3G Archives page 2 of 2 – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

4G: Is It Really A Standard If No One Cares?

November 4, 2010 By Stephen 2 Comments

Americans have terrible mobile broadband network infrastructure, yet our service providers make it sound awesome. Now that 2 of our 4 national wireless providers now offer 4G service, one might conclude that the United States is awash in mobile broadband. But neither of these supposed 4G offerings is anywhere near fast enough to meet the ITU standards for 4G, and even our 3G networks woefully under-perform vendor promises. With no teeth in “truth-in-advertising” laws, it begs the question of what these supposed standards really mean.

Filed Under: Apple, Computer History, Everything, Personal Tagged With: 3G, 4G, AT&T, Cingular, Clear, ClearWire, EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, ITU, LTE, mobile phones, Sprint, standards, T-Mobile, Verizon, WiMAX

How Apple Will Get Their Mobile Phone Mojo Back From AT&T

August 3, 2010 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Apple has taken a beating from the “in crowd” lately. In the mind of these technophiles, they’ve gone from hip to evil in just a few years. While Apple is lambasted for turning the iPhone “walled garden” into a jail, Google is applauded as the new bastion of openness and geek friendliness. This criticism focuses on the iPhone, especially with regard to the despised American mobile carrier, AT&T. But Apple is a long way from the evil empire it’s accused of being, and is showing signs that it will soon retake its mojo from the carriers.

Filed Under: Apple, Computer History, Everything, Personal Tagged With: 3G, Android, Apple, AT&T, BlackBerry, FaceTime, Google, Google Voice, iPhone, iPhone 4, Magic Jack, MMS, mobile phones, Motorola, Nokia, RIM, SIP, Skype, Sprint, tethering, Verizon, wireless data

The End of Unlimited Data – Part 2: Who’s Being Subsidized?

June 3, 2010 By Stephen 4 Comments

Expensive unlimited data plans enrich the carriers and benefit few customers

The end of unlimited data is nigh! As I discussed in yesterday’s post, AT&T’s announcement of limited data packages at lower prices has everyone up in arms. But the switch to a-la carte data is a positive move for everyone involved, including AT&T, the customer, and the US wireless phone industry as a whole.

Filed Under: Apple, Everything, Personal Tagged With: 3G, Apple, AT&T, competition, Cradlepoint, data plans, iPad, iPhone, iTunes Live, MLB, mobile phones, Pandora, Planet Money, smartphones, Spotify, streaming, TheAppleBlog, unlimited, Verizon, wireless data

How To Stream Any Size Podcast to an iPhone, Even Over 3G or EDGE!

April 23, 2010 By Stephen 3 Comments

Ever see that screen? You want to download a podcast from the iTunes Store on the iPhone, but you can’t. It’s over 20 MB, so it’s off limits. Surprise! There is a way to stream any podcast of any size to the iPhone, even over EDGE, with no hacking required!

Filed Under: Apple, Personal Tagged With: 3G, AT&T, EDGE, iPhone, iPhone OS 4.0, iTunes, podcast, QuickTime, streaming, This American Life

Ten-Year Trend: Mobility

March 11, 2009 By Stephen 2 Comments

IT infrastructure is following consumer technology out of the glass house and into the wide world

What is the megatrend of this decade? I suggest that we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.

Filed Under: Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 3G, 802.11a, Amazon, Apple, archiving, AvantGo, blogging, cloud, data archive, Dave Hitz, email, Facebook, featured, Google, GPS, iPhone, iPod, LinkedIn, mobility, NetApp, Palm, PR, Privacy, Salesforce, security, Sling, software, TiVo, Twitter, virtualization, Wikipedia, wireless, work, Yahoo, Zimbra

AT&T Down, Sprint Saves My Bacon

September 3, 2008 By Stephen Leave a Comment

I was traveling this morning, and was shocked to not be able to check on my flight status with my iPhone. It just sat there churning when I arrived in Chicago. I couldn’t figure it out, but quickly booted up the Cradlepoint router and Sprint EV-DO card and was online. Since I also had critical [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Personal Tagged With: 3G, AT&T, Chicago, Cradlepoint, EDGE, EV-DO, outage, Sprint

My iPhone is on Sprint’s EV-DO Network (and So Are My PCs!)

August 18, 2008 By Stephen 9 Comments

Goodbye, AT&T 3G! After a year of hoping coverage would improve, I finally jumped ship from AT&T’s 3G network and moved my mobile wireless broadband service to Sprint. I grabbed a refurbished USB EV-DO device and signed up through a no-contract reseller and couldn’t be happier with the service so far. And I picked up [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Personal, Terabyte home Tagged With: 3G, 3GStore, AT&T, Cingular, Cradlepoint, EV-DO, iPhone, Laptop Connect, Millenicom, Sprint, Tomato, Verizon, Wi-Fi, wireless, WWAN

Yes, Exchange ActiveSync for iPhone Works Without a Business Data Plan

August 2, 2008 By Stephen 3 Comments

One of the most common questions I’ve been hearing after I published my articles on how to set up Exchange ActiveSync with the iPhone 2.0 software is whether or not you need an enterprise data plan from AT&T in order to use it. There were conflicting rumors going around prior to the launch, and AT&T [...]