In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last month, Apple recently released the latest version of iOS, iOS 6.
Details of what’s new in iOS 6 can be found here: http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/
For those Open Mobile users that have been long-time fans of running Open Mobile on iPhones and iPads, rest assured, we’ve officially certified Open Mobile for iOS support on iOS 6 devices (in addition to all iOS 4.3 and later devices). We’re excited about Apple’s new release and look forward to seeing the new iPhone 5 in the wild.
Knowing that Open Mobile for iOS runs great on iOS 6, we’re already playing around with Siri on iPads and looking for new ways to take advantage of the over 1 million iPass Network Wi-Fi hotspots to connect our devices to. Open Mobile connects you to a broad array of global Wi-Fi hotspots, wherever you travel – just in time to serve your ever growing wireless data needs.
Have an interesting use case for using Open Mobile on your iPhone/iPad? We’d like to hear about it. Feel free to add a comment to the blog post about how you enjoy using Open Mobile on iPhones and iPads.
Current customers, can download the iOS app from the App Store. Ask IT for your profile info.
Those who bring their own device from work have quickly gone from the minority to the majority, and the benefits are countless. Yet modern smartphones are rendered almost useless without an Internet connection, and 3G can get pricy quickly. Wi-Fi has gone from being an extra perk to a necessity. I know how shocking it has been when I’ve traveled abroad for work and forgotten to turn my data usage off and returned home only to find a hefty bill waiting there for me.
This is why I’d like to introduce BYOD’s new counterpart— BYON – “Bring Your Own Network.” If you already are bringing your own device to work, why not bring your own network? At iPass, we’ve just announced a new IT-Sponsored billing option that does just that – allows the individual business user to add the iPass service to their personal device that they use for work.
IT negotiates the rate, configures the client options and helps to manage the service. The end-user signs up for the service with their credit card, gets the same great service that they received on their corporate managed devices all at their low corporate rate.
Traveling for work can be rough; going from airport to airport, trying to fit a week’s worth of business casual in a small carry-on, inevitably forgetting a smartphone charger or pair of socks at home. Working while traveling shouldn’t be difficult or expensive, but it is when you don’t know when you’ll be able to access the Internet next.
If you BYON, you can relax knowing that you can use your Wi-Fi at any of our thousands of hotspots, look up the hotspot locations in advance using our Hotspot Finder, and use that money you just saved to buy an extra pair of socks or belt when on the road.
Today, we announced an expansion of our iPass Open Mobile Express solution to help organizations tackle the rising costs of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).
To control the increasing costs of roaming with these individual (and often multiple) mobile devices per employees, IT can negotiate the best Wi-Fi connection rates and enable other departments to take fiscal responsibility for their Wi-Fi network needs. As well, IT can maintain control and support of a hybrid environment of both corporate-owned and employee-owned smartphones and tablets.
To complement the BYOD trend, we call this BYON, or “Bring-Your-Own-Network,” as employees will have access to over 1 million commercial-grade hotspots. iPass provides the ability to monitor usage and also assess networks speeds.
Enterprise IT can now offer their departments and employees a direct credit card billing option for seamless global Wi-Fi access on smartphones and tablets. More employees prefer to use their own devices, and many organizations are taking advantage of this trend.
If you want to try this with our 24-hour trial, apply today!
Earlier this week we made available to our customers and partners the Open Mobile client v2.2 for Windows. One of the things I wanted to highlight with this release is a great new feature that really focuses on helping users know the quality of the Wi-Fi connection they are connecting to.
Anyone who travels frequently probably has a good understanding of the fact that the quality of Wi-Fi varies tremendously by location. Everyone has encountered a Wi-Fi hotspot that seems to just drag along making doing anything productive a challenge. Latency issues can impact the quality of voice and video streaming as well.
There can be many factors that impact both the speed and latency of a Wi-Fi connection. It can depend on the quality of the internet connection that the Wi-Fi hotspot is presenting to mobile users, it can depend on how many users are using that connection, it can depend on how much data other devices sharing that connection are using, it also can depend on interference from other Wi-Fi enabled devices in the area. All of these factors can vary throughout the day meaning a Wi-Fi hotspot that offers a screaming fast connection in the morning could be dragging in the evening.
So to help users know the quality of their connection when they connect, we introduced a new “Speed Test” capability in this most recent release. When a user connects to a Wi-Fi hotspot there will be a quick connection quality indicator available in the form a color code that will show on the main Open Mobile screen (see the green dot in the first screen shot).
Then for a more detailed diagnostic, the user can select the new ‘Speed Test’ button, which will do a more detailed test of the current latency and download speeds available at that hotspot connection. This test will also advise if the current connection is suitable for reading email, Web browsing, voice or audio streaming and then video streaming.
This provides a great Wi-Fi usability tool for mobile workers. Users can quickly ascertain if their current connection will be suitable for what they want to accomplish, if not they can attempt to find a more suitable connection. Also, if you are using the Open Mobile client to connect to and manage a 3G/4G device on your laptop, you can use this Speed Test feature to test the current latency and download speeds of that connection as well.
Note that to take advantage of this new feature, the Open Mobile client for Windows must be running client version 2.2 or greater as well having this capability enabled by the Open Mobile administrator. While this is only available for the Open Mobile client for Windows, our hope is to add this capability soon to all other client platforms.
The past two weeks I’ve talked about the important need for Wi-Fi, but we also need to realize the dangers Wi-Fi can bring!
Here is reason number three to get the iPass Open Mobile Client and get more value from your employees’ smartphones.
3. When “Free Wi-Fi” isn’t really “Free.”
Often no one questions the security or reliability or even performance of Free Wi-Fi. Free is, after all “Free” – so you sorta get what you pay for.
Of course what if “Free Wi-Fi” is really a hacker pretending to be a free access point, allowing you to connect, and thus record keystrokes in an attempt to hijack your userIDs and passwords? You could just NOT logon to any sites that are financial/banking related or cloud-storage services that contain sensitive corporate data or facebook or email…
You can see where this is going. At a certain point, “Free Wi-Fi” is all of a sudden potentially MORE expensive than paid Wi-Fi, especially if user credentials get in the wrong hands. Why risk logging on to risky “Free Wi-Fi?” Choose only vetted hotspots with good reliability and performance, and you made a very important decision to protect and secure sensitive data.
Join us next Wednesday when we discuss: 3G/4G data caps (and International roaming) limit what apps and functions we can do on smartphones and tablets.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last month, Apple recently released the latest version of iOS, iOS 6.
Those who bring their own device from work have quickly gone from the minority to the majority, and the benefits are countless. Yet modern smartphones are rendered almost useless without an Internet connection, and 3G can get pricy quickly. Wi-Fi has gone from being an extra perk to a necessity. I know how shocking it has been when I’ve traveled abroad for work and forgotten to turn my data usage off and returned home only to find a hefty bill waiting there for me.
The past two weeks I’ve talked about the 
