Verizon
drag2share: Why The $130 Billion Deal For Verizon Wireless Is Key To Verizon’s Fight For The Future Of Mobile And Media
Data revenues: Another way to drive revenue growth is to encourage customers to consume large amounts of wireless data, by playing games and watching videos, and paying for it on their mobile bills. Telecommunications’ future will be won by the company that can foster a new culture of heavy data consumption and build the best 4G infrastructure to support it. It’s an expensive, risky game. Only the largest, most disciplined companies will win it.Glenn Greenwald’s Article On NSA Snooping Actually Snooped On Everyone Who Clicked
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-greenwald-snooped-on-everyone-2013-8
An article by The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald on XKEYSCORE actually gathered the browsing habits of everyone who clicked and wasn’t protected (by private, encrypted, and/or proxy browsing), reports Bob Cesca of the Daily Banter.
Using a free web application called Ghostery — which tells the user about embedded trackers — Cesca found that The Guardian embedded 27 tracking bugs inside Greenwald’s article.
The bugs track browsing metadata, a lot like what Greenwald exposed on June 6 with his article on the National Security Agency and Verizon.
Ostensibly, private companies track browsing metadata on the web in order to help advertise and market products to users online.
(Though Nokia showed last year that there’s a thin, spooky line between advertising and surveillance — something alumni of Israel’s Unit 8200 also know all too well.)
Which begs the question: Why is it OK for private companies to snoop in the name of capitalism, but not for the government to do so in the name of security?
Verizon smartphone revenue up in Q2 2013, half of all 7.5 million activations were iPhones (updated)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/18/verizon-quarterly-report-q2-2013/
Verizon’s latest quarterly report reveals a carrier chugging along nicely, thank you very much. Total revenue (including wireless and wireline) is up slightly to $29.8 billion, while wireless service revenue on its own grew by 8.3 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Nearly a million (941,000) new retail postpaid customers joined the VZW brigade, some of whom may have been drawn to the carrier’s expanding LTE service, which is now available to 301 million Americans, as well as to new handsets like the Nokia Lumia 928 and possibly even the BlackBerry Q10 (or maybe not). In any case, those high-margin subscribers helped to increase profit by 14 percent — so long as you’re the kind of person who’s content to be guided by “non-GAAP consolidated adjusted earnings per share.” There’s also no sign of the pension-related issues that affected the company last quarter, which leaves this carrier high and dry, regardless of how smartphone saturation may be affecting others along the food chain.
Update: In its earnings call, Verizon added that 59 percent of traffic on its network is on 4G LTE, and 52 percent of its smartphone activations (around 3.8 million device activations) were iPhones.
Source: Verizon (PDF download)
Google Fiber is ‘the most consistently fast ISP in America’
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/11/netflix-isp-ranking-google-fiber-streaming/
Like there was ever any doubt, right? Netflix — which serves up over one billion hours of video streaming to some 30 million members per month — owes it to itself to keep track of which ISPs are killing it, and which simply need to be killed. Now, the outfit’s finally ready to begin publishing its findings, ranking America’s major Internet Service Providers based upon “actual performance across all Netflix streams.” The shocker to end all shockers? “Google Fiber is now the most consistently fast ISP in America, according to actual user experience on Netflix streams in November.”
Of note, however, Verizon’s fiber-based FiOS offering came mighty close. Of course, Google’s Fiber isn’t available outside of the Kansas Cities region, while Verizon has (loosely) confirmed that it has no plans to expand the existing FiOS infrastructure beyond the 13 states that were lucky enough to get it. Broadly, cable shows better than DSL, while AT&T’s U-verse — dubbed a “hybrid fiber-DSL service” — ranked quite poorly compared to both Google Fiber and FiOS. Head on over to the source for the full rundown, and feel free to begin the relocation process to Kansas. Good internet, good barbecue, Collin Klein — what’s not to love?
Source: Netflix
1 in 3 Online Consumers Want to Interact With TV Shows Via a Second Screen
Verizon has released new data from its “Borderless Lifestyle Survey,” exploring consumer attitudes to an always-connected lifestyle. Of the many findings, attitudes towards real-time interaction with TV shows prove particularly interesting, as emerging technologies provide another potential activity for so-called “second screeners.” Specifically, 35% of respondents indicated an interest in real-time games and challenges with […]
Verizon Wants to Watch and Listen to Your Life While You Watch TV
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5965843/verizon-wants-to-watch-and-listen-to-your-life-while-you-watch-tv
Last week, Verizon filed a patent for a set-top box that detects what you’re doing while you watch TV, and serves you advertising accordingly. Ew, weird, companies watching what I do while I consume content. Big brother! Chill, son.
“Methods and Systems for Presenting an Advertisement Associated with an Ambient Action of a User” describes a system by which a device captures information about what you’re doing while enjoying TV, movies, etc, and uses it to target advertising to you. Using a “a depth sensor, an image sensor, an audio sensor, and a thermal sensor” the system would be able to detect whether you’re fiddling with your phone, interacting with another person, as well as performing any of:
eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument.
Now, this might seem kind of creepy, but there’s a few important points to remember before you freak out and sound the privacy alarm. First, companies like Facebook, Google, etc, are capturing all sorts of information about what you’re consuming online and using it to serve you targeted advertising. Second, any system like this would almost certainly require you to opt-in before peeking into your life. Besides, how many of these patents actually turn into products, anyway? [USPTO via Ars Technica via Betabeat]
Image by Tischenko Irina/Shutterstock
HTC 8X for Verizon shipping unlocked, works with AT&T and T-Mobile SIMs
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/htc-8x-verizon-unlocked/
Consider it a trend: Verizon’s wireless charging 8X variant will work out of the box with U.S. GSM networks. According to Windows Phone Central, users have reported success swapping in AT&T and T-Mobile micro-SIMs, indicating that the devices are shipping unlocked. And it’s not just hearsay either, as we’ve confirmed on our own review unit that this does indeed work. In fact, with the network openness afforded by recent additions like the Droid DNA and iPhone 5, this is quickly becoming more rule for the carrier than exception. Certainly we can all agree that it’s a welcome break from Big Red’s stodgy past.
Google Play carrier billing goes live for impulse buyers on Verizon
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/31/google-play-carrier-billing-goes-live-for-verizon-impulse-buyers/
Google gave the broadest of targets when it said Google Play carrier billing would reach Verizon in the “coming weeks” — those last two words are often hints from companies that we shouldn’t hold our breath. Call us surprised, then, when Google quietly takes the option live two weeks later. At least one Droid-Life reader has discovered that it’s now possible to load as many as $25 in purchases per month on an existing Big Red smartphone bill and pay through just the one channel. The move puts all four major US carriers on the same page, and gives Verizon subscribers an incentive to splurge on apps and movies for that new Droid RAZR HD… so long as they remember to deal with the financial fallout afterwards.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Google, Verizon
Google Play carrier billing goes live for impulse buyers on Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 3! 1 Oct 20 12 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5948408/the-iphone-5-really-costs-1800
Though you may think the iPhone 5 only costs $200, you’re forgetting about the contract that’s tied to it. Yep, that fatty two-year, soul-selling new contract you get when you buy a new iPhone. That’s the real cost of the iPhone 5 and it can get quite expensive.
And to be completely fair, $1800 is actually a low-end estimate. That just so happens to include the cheapest plan on AT&T, which gives you no free text messages and a laughable amount of data. If we’re being honest, you’re going to need a lot more. Anywhere from $200 more if you’re on AT&T to a couple thousand dollars more if you’re on Verizon. Over the lifetime of the iPhone 5’s contract, you’ll spend anywhere from $1800 to $4800. That’s a good chunk of change.
Marketing firm Avalaunch put together all the data and made the snazzy infographic below. It’s a pretty solid estimate of how much the iPhone 5 will cost you over two years (to be fair, most smartphones cost around this price too).
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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