Blog | News & Information on Wireless Services & Telecommunications
Posted: 11/02/09 by Mobile Future Team
Mobile Future staff, as well as several attendees, are live-tweeting today's Mobile Future event at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Click here to see their tweets in real-time.
The event, "President Obama's Innovation Agenda: Spurring Investment and Innovation in the Wireless Sector," features Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, Bob Hahn, Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center and Visiting Senior Fellow at Oxford's Smith School, and Hal Singer, President and Managing Director of Empiris.
The forum will conclude with a panel discussion moderated by Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter and featuring Tom Kalil, Debbie Goldman of the Communications Workers of America, and Mike Rollins of Citi Investment Research.
Posted: 10/29/09 by Mobile Future Team
The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mHealth Summit opened today with a keynote address by Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Speaking to an audience of policymakers, government and health care industry leaders, and technology enthusiasts, Sebelius lauded the “enormous promise” of mobile technology, calling it a “key piece of puzzle for improving global health.”
Sebelius’ optimism about the potential for mHealth to advance reform efforts and improve health outcomes was evident. “Mobile technology has the potential to propel health care into the future,” she stated.
In discussing the national health care reform debate, Sebelius expressed confidence that “we’ll have a bill on the President’s desk this year.” She also noted that, “the real wok starts once the legislation is signed into law…and one important piece of that work is the mobile technology we’re talking about today.”
The HHS Secretary sees great promise in using mobile devices as health communications and diagnostic tools. “Some people don’t go to websites or watch TV, but their phone is with them all the time,” said Sebelius.
In providing examples of physicians and health care groups currently leveraging the mobile platform to improve patient care, Sebelius described how a doctor in Texas sends text messages to remind patients about care regimens and appointments. She also praised a Florida health care group for using text messaging to provide patients with information about emergency rooms’ locations wait times. Sebelius also said that the federal government is working on a several wireless health projects, including text messaging programs for HIV testing information, H1N1 updates, and prenatal and infant wellness.
Sebelius hopes the mobile platform will be an asset this flu season and noted that HHS is encouraging patients to use mobile devices to research symptoms and communicate with their doctors.
“Mobile has huge advantages, including the fact that more than ninety percent of Americans have a mobile phone,” said the busy Secretary. “Unfortunately, I have two.”
Posted: 10/26/09 by Mobile Future Team
Join us at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on November 2nd for a luncheon discussion on how stakeholders - both public and private - can continue to foster investment and innovation in the wireless space. Speakers will include Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, as well as Bob Hahn and Hal Singer, authors of a groundbreaking new study exploring the policies necessary to continue to encourage innovation and competition in the mobile handset market. RSVP for the event here: www.mobilefuture.org/Newseum.
Posted: 07/20/09 by Mobile Future Team
Last April, former Vice President Al Gore said that America has "the most competitive wireless industry of any nation in the world." A comment on the trillion texts we sent last year? The 2.2 million minutes of phone calling?
Regardless, there's an aspect of wireless service even closer to Mr. Gore's heart and that's using the technologies to create a greener economy. We've written on this issue before but now comes a remarkable demonstration of wireless-inspired energy savings from a small town in Germany.
According to BusinessWeek, the town of Dörentrup is saving one-third of its annual electric bill for streetlights through wireless innovation:
A resident dials a number posted on a lamppost. The call goes to a computer at the power company. The caller taps in a code number, also posted on the lamppost, which prompts the computer to send a signal back to a wireless modem that switches on the lights in that area. The whole process takes two seconds.
The idea is that streetlights don't have to be on throughout the night, particularly if no one's there. The German company that created the technology says that it only makes sense in areas where lights need to be turned on fewer than four times a night. That disqualifies Broadway but for local governments looking to save money and help the environment, "wireless streetlights" may be a promising step forward.
Posted: 03/25/09 by Jonathan Spalter
Cross-posted from Huffington Post
Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) recently introduced a bill in Congress which could positively impact the millions of consumers of wireless communications in the U.S. and increase the job security of hundreds of thousands of mobile and wireless industry workers. The Cell Tax Fairness Act would prohibit any state or local tax that singles out your wireless service for the next five years.
By addressing the horribly regressive nature of wireless taxes, this bill could promote progress with larger social and economic problems:
- Stopping the growth of regressive taxes could spur greater cell phone use, which, in turn, increases economic opportunity.
- Regressive taxes affect the poor more so than any other group, so this bill directly helps lower-income Americans.
- Given that wireless broadband is the country's fastest growing high-speed option, this bill could help close the digital divide by making the service more affordable to those without other options.
If you've looked at the bottom of your wireless bill recently, you understand what a good idea this is: today, state and local fees average nearly 14 percent of mobile phone bills. That's almost double the cost of ordinary sales taxes.
Even worse, there is a new trend in state legislation to increase taxes on wireless service. In 2007, Missouri cities successfully got courts to impose new "business license taxes" on wireless services at rates as high as 10 percent, even though other business license taxes are typically about one percent. More recently, cities in California have been rewriting utility regulations to expand the list of wireless services that can be taxed.
Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced a similar bill last year, and hopefully, they will continue their work to limit wireless taxes in the Senate.
Finally, these efforts bring up an important issue for progressives. Mobile services are a great equalizer in America. In this environment of financial stress, when millions of Americans need more - not less - access to the communications and data services provided by their cell phones - government should be doing all it can to encourage investment, innovation, and access. New regressive taxes will only negatively impact these cornerstones of our economic recovery.
Jonathan Spalter, chairman of the Mobile Future Coalition, served as chief information officer at the United States Information Agency during the Clinton administration.
http://www.mobilefuture.org/
Posted: 03/05/09 by Molly Kocour
During today's tough times, it's especially good news to see firms prosper. Case in point, two Atlanta companies at the forefront of the push to make mobile banking easier.
As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports this week, Firethorn and Fiserv create the software applications that marry large banks such as SunTrust with wireless carriers. These two companies, both with large presences in Atlanta, are at the vanguard of a movement toward mobile banking that began a decade ago. A combination of consumer hesitation and network issues slowed this app's growth during the first years. However, as consumer perception of the mobile phone has evolved to become a gateway to the Internet, mobile banking is taking off.
As far as we're concerned, anything that helps reduce those annoying deposit slips and helps reconcile account statements each month is worth its weight in gold.
Posted: 02/29/08 by Hiram 'Art' Contreras
Thanks to Technology for All, 4,000 people in a low-income, inner city neighborhood in Houston have access to the internet in their homes for the first time. Whether the service was available is moot, because many residents of this neighborhood simply couldn’t afford the service. Thankfully, Technology for All in partnership with Rice University stepped in to build a state-of-the-art wireless Internet network that is free for residents of the Pecan Park neighborhood.
Based on the success of this program in this southeast Houston neighborhood, Technology for All plans to roll out additional wireless networks to 10 other communities throughout Houston. Ultimately 500,000 low-income residents will have access to free internet service.
Through a series of antennas, residents have access to internet service that can reach greater than 1 Mbps. The goal is to stimulate the economy in these areas, as well as to build a research test bed for Rice University students to use in writing their master thesis.
Check out the story on the local TV station’s web site to hear more about this new wireless network.
Not only can this wireless network create economic opportunities, but it can also help young students in these neighborhoods do better in school so that they can improve their economic opportunities later in life.
Having access to technology and the wealth of information available online will help these young students succeed in school. Inner city kids deserve to have the same opportunities that kids in affluent suburbs have.
Of course, the families need computers to even use the internet service and luckily Technology for All has “A Mouse in Every House” program that it runs in partnership with Habitat for Humanity to provide computers to low-income residents.
As a community, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is through the accessing of information and ultimately enhancing educational opportunity that is the key for our young people to reach their fullest potential.
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Tags: FCC, Mobile Applications, m-commerce, Mobile Future, Mobile Health, Mobile Phone, National Broadband Plan, Investment/Competition