Truly Unlimited Mobile Broadband – Is It Sustainable?

Mobile broadband isn’t just becoming more and more common among everyday wireless users; it’s also performing at continually higher speeds that are over ten times faster than initial 3G mobile broadband download rates. With faster speeds comes higher demand, as consumers are able to stream anything from online radio to full-length, high-definition movies.

Capping Speed and Data Use

In light of this, many wireless providers around the world have changed their stance on just how much data they should provide their users and charge them for. Whereas many 3G data plans have traditionally been unlimited, the transition to 4G is causing carriers to reexamine things like data and speed caps in order to maintain the integrity and functionality of their mobile networks.

The problem arises out of a conundrum that wireless service providers are facing in every country: an unlimited demand for data that has to be transmitted over a relatively limited range of wireless “spectrum.” That means that a network burdened with many high-usage unlimited mobile broadband customers will slow down, fail to perform at all, and suffer blows to its quality of service.

Example of Unlimited Broadband Issues

A clear example of how unlimited data plans are largely unsustainable is the AT&T network in the United States. Burdened with millions of iPhone and Android users with unlimited mobile broadband plans, its customers have experienced elevated rates of dropped calls, lost data connections, and the occasional loss of all mobile services altogether. The company reacted to this high amount of stress on their network by instituting data caps and service tiers across the board, a method that has been copied by competitors Verizon and T-Mobile, as well as emulated by other service providers around the world.

Creating a Sustainable Environment for Data Users

All of these sustainability problems were already beginning to affect mobile service providers and customers before the advent of 4G, or fourth generation, mobile data services. These services are even faster than their 3G predecessors, and they’ve opened the door to all kinds of new mobile applications. Customers can now video chat – either one-on-one or in conferencing groups – as well as stream movies, television shows, and high quality radio stations. At any given time, they can have multiple applications all using small amounts of data throughout the day.

These 4G data services have required mobile broadband providers to reconsider the way they issue data caps to their customers. While some have stuck with arbitrary data usage caps — limiting customers to a certain number of megabytes or gigabytes — others are experimenting with speed caps. Using this model, they give customers a higher monthly data cap but limit the download speed they will achieve with their smartphone or tablet device on the network.

This allows mobile service providers to save spectrum by providing maximum speeds only to a select group of high-end power users who are willing to pay extra for the faster service. Lower speeds can be divided up among many more users, making a better use of the highly limited wireless spectrum that companies around the world are trying to maximize.

Conclusions

Mobile broadband data usage is only projected to increase over the next decade as speeds become faster and applications become more apparent and readily available. Unlimited demand in a market constrained by wireless spectrum limitations and physical tower placement means that data and speed caps will be required — not just for profitability, but for the functionality and stability of the mobile broadband industry and infrastructure themselves. These caps, however, will ultimately benefit consumers by offering consistency of service and an all-around better customer experience.

Author: Blake Sanders is a tech writer at UK broadband comparison site Broadband Expert where he discusses unlimited mobile broadband, wireless internet, and the latest industry news and information.

Private Entities Can Now Register their Own Domain Extensions

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a proposal at a meeting in Singapore which will allow for the creation of new website domain suffixes by private companies. This will see large companies replacing the .com, .net or .org extensions with their own brand. The vote comes amidst fears that opening new suffixes could cause some confusion.

Many people have stated that the new domain extension could open the route for cyber squatters stealing the extensions of companies, however, registering a new extension will not be as easy as registering a .com or .net. The new process will require much attention and investment.

According to information, by simply launching an application, a user will need to pay a fee of $185,000. If approved, an annual fee of $25,000 will apply to the extension.

Back in 2004 ICANN released a set of new domain names, which included .eco, .programming, .canon and more. Registering a domain on these extensions often proved to be expensive and difficult under certain circumstances.

It will be interesting to see how many companies from around the world would be interested in owning their own branded domain extensions.

Baidu Search Engine Launches English Blog

Chinese search engine giant, Baidu has launched an English blog on its website, according to a statement by the company. This comes as the company looks to expand its services into overseas markets.

Baidu said that it intends to introduce and explain to foreign users the hot topics and trends on the Chinese Internet. China currently has the most Internet users, with a number exceeding 450 million people visiting the Web.

According to Baidu, the blog will also promote its brand and is not intended to be commercially related. Baidu still remain an unknown brand to many overseas Internet users.

The company also said the blog is “really out of a desire to give people who are interested in China but who don’t necessarily read Chinese an opportunity to understand what Chinese Internet users are doing”.

Baidu said that users can see the intentions of Chinese people are by what trends are on Baidu.

Baidu currently caters for more than 70% of the Chinese search engine market, followed by Google with a 20% search engine market share.

Baidu is also listed on Nasdaq and has offered a Japanese-language search engine for two years.

Founder of Baidu, Robin Li, said he wants Baidu to become a household name in more than half of the world’s countries within the next 10 years.

Man Makes Living Suing Email Spammers

As with many of us, Daniel Balsam hates spam. In fact, he hates it so much that he has quit his job just to take actions against spammers, by suing them.
Eight years ago, while he was working as a marketer, he started a website, danhatesspam.com. He then quit his job and went to law school. Ever since Daniel has made a good living suing companies flooding his Inbox with unwanted e-mails.

According to Daniel, he has racked up well in excess of $1 million in court judgments and lawsuit settlements with companies accused of distributing illegal spam.

Bennet Kelley, a defense lawyer who became Daniel’s arch nemesis over the years is of the opinion that he really seems to be trying to twist things for a buck. Kelley, in fact created a website with a similar name, danhatespam.com that was critical of Daniel’s tactics. Kelley later let the website expire.

According to Daniel, what started off as a hobby later turned into a lucrative career. Spam is what triggered him to go to law school, Daniel added.

Some companies Daniel took on in court include Various Inc., Trancos Inc., the Stockton Asparagus Festival, Tagged.com, Valueclick Inc., and more.

Yahoo Losing more Ground

Yahoo! appears to be in trouble, big trouble at it.

Information was received that Yahoo! is in the process of closing down at least a number of eight of their popular services, amongst which Delicious, an online bookmarking service used by a large number of technology experts.

The news has been released only three days after the company announced that it plans to sack around 560 employees.

The news of the closure of Delicious has been met with protest and outrage from the technology community. Delicious was purchase by Yahoo! five years ago.

According to a Yahoo! spokesperson, part of the organizational streamlining involves cutting investments in underperforming or off-strategy products. The company intends to focus more on their core strengths and fund new innovations in the New Year.

Other services within Yahoo! on which the axe will fall include AltaVista, Yahoo! Buzz, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Traffic APIs and more, according to an unnamed source.

Yahoo! refused to comment on the allegations, but did say that the only service they can confirm will be closed is Yahoo! Buzz. They, however, fell short from denying the allegations, which makes us wonder.

Yahoo! also confirmed that the job cuts are more than just cost savings. The company intends to invest more in products and technology which can assist the company in becoming more successful.

Advertising Trends – Moving From Off-Line Newspapers to the Web

For years now those in the know have been turning away from print publishing and looking to the internet for their advertising campaigns, and meanwhile many webmasters have realized the value of this burgeoning market and been publishing adverts on their websites thereby allowing them greater control and lower overheads. It’s only recently however that the rest of the world has caught up and the realm of digital advertising has actually overtaken print media with reports for 2009 showing that ad budgets were actually higher for forms of online advertising than they were for adverts appearing in print media.

In general ad budgets throughout 2009 were smaller than in previous years, which was largely an effect of the recession and which might have contributed in some way to these statistics. However this still reflects a growing trend where more and more advertisers have been heading online for their campaigns, customers and clients due to the incredible audience this allows them to reach as well as the real time metadata regarding the adverts themselves.

Of course the king of online advertising remains Google with even politicians using Google Adwords to target their campaigns towards specific searches (particularly searches for the opposition’s parties interestingly).

However the constantly developing and changing nature of the web is also offering up many other opportunities for big publishers. Many for example use banner advertising on big sites such as YouTube and Myspace, while other social media sites have opened up other avenues. For example 2009 saw the birth of advertising on Twitter through ‘sponsored’ tweets. Smart phones such as the iPhone meanwhile allow for digital advertising through applications. Predictions state that these new opportunities will lead to the dwindling of ad networks (such as Google) who are expected to have to up their game this year to stay on top.

Either way though with the continued growth of the internet and the ominous mutterings of foreboding surrounding the print publishing industry, this digital advertising looks set to continue growing as it takes on new forms over the next year.

One item worth noting is the forthcoming release of Apple’s new iPad which promises to make eBooks accessible and practical. Already print publishers are looking for ways to deliver their products digitally so that magazines can be read in a truly interactive fashion. It may be the case that over the coming years print media becomes almost obsolete.

The sooner advertisers jump ship the better it will be for their businesses. Meanwhile the web publishers need to be waiting for them and developing new ways to offer them truly interactive and eye catching digital adverts.

Internationalized Domain Names: Forecasts and Trends

As you should know by now, an internationalized domain name (also known as an IDN or a international domain name) is a domain name that includes or is made up entirely of local language characters. For example then this domain name might include characters not in ASCII script such as Chinese or Arabic symbols. IDNs then provide a truly international internet where publishers can reach countries using symbols other than Latin in their own language allowing those with IDNs to reach large new audiences in China and the Middle East.

As IDNs haven’t been around for as long as ASCII-based domains , this means there are many more of them still available for domainers looking for catchy domains. It also drastically increases the combinations of domain names available. As countries and territories have to apply for IDNs this also means that there are many top level domains that have yet to allow IDNs which will be great potential future markets for domainers.

Recent IDN sales include Thai ‘เกมส์.net’ (games) which sold for $3,765 on 04/03/2010, ‘Schwerhörigkeit.ch’ (deafness) in German for $10,125 and the Chinese ‘手机铃声.com’ meaning ‘Ringtones’ which sold for $2,803. As you can see then, IDNs are a highly lucrative market in 2010.

So what trends are emerging in this are and which IDNs should you look out for? In general trends are moving towards Chinese IDNs as the Mandarin ‘Chinese language’ is currently responsible for around 30% of all online content – a trend that looks set to continue to grow as China increases in prominence on the world stage. In 2009 China’s .cn was the most popular of all country code TLDs, demonstrating what an important market this is (this was followed by the German .de).

Looking ahead, African domains are also a key area of interest for the coming years. With over 2,000 indigenous languages, many of which with over a million speakers, this is a vast potential market. Meanwhile the attempts of Virgin and The One Laptop Per Child Scheme charity aiming to get these countries online mean that very soon the internet could see a similar influx of African speaking viewers. While some of these use the Roman alphabet others use Amharic, Tigrinya – Ethiopic and other scripts. Effort is being made to bring IDNs to these TLDs by the Africa Top Level Domains association among others (interestingly it was an African, Prof Subbiah, who originally coined the term ‘IDN’). Until then TLDs supporting Portuguese and French characters (which many African countries use) might be a good way to prepare for the influx.

In the coming years more and more countries will be registering and applying for new ccTLDs to support IDNs. Recently for example Bulgaria has registered the cryliic domain ‘.бг’ (BG). As this continues the demographic of the internet will become more and more international, and domainers and webmasters alike will need to be ready if they’re to make the most of that.

Facebook Is Still In The Thoughts of Marketers

It’s always great when the mainstream media realizes (again) that something is big—like social media marketing or Facebook. The Wall Street Journal posted an article Friday on the popularity of social media marketing on Facebook. Okay, so really they were reporting about the Social Data Summit in New York Thursday.

At the summit, Facebook’s social graph was the brass ring—everybody wanted a way to tap into the friend data and relationships in Facebook, but most users aren’t happy with sharing that information. Beacon, Facebook’s efforts to leverage friendship data and connections for people (and selected advertisers), will officially come to an end once a court approves a class-action settlement.

Continue to read on WebProNews – Marketing

Mobile Advertising Guidelines Get an Update

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released a new version of its Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines, which serve as a source of global formats, guidelines, and best practices for the implementation of mobile advertising campaigns.

“The updated guidelines reinforce the MMA’s longstanding pledge to provide its members and the wider industry with reliable standards and increased awareness of mobile advertising globally. MMA’s Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines will serve to simplify the deployment of mobile advertising campaigns whilst increasing their effectiveness,” said Mike Wehrs, MMA President and CEO.

Continue to read on WebProNews – Marketing

Android Demands as Much Marketing Attention as iPhone

At Search Marketing Expo East in New York, where WebProNews is on location, Michael Martin of Internet Marketing Inc. delivered a presentation about the growing Android market. He spoke about how Android is becoming an increasingly important mobile platform for marketers to keep in mind. In other words, it’s not just about the iPhone.

Android is open and freely distributed, and it can be programmed in Java as well as C/C++ components. It can be coded on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can run multiple apps and have onscreen widgets. It can run Flash videos on updated versions, and it has forthcoming text to speech recognition with translations.

Continue to read on WebProNews – Marketing

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