Google "leveraging" with it's Services?

First a little update on the Global IT Club. We missed many of you guys at are last meeting on Wednesday. It's very rare for Professor Drake to give out extra credit and many of you guys missed out on the opportunity as well as an awesome speaker, EMU's new CIO Carl Powell. Dr. Powell was very entertaining and had a lot of advice from his years holding high level IT jobs. Well I know its a little late, but there is another opportunity for extra credit today, Friday March 26th at 2:30pm as we go to Menlo Innovations. Meet us on the 2nd floor of the COB.

Now for the main story. First off, I love the Android platform. Just the ability to be able to download almost any kind of app you can think of and its ease of use. I figured that has to be one of the reasons why every other day I hear of a new Android phone made by this or that phone maker and on this or that carrier. But now multiple sources are coming out with a new reason to why there seems to be an explosive rise of Android handsets.

Google has been enticing manufacturers with a cut of revenue from their other services such as Maps or Search. This is almost the complete opposite of how Apple is bringing the iPhone to AT&T. AT&T pays Apple $400 for every iPhone it sells. So in a way Apple is making money while Google is giving money away. But if you look at it another way, Google has the money to give and this could be a very good investment because people have many, many options of Android handsets to choose from.

Via ENGADGET

AT&T to invest $2B in mobile network

So I found this article on cnn.com and it made me laugh, hence the lol cat image. It's about how AT&T is going to invest an additional 2 billion dollars this year compared to last year in their mobile network. Upgrades include "...2,000 new cell sites and [an] upgrade [to] existing cell sites with three times more fiber links than it had in 2009." I think that it's about damn time, this should have been done a long time ago.

There are two concerns that I have with this though, who is going to pay for these upgrades? I'm really glad I'm not an AT&T customer, but I have friends who are and I think that the extra expenses will be passed on to them. We all know that they are not going to let these upgrades eat into their precious iPhone service income. The other thing I'm curious about, if they are going to pass on the expenses to their customers then how do they expect to remain competitive in a market that is full of companies looking to eat at their bottom line. I believe that Verizon and T-mobile are already eating away at them because of the Android platform and what seems to be, more fact than opinion, that they have a better network than AT&T.

To answer my own question it'll be with the iPad, which they mention in the article that they will be the exclusive carrier to provide 3G wireless service. I don't think they are going to see the huge sales that they saw with the iPhone because a lot of customers are already boasting that the iPad is just a larger version of the iPhone. The next couple of years will be extremely interesting in the mobile world, I think that things will get even more competitive then they already are and companies will have to maintain a good balance of being able to offer the best technology while keeping their prices lower then the competitor.

Iphone user are clogging up the network

This is an astonishing fact! 3 percent of smartphone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity. At&T wants its customers to use less wirless data because it's clogging the network. AT&T's head of wireless,said "the wireless operator is considering incentives to get consumers to reduce their data usage."

They plan to gives incentives to encourage phones users to use less data usage.

The video and the audio features on the phone are the culprits for the data usage becoming clogged. The iphone uses more data than the standard phone. It has gotten so bad at&t had a program application that allows users to report service problems. By AT&T having a 3G network , people were accessing more data and clogging up service.

At&t is looking into reducing phone plan serivices in order to free up the network. This isn't the answer to the issue. It's more like a band aid. AT&T is asking the Federal Communications Commission to find more spectrum to auction off that can be used for wireless data services. With the creation of the cell phone with applications, it will be extremely hard to find more space. Teen's are purchasing more phones thus getting more apps and clogging more space in the network. This reminds me when they were running low with IP address.