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Throttling Smartphone Users

AT&T has formally announced what many high-use smartphone users already knew: throttling is here to stay. AT&T users on a 3G plan will be throttled at 3GB, while 4G LTE users will see throttling at 5GB. The 3G/4G differentiation is a key point, as 4G users will blow through their data far quicker than 3G (the bigger pipe means better quality video, but also greater data use – and better efficiencies for AT&T).

AT&T Shakes Up Data Plans, But At What Cost?

In the first significant shake-up of the mobile data market, AT&T has revamped data plan offers for smartphones and tablets. The general impact of the changes (to be launched on Sunday) is to increase the general bucket sizes that customers must purchase (with a price increase to go along with it).

 

The current smartphone data plans are 200MB ($15), 2GB ($25), and 4GB ($45), the latter including hotspot tethering. The new plans raise the stakes in terms of data and price, with 300MB ($20), 3GB ($30) and 5GB ($50), again, with the latter plan including tethering.

HSN Showcases Digital And Women In Tech Success Story

Beyond all of the “cloud chatter” and plethora of device announcements at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), HSN talked-up their “boundary less” retail strategy; digital efforts (driven in part by mobile gaming veteran and their EVP of Digital, Jill Braff); and offered sell-through proof points driven by their largely female audience (85 percent).

Dish Overcomes The Broadband Stumbling Block—To A Point At CES 2012

In announcing a new name, new direction, and new marketing strategy that puts more emphasis on services and content and less on low price, Dish did a remarkably good job of obscuring a salient point; the digital divide still exists, and because it does a less-than-enthralling broadband offer looks like it should have legs.

Dish used CES to promote a whole-home Kangaroo-themed client-server set-top combo (Hopper and its sidekick Joey) with tuners that can handle 6 HD recordings at once and a hard drive deep enough to swallow 2,000 hours of HD programming in a single gulp.

CES 2012: Cloud-Made Handcuffs

In the past, carriers and Internet service providers had multiple tools to ensure that I remained a loyal citizen of their domain. In the early days of the Internet, the easiest way to get an email address was from my service provider, and once I began to use and distribute this email address, the thought of moving to an alternative broadband provider was delayed by the thought of how painful it would be to switch my email address.

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