Tag Archives: WiMax

Weekly output: KnowRoaming, Apple Watch app rules, wireless spectrum, Comcast (x2), cable unbundling, wireless broadband

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I didn’t decide to attend the cable industry’s INTX trade show until late March. But seeing that convention would take place in one of my favorite cities, Chicago, made it an easy call. And I’m glad I went to the cable confab for the first time since 2012. I picked up a lot and wrote a lot, as you can see below. For more about the event, see my Flickr album.

All this work did catch up with me on Friday, in the form of my filing my USAT column ridiculously late. A contributing factor to that tardiness: I stepped out for an hour or so to watch the WW2 flyover down the Potomac. There’s a Flickr album for that, too.

5/4/2015: Hands-on with the KnowRoaming Sticker that Cuts Smarphone Costs for International Travelers, Yahoo Tech

This review concludes my coverage of Mobile World Congress–yes, I probably could have written it weeks earlier. Speaking of overdue tasks, I only just now noticed the typo in the headline; I’ll ping the editors to get that fixed.

5/5/2015: Apple’s Rules Tell Developers Precisely Whose Time It Is, Yahoo Tech

It had been a while since I’d last written about Apple’s App Store rules. As you can see, I still don’t like them but can no longer pretend the company hasn’t made them scale in a way that I thought impossible five years ago.

5/52015: Across the Spectrum: Strategies for a Changing Wireless Marketplace, INTX 2015

At this panel, I discussed the coming arrival of higher-performing wireless spectrum with Liberty Global’s Timothy Burke, Arris’s Charles Cheevers, Comcast’s Evan Koch, and T-Mobile’s Tony Silveira. I’d like to see cable companies use some of this to reach new customers–maybe people who find themselves a couple of thousand feet from the closest Comcast line?–but I don’t know that cable’s ready to take that step.

Yahoo Tech Comcast-service post5/6/2015: Comcast Really, Really Wants You to Like It, Yahoo Tech

Most reader reactions to this description of Comcast’s moves to upgrade its customer service ranged from “yeah right” to “screw them.” The company has its work cut out for it.

5/7/2015: Big Cable CEOs Insist Viewers Like Their Bundles, but the Tide Is Turning, Yahoo Tech

When I started writing this answer to a question many friends asked after learning I was headed to the cable industry’s annual gathering, I was a little more pessimistic about the future than I was by the time I’d finished it.

5/8/2015: Comcast customer service, WBAL

I talked about Comcast’s customer-service initiative with the Baltimore news station’s Mary Beth Marsden. I did not get to hear the story but assume they used some part of my interview; if you did, please let me know in the comments if I sounded coherent.

5/10/2015: Unlimited wireless broadband possible, just not beyond phone, USA Today

A reader’s question about replacing her Clear unlimited residential wireless broadband gave me an invitation to update readers about the impending retirement of Sprint’s WiMax broadband (it’s kind of awful that some WiMax resellers still offer WiMax devices that will go defunct in six months without clearly warning potential customers of the network’s coming demise) and note the continued inability of wireless broadband to compete with the wired kind for residential use.

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Weekly output: EU vs. Google, Tech Night Owl, Sprint WiMax resellers

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This has been a rotten week for journalism, courtesy of Rolling Stone’s failure to follow the newsroom mantra “if your mother says she loves you, check it out” when reporting a gruesome allegation of gang rape at the University of Virginia. My own week in journalism was better, but I’m not going to say it represented my best work.

12/2/2014: The European Union Wants to Regulate Google —Some More, Yahoo Tech

The EU’s increasingly shrill attacks on Google led to a column in which I sound suspiciously like a Republican (maybe even more than when I’m discussing San Francisco’s screwed-up housing policy). But in retrospect, I should have ended the column on a different note: By acting like the confiscatory villains in an Ayn Rand novel, the EU invites us to dismiss all of its critiques of Google, even the ones that might have a grounding in the facts.

12/6/2014: December 6, 2014 — John Martellaro and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

Host Gene Steinberg and I talked about the present and possible future of the Apple TV, net-neutrality politics, Windows 10, 4K TV and a few other things.

USAT column on Sprint Wimax resellers12/7/2014: 4G me not: WiMax isn’t LTE and is going away at Sprint resellers, USA Today

I don’t always get to write my own headlines, but my editor at USAT appreciates the help and I don’t mind making the effort–especially when this kind of wordplay pops into my head. The research involved in this  piece about companies reselling Sprint service will also play into an upcoming story about wireless broadband.

Weekly output: Energy Star, holiday shopping, consumer-vs-enterprise mobile apps, cable competition, FreedomPop, backup services

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone! I hope it finds you well.

11/25/2013: Plugged-In with ENERGY STAR – EPA’s Consumer Electronics Podcast, Energy Star

I talked about electrical consumption in new and old gadgets on this podcast put out by the EPA’s Energy Star program with host and EPA spokeswoman Brittney Gordon, Samantha Nevels of the Consumer Electronics Association and Energy Star managers Una Song and Verena Radulovic.

11/26/2013: Let the Black Friday madness begin, Voice of Russia American Edition

I talked for a few minutes about the intersection of holiday marketing and consumer electronics (disclosures: a friend is a producer in their D.C. office).

11/26/2013: Navigating the Enterprise-Consumer Collision Course, Enterprise Mobile Hub

IDG Enterprise’s sponsored Twitter chat focused on how enterprise and consumer mobile apps can learn from each other.

11/26/2013: How One Local Cable Monopoly Can Compete With Another, Disruptive Competition Project

If Comcast buys Time Warner Cable or teams up with another cable operator to engulf TWC, no one TV viewer will gain or lose any cable-TV choices–but the subscription-TV business as a whole will still lose some important forms of competition.

PCMag Freedom Hub Burst review11/27/2013: Freedom Hub Burst (FreedomPop), PCMag

This home wireless-broadband router offers decent speeds–in the relatively few parts of the country with WiMax coverage–but FreedomPop’s creepy, sketchy Web presentation of the service really bothered me. Memo to marketers everywhere: Making visitors cough up both e-mail and street addresses just to see prices is a profoundly stupid way to introduce yourself to customers.

12/1/2013: How to choose a good backup system, USA Today

I was overdue to compare online backup services, and Comcast’s shuttering of its own offering gave me an excuse to test-drive Backblaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan and Mozy. One issue I’ve realized since filing this piece: Carbonite eats an awful lot of processor cycles on my Mac. Another: good deals on Backblaze and Mozy through Monday.

My Sulia microblogging was mostly Thanksgiving-themed, with one post comparing Google Maps and MapQuest’s performance on the rather gruesome drive up and four about family tech support (updating my mom’s Mac, introducing my father-in-law to Android Device Manager, fixing my sister-in-law’s iPhone-driver problem, freeing up space on my wife’s iPad). I also found time to visit one of Google’s “Winter Wonderlab” exhibits at a nearby mall, leading to the slow-mo video you can watch after the jump.

Updated 12/3 when I realized I’d forgotten to mention the Energy Star podcast.

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Weekly output: Slashdot, online journalism, Ron Wyden, This Week In Law, Washington Apple Pi, prepaid data, mobile sites

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It’s been a busy week, and I still have to pack for a flight tomorrow morning. (I’m off to San Francisco to speak on a panel about “Blogger Language 4.0” at PR Summit.) I’ll have to be a little more concise than usual in these descriptions…

7/22/2013: Former WaPo Staffer Rob Pegoraro Talks About Newspapers’ Decline (Video), Slashdot

Robin Miller, aka “roblimo,” asked me a few questions about the state of the newspaper business and the future of journalism.

7/24/2013: Online Journalism Not All Doomed (Even If You Count Past 538), Disruptive Competition Project

And speaking of the future of journalism, here I argued that the ability of a local-news site called ARLNow.com to hire its first full-time reporter is probably a better sign of the health of my profession than Nate Silver’s headline-making move from the New York Times to ESPN.

Ars Technica Wyden post7/24/2013: Senator: Weak oversight of NSA may lead to massive location tracking, Ars Technica

I wrote up the speech Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave at the Center for American Progress about government surveillance and the secret body of law that barely constrains it.

7/26/2013: #221: We’re #9! We’re #9!, This Week In Law

The number in the title of this week’s episode refers to the U.S.’s ranking in a recent survey of broadband access; tune in to see host Denise Howell, Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn and me talk about the state of our broadband market and a grab-bag of other issues.

7/27/2013: Rob Pegoraro talks about things that beep and blink, Washington Apple Pi

The last time I spoke at a monthly meeting of the D.C. area’s Apple user group was in February 2011. A few things have changed since then (my ability to get lost on the roads of George Mason University’s Fairfax campus is not among them), so I enjoyed catching up with my friends at WAP.

7/28/2013: To get online during vacation, consider prepaid data, USA Today

A reader wanted to know a cheap way to get a laptop online during a long cross-country trip, so I suggested some prepaid data services–most reselling Sprint’s old WiMax network. I also shared a tip about using mobile sites when you’re starved for bandwidth, one of the things I’ve resorted to in the face of uncooperative WiFi at conferences and elsewhere.

Sulia highlights: Excoriating the worse-than-Apple performance of Nokia’s Windows Phone mapping app, noting the impending arrival of a $999, 50-inch 4K TV, celebrating a pathetically overdue tech-patent ruling and wondering if faster WiFi on Amtrak will induce demand that leads to the same slow wireless as before.