Details of Google’s new, more sensitive privacy policies will sound familiar to anyone who followed the public relations debacle surrounding reports that Apple “was tracking users.” Read the rest of this entry »
Unfiltered
Frank discussion with telecom's most experienced editors
Net Neutrality documentary ‘Barbershop Punk’ gets to the heart of the debate
“Barbershop Punk,” a David-and-Goliath style documentary about Net Neutrality and citizen’s rights to the Internet has been touring the film festival scene and on Friday night — a day after the Senate voted to strike down a move to block the FCC’s net neutrality rules (Unfiltered: Congress reportedly close to a Net Neutrality review) — was screened at a small Brooklyn theatre where the audience sat in threes on what had once been the “back row seating” of a great number of minivans. Read the rest of this entry »
Amazon gets Fire started a day early
The holiday shopping season can’t begin soon enough for struggling retailers, and it appears Amazon is also eager to get the ball rolling. According to reports, the Kindle Fire has begun shipping to some customers who pre-ordered, heading down the conveyor belt a day early. Read the rest of this entry »
Report: Verizon is one of nation’s biggest tax dodgers
The Communications Workers of America on Friday accused Verizon Communications of being one of the nation’s biggest tax dodgers for the last three years. The comment came in an advisory sent to the media to advise them of a conference call scheduled for tomorrow titled “Unpaid Bills: How Verizon Shortchanges Government Through Tax Dodging and Subsidies.” Read the rest of this entry »
Sprint, Verizon officially not a part of unlocked iPhone fun
Sprint was expected to ship its iPhone 4S unlocked, per the rumor mill (Unfiltered: Sprint Apple iPhone 4S unlocked. And why not?), but it appears that won’t be the case. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tax Man cometh — are telcos ready for the implications of payment processing?
As telcos increasingly get involved in the payments eco-system there will be regulations to observe and taxes to pay – unless you live in mobile cyberspace, perhaps.
Anthony Castellanos, a partner in KPMG’s tax practice brought some of these issues to the attention of Connected Planet. Castellanos believes that payment processing will be one of the next battlegrounds in the emerging payments eco-system. As telcos, device manufacturers, retailers and payments processors – primarily credit card companies – find their new places in the value chain, carrier billing has a huge advantage in terms of convenience for customers and revenues for telcos. In normal circumstances, device manufacturers would get nothing from a transaction via their device. Apple’s great coup, of course, was to design a device so cool that they could make sure that they not only got a piece of the action but a large, 30% piece. Read the rest of this entry »
Global Capacity sees strong growth in Ethernet ‘quotes’
When an exec from Global Capacity told Connected Planet earlier this year that the company was seeing a “dramatic increase” in Ethernet connections through its One Marketplace Access Exchange (CP: FiberLight deal helps validate Global Capacity business model),apparently he wasn’t kidding. The company announced that Ethernet quotes made through the exchange had doubled in volume this year and that Ethernet quotes are expected to account for 40% of quote demand in 2012, up from less than 1% at the beginning of this year. Read the rest of this entry »
HP’s Whitman needs a few more weeks to decide webOS fate
Hewlett-Packard’s plans for webOS — the platform that was the motivation behind its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm last April — are a bit more complicated than simply shutting down the division, as reports last month suggested (CP: Samsung tablet footing more tenuous than record smartphone sales). Read the rest of this entry »
Apple and Android each enjoyed some recent good news. A win-win?
Android and Apple each logged wins in recent days, with comScore announcing that Android is both the most-used mobile platform in America and the fastest-growing, and Consumer Reports giving its stamp of approval to the iPhone 4S — a distinction it withheld from the iPhone 4, you’ll remember, for connectivity issues stemming from its wonky antenna. Read the rest of this entry »
Dish reportedly considering OTT offering
Dish Network has been talking to several content providers about possibly licensing TV channels for a new pay TV service that would be delivered over the Internet, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are reporting. Read the rest of this entry »