Archive for the ‘Cost Control’ Category
Monday, June 25th, 2012
Steve Livingston, Sr. Vice President of Carrier Development
GSMA member operators meeting this week committed to making mobile data roaming charges easier to understand and more transparent, in an effort to calm the waters with subscribers experiencing bill shock after travel. The twenty-four operators signing on the plan represent over 400 million subscribers worldwide.
These mobile operators are taking a big step forward by making data roaming charges easier to understand as well as setting up protection from accidentally running high mobile data bills, but the consumer is still being put on a diet when traveling abroad. Consumers are growing more dependent on their digital and connected lives and want to access the same applications and content when they travel as when they are at home. Increasingly, subscribers have become so dependent on this connection that access has migrated from a desire to a necessity, for both business and personal reasons.
There will be some carrier disrupters that will provide the consumer with this obvious benefit, and those carriers will quickly reap the benefits from these high valued customers as well as their families. A further step that will distinguish these operators from their competitors is taking advantage of services such as iPass Open Mobile Exchange. Tapping into rapidly growing global Wi-Fi availability will allow carriers to support their subscribers more cost-effectively for data hungry applications, benefiting both the consumer and the operator.
Bill Shock Complaints Push Operators into Action >>
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing
Today, iPass announced a new Open Mobile offer called Open Mobile Express. I wanted to use this blog entry to provide some basic details on what Open Mobile Express is and why iPass is providing a new Open Mobile offer.
Open Mobile Express provides mobile employees seamless connectivity for smartphones, tablets and laptops to the iPass Mobile Network, providing a consistent user experience across all devices while avoiding costly roaming charges and expensive Wi-Fi day passes. How is this different than Open Mobile? First, let’s talk about how they are similar.
Both Open Mobile and Open Mobile Express are based on the Open Mobile Platform and are designed to simplify the user’s connectivity experience from any type of device. The difference is what you can do with those connections.
Open Mobile is a universal connection manager with comprehensive cost and security policy options that provide granular options on how employees connect to Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Mobile Broadband (3G/4G). So think a command and control connectivity solution for the Enterprise that provides several policy and reporting options above and beyond providing connectivity to the iPass Mobile Network.
Open Mobile Express focuses more on the ‘just connect me’ user who wants to take advantage of the cost advantages and ubiquitous availability of the iPass Mobile Network. The focus is on seamless connectivity across a wide range of devices vs. a universal connection manager managing all connections.
By providing both Open Mobile and Open Mobile Express, iPass now has a solution that meets the need of everyone. Those who want seamless connectivity to the iPass Mobile Network can evaluate Open Mobile Express. Those who want to layer on cost and security policies for all types of connections, not just those to the iPass Mobile Network, can evaluate Open Mobile.
More on Open Mobile Express
More on the Open Mobile Platform
See the press release
Introducing Open Mobile Express >>
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
Have any of you had any roaming bills or overage charges with the new iPad?
My colleague told me a story of his $1,100 roaming charge while in Norway, after reading a dozen emails. Now these stories are trickling in:
The New iPad Is Already Crushing Owners’ Data Plans
“…streaming video can be faster and smoother using LTE instead of 3G or even Wi-Fi, but it’s also very taxing on your data plan. If you stream a lot of video, especially HD video, you can hit your limit within just a few hours.”
Video Speed Trap Lurks in New iPad
“..something has to give: Either consumers will have to get used to paying more or wireless carriers will come under pressure to change their pricing models.”
What about you? Have you hit your limit? Are you paying more? Tell us what you were charged when going beyond; either roaming in another country or going over your monthly limit.
You can also tweet at us using @ipass
Any roaming bills or overage charges with that new iPad? >>
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
John Gallagher, Sr. Public Relations Manager
In enterprise software the concept of “departmental” used to be a dirty word.
Product marketers would address a competitor’s offering as “just” departmental – translated as “niche” and “unable to scale.” But with the advent of mass adoption of consumer devices, the proliferation of the mobile Internet and the rise of cloud services, departmental is the next big thing.
At least that is one of Gartner Group’s predictions for 2012 as business managers are expected to increasingly take control of the IT budget.
“The Gartner Predicts 2012 special report addresses the continuing trend toward the reduction of control IT has over the forces that affect it. As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the past few years. Moving forward, IT departments will find that they must coordinate activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled.”
This is aligned with some trends we’re seeing in enterprise mobility:
- IT professionals feel they were losing control of the mobile landscape: 41 percent of IT managers believed they had less control over their employees’ choice of devices than a year ago, and 37 percent felt it was about the same.
- As a result, Mobile device liability is shifting to the user: The mix of corporate-provisioned versus individually-liable has shifted. Today 58 percent of companies provision smartphones to their employees; this is down from nearly two-thirds a year ago. 42 percent of employees have individually-liable smartphones – they purchase and pay for their own devices.
- Employees are more tech savvy, and less reliant on IT: Most mobile workers described themselves as highly proficient when it comes to technology (69 percent), compared to six percent who rated themselves as fairly proficient or non-proficient. And mobile workers only contacted IT as a last resort (81 percent), while two percent had IT on speed dial.
- Yet “support” in general is the hot button for IT: This is likely the result of the difficulty in “hitting a moving target” — as lifecycles of each model of a mobile device are measured in months, not years. The highest level of frustration was in providing support for non-provisioned devices, followed by onboarding and ongoing support for these devices.
- And according to IT professionals, employees are contacting IT with more demanding tech support issues (especially since mobile employees are only going to IT as a last resort). 45 percent of IT departments stated that the IT problems were more complex than two years ago, while 27 percent found them the same, and only seven percent believed the issues were less complex than two years ago.
The shift is well underway, but for IT management we think this change represents opportunity.
Have a perspective? We have our Q1 Mobile Workforce Survey underway and we would like to hear from you. This quarter we are looking at Wi-Fi adoption, the social enterprise and multi-tasking.
And if you take our survey you will be entered into a drawling to win an iPad 2.
Who will have the bigger IT budget? >>
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
How to Beat Roaming Fees While Traveling Abroad by Michelle Higgins, in the NYTimes, gives some tips on some ways to control costs.
Carriers have made some efforts to inform and help you control costs, but here are some more tips from the article:
- Use Wi-Fi on your smartphone, and IT wants you too. It’s cheap and often faster.
- Consider data packages (with some US examples)
- Rent a Wi-Fi device (ship to your hotel!)
- Get more out of your data package
Read more and get the details >>
And, last year, we posted a video from one of our product managers that overheard IT people talking about a $27,000 roaming bill.
[photo courtesy of nytimes.com Francisco Caceres]
Saving on Roaming Fees >>
