Verizon Clarifies: There Is A Way To Unlimited

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There was an outcry yesterday after Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo spoke at a JP Morgan investor conference. During his keynote he talked about Verizon’s move to shared data.

Shammo said that Verizon will start offering shared data plans this summer. This has actually come as welcome news to a majority of Verizon Wireless customers.

Many families want to enjoy the features and convenience of a smart phone without having to get individual data plans for each device and each family member.

New shared data plans will mean a family plan and perhaps small business plans as well, can share buckets of data.  This would be similar to the way shared buckets of calling minutes are shared.

The outcry came after Shammo said Verizon Wireless would begin moving customers to tiered and shared data plans at their next upgrade.

Customers who had an unlimited data plan for $30 per month prior to July 2011, were able to stay “grandfathered” into their unlimited data, provided that they didn’t change any other part of their plan. Verizon would even allow upgrade eligible customers, covered by the “grandfathe” clause when they upgraded their device under subsidy.

Now the only way to keep your unlimited data is to elect to stay on the same device or pay full retail for your next device. This can be rather costly for the average customer.

A Verizon Wireless spokes woman confirmed all this to CNet earlier in the day.

While this may seem outlandish to some, those maximizing their unlimited data may find this to be a decent compromise.

Source: CNet

Verizon Continues LTE Domination, Adding 28 Markets On Thursday

Verizon Wireless has announced that their 4G/LTE rollout continues. Thursday they’ll throw the LTE switch on for 28 new markets and expand their coverage in 11 existing markets. They are by far the market leader with 4G/LTE which has been implemented or announced for all four US carriers.

AT&T has also been expanding their 4G/LTE footprint, but not quite at the pace of rival Verizon Wireless.

Sprint has announced that six cities will have 4G/LTE speeds in the middle part of this year. From what we’ve heard from several sources, those cities could be lit up next month.

As for Verizon Wireless, here are the new cities getting 4G/LTE Thursday. As with all of their other market roll outs, you should check your phones today as they tend to turn it on a few days before the official date for testing.

Houma/Thibodaux and Lake Charles, La.; Hyannis/Mid-Cape, Mass.; Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Mich.; Biloxi/Gulfport/Pascagoula and Oxford, Miss.; Atlantic City/Toms River, N.J.; Dickinson and Williston, N.D.; Ashtabula, Bucyrus and Defiance, Ohio; Eugene/Springfield, Ore.; Lancaster, New Castle, Northern Cambria County, Oil City/Franklin, Somerset and York, Pa.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Mitchell, S.D.; Paris, Texas; Burlington/Northern, Vt.; Fredericksburg, Harrisonburg, Martinsville and Staunton/Waynesboro, Va.; and Sheridan, Wyo.

These are the 11 markets that are getting their 4G/LTE service enhanced:

Denver, Colo.; Dover, Del.; Fort Myers and Lakeland, Fla.; Hagerstown, Md.; Canton, Lima, Mansfield, Toledo and Youngstown/Warren, Ohio; and Erie, Pa.

That brings Verizon Wireless to 258 markets. As you can see from the graphic above Verizon Wireless is well underway with bringing their entire 3G footprint to 4G.

source: Verizon Wireless via Phandroid

Verizon Report Confirms: Hacktivist Stole 100 Million Records

If that number astonishes you it should. In a study published this week by Verizon, it’s been reported that hacktivists like Anonymous and Lulzsec were responsible for compromising 100 million records.

Now to put the power of the hacktivist groups in perspective; out of an estimated 855 data breach incidents last year, only 25 of them were attributed to hacktivist groups. While they were only responsible for 2% of the data breaches they were by far the most detrimental. Their 2% of data breaches resulted in 58% of the 174 million total records stolen in 2011.

More after the break
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#CES2012 Intel, Ultrabooks, Isis, and Gemalto: is this the year of NFC?

Our good friend Sylvie Barak was quoted on the Gemalto blog 
Intel demos NFC on an ultrabook: tap your credit card on your laptop touchpad to pay. #AWESOME #CES #eet_CES
Personally I don’t see making payments with a laptop being an option that many people would adopt. Bringing the ability for retailers, small businesses, or the average consumer to accept payments via built-in NFC hardware is an entirely different matter. We have already begun to witness the downfall of the traditional payment options and watched as first PayPal then Square knocked down the payment barriers.
With Google Wallet and Isis using NFC payments and PayPal by phone at Home Depot stores (without NFC) and NFC payments in Sweden  it is clear we have almost arrived at a new paradigm in the ability to accept payments. When your smartphone can act as a terminal for both positive and negative cash flow, without any additional hardware, the benefits will market themselves.
Last year I heard over and over “2011 is the year of NFC (in the U.S.)” beginning at CES. I was not clear on why people were making that statement at the time. If I remember correctly, there were no high-profile devices announced in Las Vegas last year.  The Nexus S had been announced in November the previous year, sure, but that was it. There was extremely limited NFC functionality for the end-user at the time.

Updated – Editorial: Nexus Brand Being Diluted by Verizon

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Nexus devices have been billed as “Pure Google” devices ever since the HTC built Nexus One was released January of 2010. The Nexus S [December 16, 2010] and Nexus S 4G [May 8, 2010].
When the Nexus One was originally announced the list of carriers who were originally going to carry the Nexus One included T-Mobile, AT&T, Vodafone, and Verizon. After months of delays Google eventually announced that the Nexus One would not be available from Verizon Wireless.
The follow-up to the Nexus One, the Nexus S (and Nexus S 4G) were available on AT&T, T-Mobile, and finally Sprint.
The Nexus One ushered in the term (as well as actually backing up the claim) “Superphone”. 1 GHz CPU, 512 RAM and ROM, AMOLED (Original screen) and was launched with Android 2.1 Eclair. Being a “Pure Google” device meant that it would be among the first devices to receive future updates to the Android Operating System.
The Nexus S was the first Android device to launch with NFC (Near Field Communication), with a 4″ Super AMOLED screen, 512 MN RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage space (1 GB dedicated to internal storage [ROM] and 15 GB “USB storage”. This was the first device to launch with Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Again this was free from carrier “bloatware” and was sold without any additional carrier overlay (Touchwiz, Sense, Motoblur, etc). This ensuring a faster upgrade path. Shortly after the launch of the Nexus S the Nexus One was updated to Android 2.3.
Google released a tablet version of the Android Operating System 3.0 Honeycomb – which was never open-sourced, but was also free from OEM overlays (at launch).  This apparently was done to help speed up updates to the work in progress which was (is) honeycomb.

Fast forward to October 18, 2011 – Google and Samsung announce their second collaboration towards the Nexus line of devices, the Galaxy Nexus.  The Galaxy Nexus brings a 4.65″ 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED HD screen, a Texas Instruments 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor, with 1 GB RAM, with either 16 or 32 GB of on board storage, along with a myriad of updates to camera software, video output options, and I’d the first Nexus device to offer 4G LTE connectivity. Seeing as there was only one carrier offering a significant LTE network at the time of the announcement it also signaled the first “Pure Google” Nexus device on the Verizon network. Fans were going nutsTHIS IS WHAT WE HAD ALL BEEN WAITING FOR……OR WAS IT?

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