Cell Adictus

SPE Roundtable Podcast 04: CTIA Wireless 2009 Recap!

I don't think Dieter and I are quite fully recovered from our CTIA Wireless experience in Vegas last week, but thankfully podcasting isn't that difficult!! To debrief from the events, the Smartphone Experts crew got on the Skype-waves last night and recorded up a Special Edition CTIA Wireless 2009 show. There's a little something for everyone in this episode. Take a listen. We hope you enjoy. Show notes after the jump!

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CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. SPE Roundtable Podcast 04: CTIA Wireless 2009 Recap!

iPhone, Skype, and Dumb Pipes: The Future of Cell Carriers

Macworld has a great article up today about the arrival of Skype on the iPhone (and soon the BlackBerry) and what the widespread availability of VoIP (voice over IP) clients — which eschew the traditional phone lines to send talk via data instead — means for cell providers like AT&T, Verizon, O2, Rogers, etc. who’ve made tons of traditional money billing us all by the minute.

One common future seen for cell companies is that of “dumb pipes” — like DSL or cable companies that provide bandwidth but few if any premium services. Verizon shows how far (and foolish) they’ll go to avoid that fate:

“We have moved away from unlimited data plans,” Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdam said at a question-and-answer session at CTIA. “The excitement of an over-the-top application like (Skype) in an unlimited environment means one thing to a customer. In an environment where you’re paying for every byte, that means something totally different.”

I wonder, tongue only partially in cheek, if McAdam used to work for the music or movie industry? Our own editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, freshly returned from CTIA shared his thoughts:

Dear Verizon: You always become what you most fear. To wit: dumb pipes. Love, the inevitable.

Sounds good to me. Let’s make a deal, carriers. You supply the bandwidth, keep the bits open and neutral, and I’ll pay for the service same way I pay for my electricity and plug in whatever gadget I want. Deal?

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, the iPhone’s US carrier, seems almost on a page with that already:

“The way the world is going, it’ll just be, ‘How much data do you want to buy?’ and you do whatever you want over that data.”

Check out the complete article at Macworld for more, and let us know what future you want for your data below…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone, Skype, and Dumb Pipes: The Future of Cell Carriers

Next Gen iPhone: Apple Gobbling up NAND Flash Memory

DigiTimes (via Engadget) is reporting that Apple is once again draining the world dry of NAND Flash memory chips ahead of an anticipated summer iPhone hardware refresh.

The iPhone 3G has one NAND Flash memory slot, currently maxing out at the 16GB density. So, if Apple is planning to take it to 32GB, higher density chips will of course be required. Will supply and pricing allow that by the summer? If it does, it also means the dual-slotted iPod touch could hit a whopping 64GB by its next refresh cycle in the fall.

Anyone out there itching to load that much data on a multi-touch device?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Next Gen iPhone: Apple Gobbling up NAND Flash Memory

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