Staying Connected

Leggo My Bandwidth!

AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, is complaining about those darn bottleneckers.  Representatives of AT&T claim that network usage of iPhone owners has been increasing.  The primary culprit – streaming.  Streaming is when a user plays media from the Internet instead of having the media stored locally on their device and playing it from there.  If you play songs from your iTunes library, that’s local audio.  If you play songs from Pandora.com, that’s streaming audio.

AT&T now cites streaming audio and video as the top bandwidth usage of their network.  Furthermore, they say not everyone is streaming, but some users stream a lot.  And because streaming takes up so much bandwidth, it appears that 3% of users are utilizing 40% of the bandwidth (Associated Press, 2009).

As a result, AT&T wants to change the way bandwidth is managed.  There has been speculation about intentional bandwidth choking, or charging based on the amount of bandwidth being used.  AT&T has not made any official statement about what they are going to do aside from saying that they will “give high-bandwidth users incentives to reduce or modify their usage.”

What AT&T does not state is exactly how much bandwidth is currently being used.  Granted, a small percentage of users are consuming a majority of the pipe, but if the overall bandwidth usage is only 60% of what is available, then it isn’t a problem.  That does not mean that we shouldn’t plan for the future, but hopefully AT&T considers all the unintended consequences before implementing a plan that wasn’t well thought out.  The worst thing AT&T could do is use this as an excuse to oppose Net Neutrality.  If you are not familiar with Net Neutraility, you can read my article on it here.

Until AT&T decides what to do, it will be business as usual.  But keep in mind, consumers have some control in the matter as well.  If you want to listen to music on your iPhone and you don’t have the songs stored locally, then by all means, listen to streaming audio…that’s what it’s there for.  But if you do have the songs or playlists stored locally, then play them locally instead of streaming.  It will take some of the burden off the network and maybe AT&T won’t have to do anything.  So help a brother out,  think of it as e-conserving.

Associated Press, . (2009). At&t: tighter control of cell data usage ahead. New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/09/technology/AP-US-TEC-ATT-Data-Usage.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Never have to replace your favorite Skynard tracks when you replace your Windows Mobile Phone.

Microsoft announced yesterday that its new My Phone service is available as a public beta. Windows Mobile 6.x users can download the software and test the service. The new Microsoft service (codenamed SkyBox during development) My Phone will allow users to automatically backup contacts, photos, videos, text messages, calendar items, and most other personal data. The service will backup data from their phone to a password-protected web account (which can hold up to 200mb). Your data can later be restored to your mobile phone or a new device when you upgrade.

The official announcement was made on the

My Phone Team blog; below is brief excerpt:

"We just completed upgrading the My Phone web portal. Over the next few weeks, we will be updating the companion software for your phone, at which time you will be prompted to download the updated software. The upgrade process is quick and easy - all your settings and data will be retained -- so we encourage you to upgrade when prompted to do so. Today's web site upgrade includes enabling 19 additional languages on the web portal, adding a Video Demo on the welcome page, providing Help content, and making a number of other improvements based on your feedback. With today's release, we're opening the beta to all users -- no more waiting list or promotional codes!"

The Next Target: Hacking Your Smartphones

More people are using Smartphones.  And, why not?  With the instant access to email and the tons of applications being created, business technology professionals are leaving their notebooks behind and grabbing their Smartphones.  Market researchers predict that the sales of Smartphones will exceed those of notebooks.  However, business professionals aren’t the only ones with their eyes on Smartphones.  Hackers are ‘licking their chops’ as this new market has unfolded.

Companies are using all types of software and other tools to protect their notebooks, but not so much when it comes to Smartphones and other mobile storage media.   This has created a huge exposure that hackers are more than happy to exploit.  The Google Android and iPhone from Apple have already experienced problems with their devices and sent out updates to address their vulnerabilities.  Consequently, the growing number of vulnerabilities has caused leading security manufacturers to release products to protect Smartphones.  These include Symantec’s Norton Smartphone Security, Trend Micro Mobile Security, McAfee VirusScan Mobile and F-Secure Mobile Security.

Here at ConnectWise, clients using our mobile services are able to login to our portal and manage their own mobile devices.  If their mobile device is infected, they can wipe their device, resend an activation code, and start all over.

 

Another Reason To Stay With Windows-Based Phones

At the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft announced that they were going to be releasing Windows Mobile 6.5 later this year.  Bells and whistles were mentioned, but by far, the feature that caught everyone’s attention was My Phone.  This is Microsoft’s backup service for phones.  If you have a Windows Mobile 6.5, you will be able to sync your contacts, appointments, text messages, documents, music, photos and videos to a password protected online account on Microsoft’s servers in the cloud.  Whenever needed, you can always restore what you’ve accidentally deleted.  And of course the nice part is that if you ever lose your phone or you decide to get a different model, then as long as the new phone you purchase is a Windows Mobile phone, you can download or restore all of your files, messages, contacts, etc. on to your new phone from the My Phone cloud.  That’s nice.

Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone for email?

This can be a very heated discussion.  Which do you get for your company?  There are several things to consider when looking at each one:

1.  Exchange Active Sync.  Do you have an Exchange server onsite?  If so, the Windows Mobile phone would be the cheapest, quickest route to go.  Exchange 2003 SP2 comes preconfigured with Active Sync.  All Windows Mobile based phones come with Active Sync.  No-brainer...  You'll get your email, calendar entries, and contacts through Active Sync.  If you need encryption security, an SSL certificate can easily be installed on your Exchange server for a fraction of the cost of Blackberry Enterprise Server.

2.  Blackberry Enterprise Server.  EXPENSIVE.  It cannot be installed on an Exchange Server and must be installed on a separate operating system.  The licenses for this application are not cheap.  The only technicians I know that would recommend this are simply biased towards Blackberry because they bought one when they first hit the market.  This is the only way to sync contacts and calendar entries to your device when not directly connected to your computer.

3.  Blackberry Internet Service.  This is provided by your mobile vendor and easy to set up.  It uses the settings for Outlook Web Access.  For example:  https://mail.mycompany.com/exchange.  You can only sync email with this service and cannot get contacts and calendar entries without directly connecting to your PC.  There is normally an additional monthly charge on your service plan from your vendor.

These are the 3 most used methods for getting email on your mobile phone.  You decide.  But keep in mind the easiest, least maintenance route is by using a Windows Mobile device with Exchange.  This is preferred by ConnectWise and is available if you host your email with ConnectWise.