“Why Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Calling is Evidence of a Lack of Wireless Competition”, suggests that there has been no competition in the wireless marketplace because AT&T is offering a new unlimited mobile-to-mobile plan. Mr. Weinberg claims that this new plan is evidence that there has not been competition in the market for some time.

The same people protesting a 10 watt cell tower don’t seem to be as alarmed by TV towers broadcasting at over a million watt in the exact same VHF and UHF frequencies. By effectively paralyzing new cell tower construction, people are exposed to much higher cell phone transmit levels which are millions of times stronger than the cell tower due to close proximity.

It appears that average wireless service nationwide have reached new highs rising above 16% as politicians look for something to maintain state and local coffers in a down economy.  This is more than twice as high as the average rate of other consumption taxes and states like Nebraska, Washington, and New York top the list [...]

Smartphones are already a large source of images posted on photo sharing sites like Flickr because of their ubiquitous mobile Internet connectivity. New image array cameras could make smartphones even more dominant, even against higher end compact point-n-shoot cameras.

Consumers Union is acting more like the professional whiner’s association. What next, refunds on new cars when next year’s model comes out? It’s also strange that they’re complaining about CDMA and GSM interoperability now when the entire industry is moving towards GSM.

Google’s Gmail service has added a two-factor authentication mode for users who want a little more security in their Gmail account.  Gmail users can now have Google send them an SMS text message with a numeric code that would be used as a secondary pin in addition to the normal Gmail account password.  Gmail users [...]

Via Fortune Magazine, IDC reports that Smartphone sales has exceeded Personal Computers (PCs) for the first time in Q4-2010. IDC also projects that Smartphones will expand its lead within the next few years with smartphone prices dropping rapidly and this has huge ramifications for several industries. What we think of as “computers” and “broadband” will have to undergo some radical revisions.

Harris takes questions about mobile apps privacy and provides answers based on the CDT privacy perspective. Some of the questions are ones that are important to ask and will likely be discussed in the tech community for some time.

Why all the “Net Neutrality” screaming about Verizon throttling 5% of the heaviest users? Even under the strictest Net Neutrality rules, a fair sharing throttling scheme is reasonable and legal. For wireless networks, it’s the only way to keep the network operational for everyone.

Can we simply get rid of the wireless carriers and just rely on ad-hoc radios? The spectrum commons people seem to think so and they argue why Wi-Fi innovation could be a model for the future of mobile networks, but the engineering and economic realities argue otherwise.