Mobile VoIP: No Profits, Big Problems

But in joining the OTT VoIP crowd, mobile operators are quickly discovering that being popular doesn’t make mobile VoIP profitable — far from it. Infonetics’ estimation of the revenue per mobile VoIP subscriber is a mere US$7.13 annually.

For the OTT VoIP crowd, that reality means looking for other ways to make money — possibly through ad insertions or by providing the voice segment of a mashup that pulls in other third-party apps for which people will pay, such as presence or gaming, or by charging extra for video-conference or multi-party video.

via Light Reading – Mobile VoIP: No Profits, Big Problems.

Verizon Taps AlcaLu & Ericsson for 4G Small Cells

Verizon is calling 4G small cells a “complement” to its existing LTE network and distributed antenna system deployments in hard-to-cover areas like building basements. The operator currently has 497 live LTE markets, which represents 95 percent coverage of its existing 3G footprint.

via Light Reading – Verizon Taps AlcaLu & Ericsson for 4G Small Cells.

Foursquare’s API Is A Pillar Of The Mobile App Ecosystem

Pick up your smartphone. Search through some of your favorite apps. Do you have Uber? Maybe Foodspotting? Surely you have Instagram. These apps, as well as a significant amount of the most popular apps in Apple’s App Store and Google Play, use Foursquare location data. For developers who have user actions or content tied to Foursquare venue IDs it would be difficult (if not impossible in some cases) to migrate their services off the Foursquare location database.

via Foursquare’s API Is A Pillar Of The Mobile App Ecosystem | TechCrunch.

‘Bezos Beep’ could replace the smartphone bump for mobile content sharing

For example, if the user of an e-reader or smartphone wants to share a book or picture with someone else, that person’s phone will transmit an audible signal that can be received and decoded by other devices within earshot. The decoded signal contains information (such as a URL) allowing the receiving device to download the shared content from a remote server.

via ‘Bezos Beep’ could replace the smartphone bump for mobile content sharing – GeekWire.

LOL.  Someone reinvented the 300 baud modem.

A Look At YourKarma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission

The YourKarma device creates a WiFi hotspot that moves around with you, and connects your WiFi connected devices to the Internet. This is just like the tethering option available on your pocket computer; but YourKarma sends data through Clearwire’s cellular network.

via A Look At YourKarma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission | TechCrunch.

AlcaLu Gets Smart With Mobile Data

The concept isn’t new, but the AlcaLu team believes its system, which includes its patent-pending Agile Rules Technology (ART), enables service providers to develop new mobile service offers more quickly, efficiently and accurately by giving them greater control over the process using a single system.

via Light Reading – AlcaLu Gets Smart With Mobile Data.

Not sure what this actually means.  What kind of “service” can a service provider provide for data other than blindly routing IP packets and counting them?  I’ll await a powerpoint presentation on this.

For superfast 4G LTE Advanced smartphone and tablet connections, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile plan new network tests, and rollouts use chipsets from Qualcomm and others

Current phones generally use only one antenna taking one stream of data at a time. LTE Advanced devices will also need more energy storage to do the necessary onboard computation. Without new breakthroughs in batteries or reductions in power consumption by other means (see “Efficiency Breakthrough Promises Smartphones that use Half the Power”), phones will simply get larger.

via For superfast 4G LTE Advanced smartphone and tablet connections, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile plan new network tests, and rollouts use chipsets from Qualcomm and others | MIT Technology Review.

Will ubiquitous mobile data bring down its cost for low bandwidth users?  We shall see.

Nokia’s MITM on HTTPS traffic from their phone

From the tests that were preformed, it is evident that Nokia is performing Man In The Middle Attack for sensitive HTTPS traffic originated from their phone and hence they do have access to clear text information which could include user credentials to various sites such as social networking, banking, credit card information or anything that is sensitive in nature.

via Nokia’s MITM on HTTPS traffic from their phone « Treasure Hunt.