3G/4G Usage Limits- Open Mobile for Windows

Monday, November 21st, 2011 Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing

This is our fourth and final blog post highlighting the Open Mobile client v2.0 for Windows.

The first post provided and overview of the Open Mobile client v2.0 for Windows release. The second post provided an overview and video of the new Endpoint Integrity Verification feature. The third post last week provided an overview and video of the new Login Assist feature. This week we are going to take a closer look at enhanced 3G/4G usage limits made available with the v2.0 release.

Prior to the 2.0 release, Open Mobile for Windows supported the ability to set and manage Mobile Broadband roaming limits. This allowed administrators to allow or disallow roaming on Mobile Broadband data cards, and if allowed to place limits on how much data usage a user was allowed to use when roaming. This was added to help organizations avoid costly data roaming bills, often brought on by employee unintended usage (e.g. “I did not know streaming Netflix while in Japan would be so expensive”).

Being able to set roaming usage policies is a great tool for organizations in controlling their mobility costs. However, this did not help organizations who were facing overall usage limits on their Mobile Broadband data cards, the move away from unlimited data plans to limited data plans. While we often hear that only a small percentage of users exceed those data limits, that small percentage can add up to big costs for an organization and often our customer’s hear the same type of plea from the user- that they didn’t know that that their behavior had a large cost impact on the organization.

To address this, we made some great enhancements in the Open Mobile client v2.0 for Windows release. First we added in the ability to set Mobile Broadband usage limits for when users are not roaming. This allows you to tie an overall usage limit to what your data plan allows, and also warn the user with customizable messages as you approach the limit. The screenshot shows a policy that sets a 2GB overall usage limit per month, with a warning passed to the user when they hit 1.5 GBs of usage and additional warnings passed each 100MBs thereafter. Once the user gets to 2GBs of data usage in a single month, they will no longer be able to use their Mobile Broadband data card until the next billing month starts

The second enhancement we made with the 2.0 release is the ability to set the same type of usage limits for a personal hotspot. This is useful for Mobile Broadband 3G/4G devices that can act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, like a smartphone or a MiFi device. Organizations can register the SSIDs for those devices and apply a usage policy in the exact manner described above for a Mobile Broadband data card. It is important to note that Open Mobile is only tracking usage on that individual Windows device, so if that MiFi device is being used by a laptop, iPad and smartphone, you will only be tracking usage just through the Open Mobile client installed on the laptop. However, this is still useful in passing warnings to the user as well as setting high bandwidth warnings if you notice a large amount of usage in a short amount of time (e.g. streaming a video).

Note that with any of these scenarios that we have walked through that you don’t have to take to block access, instead you can just pass the warnings to the user. I get comments all the time that organizations don’t want to block access outright, but pass information to users with the assumption that if the user has the best information possible, they will make the right decision.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post as well as the previous entries in our series highlighting just some of the great new features in the Open Mobile client v2.0 for Windows release. Want to learn more? Go to www.ipass.com.

Tags: Open Mobile Platform