireless is actually different. It’s not just a lack of speeds-and-feeds argument, either. The typical mobile phone network offers three very distinct services:

• Voice (including 911)
• SMS (short text messages)
• Data (also includes MMS or Picture messaging)

While you can have calls over the Internet with Skype or what have you, generally speaking people use their landline Internet for other purposes. There’s also a lot more bandwidth to work with, and the calls are all IP-based, so there is, quite frankly, less need to manage it.

In the wireless world, all three uses are effectively vying for use of the same spectrum and backhaul. In addition, you are combining both packet-based and circuit-switched communications, both of which operate fundamentally differently. Data connections can generally tolerate some temporary congestion issues. SMS, which was designed to operate on idle call control signaling paths, can be delayed. In-progress circuit-switched phone calls cannot.

When there is bandwidth contention in a cell site (i.e. more bandwidth is needed than is available), what happens? Does everyone on that cell site suffer? Who’s phone call or data connection will get dropped when a 911 call comes in, which are generally prioritized over other traffic for obvious reasons? Also, how do you handle when a cell site goes from needing lots of voice traffic to needing lots of data traffic and vice versa?

There’s really no easy answer to this question. Perhaps what is needed is a standard set of network management principles for mobile network operators that would be clearly described as part of the service provider’s terms of service. This way, everyone understands what is prioritized in what circumstances.

Regardless of how things are prioritized, though, at any given point, some amount of bandwidth at a cell site will be available for mobile data use. This bandwidth–however much there is–must be treated in a net neutral way. Without question. Wireless operators should not be granted a complete pass on net neutrality, therefore, but the regulations do need to take into account the multi-use nature of wireless networks.

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I’ve used my mobile phones under unusual circumstances, at least for me. Mostly I was in areas where connectivity was nearly non-existant (Northern Alabama) or insanely expensive (traveling outside the US). Based on that, I have some interesting observations about three different operating systems: Symbian (at least as it exists on the US version of the E71), Apple iOS 4, and Android 2.1 on a Nexus One.

The iPhone

When I am traveling abroad, my iPhone is little more than an iPod touch. Unfortunately, my iPhone is locked to AT&T and I can’t use another SIM card in it. Despite the recent announcements from the US copyright office that unlocking your iPhone is illegal, Apple or AT&T refuse to unlock my iPhone. Unless it comes from one of those sources, there is no hope that whatever unlock I use–free or otherwise–will stick in the long term. It’s not something I want to mess with.

When I was in Northern Alabama, data connectivity was EDGE–somewhat expected when you get north of Birmingham and into less populated areas. However, the connectivity speeds were even slower than I would expect for EDGE. In the cabin where we were staying I almost had no signal at all! Whenever I tried to use my iPhone at all, data was excessively slow and most of the applications, be they ones built into the iPhone or ones I purchased from the App Store, pretty much gave up. This pretty much meant that the phone was mostly an iPod Touch.

Android with Nexus One

While I was in Northern Alabama, I had a Nexus One with me also. It seemed from my limited testing that the Nexus One was getting somewhat better reception than the iPhone. It also seemed to be a bit persistent on data connectivity than the iPhone was.

The upshot of this, along with the fact that Android allows applications to run in the background, meant that I was able to actually use the Nexus One even in these limited data connectivity situations. Podcasts would happily download in the background whenever there was data connectivity (using Google Listen), Twidroyd would happily refresh my Twitter timeline in the background, and I could periodically peek at my email. It wasn’t always realtime, but it was good enough. I even updated a few apps while I was in the sticks.

Unfortunately, because of the weak signal in the area we were, the battery drained on the Nexus One even faster than normal. This meant the phone pretty much lived on a charger most of the time.

In terms of UI, Android 2.1 is close to the iPhone. Unfortunately, apps are (at least in the areas I care about) not as plentiful as on the iPhone. The lack of a Skype client is a problem. While it’s not something I use that often, when I do, I need it.

The Nokia E71 and Symbian

Unfortunately, for the reason I liked Android in Northern Alabama, I dared not ever configure GSM or 3G connectivity on the Nexus One when I was in Europe in June. I had data connectivity thanks to the various global SIM cards I was carrying, but data connectivity was not cheap. I couldn’t use the iPhone, of course, so I was left with my tried and true platform: Symbian on the Nokia E71.

The normal incessant prompt for each data connection that I hate on Symbian actually comes in handy when you don’t have an unlimited data plan. First of all, you know when the phone is connecting somewhere because it prompts you. Second, as long as you use careful with the apps you use, you can make far better use of a scarse, expensive resource

Unfortunately, being that Symbian (and Nokia) doesn’t have a lot of market share in the US, Symbian lacks a lot of the cool apps that are available on my iPhone or Symbian, though there is a Skype client for it. My favorite and most used app by far is Gravity on Symbian, which is as good or better than any similar app on the iPhone or Android. This one app takes care of all of my social media needs as it supports Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and Google Reader. It also supports status.net, though I don’t use that feature.

Conclusions

The reality is, a single phone does not currently meet all of my needs. The iPhone would likely be closest, but AT&T seems “unable” to unlock the iPhone–even though it is well documented that Apple has an official way to do this.

When I travel, I ultimately end up taking more than one phone in hopes that one of them will work optimally in the conditions I find myself in. While I’m sure the mobile phone manufacturers love this, I don’t. I really don’t want to carry so many phones with me. I just want to carry ONE phone. Is that too much to ask?

I have always been a huge fan of trackballs. In fact, on my first Mac back in the 1980s, I had a Kensington Expert Mouse with an 8-ball as the actual trackball. No, you couldn’t buy them that way, but yes, the trackballs were big enough you could put an actual billiard ball in my trackball. And I loved it.

When Adesso’s PR firm asked me if I wanted to review their new Optical Trackball, I jumped on it. Yes, it has been some time since I’ve owned a trackball. 15 years or so. Not quite sure why I never picked one up in the years since. Mostly inertia, I guess, as I never found one I liked quite as much as my old one.

The trackball I was back in the late 1980s, well before mice and trackballs went digital. They had analog rollers that needed cleaning often. The trackball was also pretty big, meaning it took up a lot of room.

By comparison, Adesso’s Optical Trackball is smaller and lighter in many respects. It’s also digital, which means very tiny rollers that don’t require constant cleaning. The ball itself is much smaller than my old Expert Mouse, and it’s really light and easy to move around. It’s also much more accurate–800dpi to be exact. Never quite sure what impact that actually has on my day to day use, but I did have to lower the mouse tracking speed settings on my MacBook Pro or it’d be too easy to overshoot things.

The challenge with any new trackball is learning where the optimal spot is for your hand. The left and right mouse buttons are a little higher up than I would have liked, at least at first. It didn’t take long for my hand to find the sweet spot where those buttons are easily reachable. The scroll wheel is in a good location for my thumb, allowing me to scroll pages up and down easily.

I am finding this trackball delightful to use. At $30 from Adesso (or less if you shop around), it’s also a pretty fair price! Certainly cheaper than my old Expert Mouse. Compatible with pretty much anything that supports a USB mouse (i.e. Mac, Windows and likely Linux). No drivers to install, either. It just works.

At least on my twitter stream, this Tomi Ahonen piece got a lot of play. So did the CTIA response from CEO Steve Largent. While they both raise excellent points, I think there’s a middle ground between Tomi’s “treating your customers as prisoners, and punishing them all the time” opinion and Steve’s “the U.S. consumer pays less yet uses more of their wireless products and services than any other in the world.” Let me, a better-than-average educated consumer, take a stab at this.

Paying for Incoming Calls

One of the reasons we pay for incoming calls to our mobile phones in the US is because of how our landline service evolved in the US. In most other countries, local calls are metered (i.e. charged per minute). The rate is relatively low, but it’s there. In the US, most everyone has flat rate local service. This means they can call anyone within approximately 12-15 miles as part of their line rental charge.

Because of this, when mobile phones came out in the US, the operators implemented a “mobile party pays” system. This means the person who was the mobile phone would pay to receive the call. For better or worse, this system has persisted ever since, though the FCC did investigate implementing a calling party pays system in the US at least for mobile phones, but ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons.

Due to that reality, the US mobile operators added more minutes to their pricing plans, and even included some “free” minutes, such as night/weekend minutes and mobile-to-mobile. The end result? Yes, it costs money to receive a call on your mobile in the US, but people generally don’t worry about it.

Mobile Phones and Service Providers

Tomi and Steve are comparing apples to oranges when it comes to the number of handsets available. Tomi lists the number of phones actually in operator stores–43. I know from talking with people at CTIA that their “over 630 handsets” number includes handsets you can purchase outside of the operator channel. They are both right, in a sense, but what matters to consumers is what they can purchase in stores–not what they can order online.

Again, we have a different dynamic in the US. Whereas in most other places, there is the one true GSM standard with a common set of frequencies, we have at least 3 standards (GSM, CDMA, and iDEN) with “unique” frequencies not in use elsewhere in the world. Only one manufacturer makes iDEN phones (Motorola) and the CDMA carriers are generally not open to allowing non-operator devices on their network.

GSM operates more or less like it does elsewhere in the world, but it’s a much smaller market (the last number I heard when I was at Nokia was 45% of the US market), and you have the difficulty of both T-Mobile and AT&T using different frequencies for 3G. Until the chipsets used by mobile phones can support both sets of US 3G frequencies, even if you can unlock a phone, you can’t fully use it on the other network, so what’s the point?

Long term, all the major US operators are moving to LTE–and yes, I believe Sprint will ultimately change their WiMax stuff over to LTE. The chipset manufacturers should be able to support all the different US frequencies (including the 700mhz spectrum not being used yet). Whether or not we’ll see unlocked handsets being openly sold like in other countries remains an open question, of course.

In short: the market appears to be–on it’s own–evolving towards a point where we can buy our handsets separate from service and actually be able to move between service plans without a mandatory handset upgrade as is the case today. That’s my prediction and, quite honestly, it can’t happen soon enough.

Roaming

Sorry, Tomi, I’m not sure where you got your info, but most Americans don’t pay roaming inside the US. I haven’t since I had my AT&T Digital One Rate plan back in 1999 (and yes, back then it was a revolutionary plan). You have to work pretty hard these days to find a plan where you are charged for roaming inside the US. Outside the US, of course, it’s a different story.

Text Messaging

This is one area where I agree wholeheartedly with Tomi on. There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to pay to receive an inbound SMS message. EVER. At least with a phone call, I can see who is calling and I can make the choice not to answer. With a text message, I have absolutely no control over who can send me a text message–and affect my bill.

Granted, US operators have provided buckets of text messages, and even provide unlimited text messaging as an option. However, the usurious per-message rates of $0.20–which I’ll point out once one operator decided to do, they all did–simply encourage customers to buy a bundle they may not want. It definitely drives up the bottom line of the operators.

And yes, given the obscene revenues on SMS, I should never EVER have an SMS outage.

Universal Coverage

While Steve did say that 92% of customers are satisfied with their wireless service, most everyone can name a deadspot (or two) in their daily travels–that one spot where no matter what time of day it is, you drop a call. I certainly had my share of those on Interstate 5 when I was driving to and from Northern California to see my dad.

The challenge with fixing that problem is not so simple. I don’t know what the regulations are in other countries, but in the US, every tower that goes up requires (almost) an act of congress to get put up. Local communities can and often do get in the way of bettering the wireless networks because they don’t want to look at ugly towers. Applications for new towers with city or county governments would often take months or even years to get approved.

The FCC, to their credit. finally put in a “shot clock” on these applications at the end of 2009. Even with the shot clock, we’re look at either 90 or 150 days to get a ruling on whether or not an operator is allowed to put a tower up. That doesn’t include actually getting the tower up and online. And no, that’s not the operators “incompetence,” Tomi, that’s just the government bureaucracy for you.

Phone Subsidies

Steve doesn’t even attempt to address this issue in his response to Tomi’s posting, which is that people who take a free/cheaper phone in exchange for a two year service agreement pay the same monthly rate as those who don’t. This is ridiculous.

T-Mobile actually gives you a discount for not taking a phone subsidy: up to $20/mo depending on the plan! They also allow you to finance your phone purchase separately over the course of 4 or 20 months. This way, you know exactly what you’re paying for your phone and you stop paying extra once your phone is paid off in full.

Largest Mobile Data Market

Steve mentions in his posting that “the U.S. also has the largest mobile data market and according to Nielsen Mobile, we have more mobile Internet users than any other country.” We certainly have a lot of users, but the reason for that is the prevalence of Unlimited Data plans–something AT&T has discontinued. Given their history with SMS, I expect the other operators will fall in lockstep within 6 months. Unlimited data will be a thing of the past and consumers will simply be paying more for less, or opting not to use it because now they need to watch and see how much data they use.

Conclusions

Things are not quite as bad at Tomi makes them out, but they certainly aren’t as rosy as the CTIA points out either. There is plenty of room for improvement. More towers, more quickly, and better prepaid data plans. That’s what I want to see different in the US mobile operator market. What about you?

My personal inbox is getting bigger than my work inbox, so it must be time for an Inbox Liquidation Post.

Truph0ne News: Having made use of Truphone Local Anywhere on my last trip abroad, I’m certainly interested in seeing it expand to other markets. They recently announced planned expansions of their “local markets” to The Netherlands and Spain (i.e. markets where you can get “local” numbers and pay “local” rates). Unfortunately, it’s not immediately, it’s “months.” On a more positive note, their iPhone app now supports iPhone OS 4.0 multitasking, so you can receive Truphone calls on your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 while running other apps.

iOS4 (or rather iPhone OS 4): I’ve actually been playing with iPhone OS 4.0 for the past few months. I had the “golden master” release on my phone for nearly two weeks now and I’ve been fairly happy with it. Unfortunately, to take advantage of the multitasking feature, your apps need to be updated to support it. Why Skype did not launch their updated app the day iOS 4 became generally available, I’ll never know. My prediction: we won’t see it until after my kids get back into school in September.

Tomi Ahonen Takes on the US Wireless Industry: I am reminded of what my tour guide in Jerusalem told us: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen gets a couple of facts wrong in this epic rant about the state of the US mobile phone industry, but most of what he has to say is spot on.

Unlimited Mobile Data in 25 Countries: I’ve gotten a couple of press releases from XCom Global about their offering where they will rent you either a wireless USB modem or a MiFi like device on a per-day basis. The pricing is pretty good, given what I paid for WiFi in Europe. Unfortunately, it only works if you’re traveling to one country. Wonder how they’d handle that situation?

MAXroam Goes Global: I had a press release in my inbox about MAXroam’s special plan for people going to the World Cup. I figured it might be a bit dated by now, so I went to see if it was still being offered. To my surprise, their website had changed and they have launched their “Global SIM” cards. This was the “Holy Grail” SIM card I used on my last International trip . You can buy reasonably-priced bundles of minutes and/or megabytes of data to use in 41 European countries. These SIMs “just work” without the usual trickery involved with global SIMs.

Positioning Without GPS or WLAN: I like the idea of not having to fire up the GPS or WLAN to get location. The mobile phone is already talking to multiple cell phone towers and it is possible to use the information from those towers to triangulate your location. It may not get as pinpoint as a GPS can, but it can certainly get close enough (does 7-12 meters work–indoors no less?) where a regular GPS can’t easily. I really hope GloPos and the technology they are building around this gets some traction because it sounds like the right idea for a lot of reasons.