In the future, your cell plan will only know data, not minutes, says AT&T boss. “Imagine there’s no minutes,” John Lennon oh so nearly sang.
“It’s easy if you try. No worries about overage, above us only sky.” Okay, so perhaps those weren’t the exact sentiments of Lennon’s 1971 classic, but they’re the sentiments of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who today said that he believed that cellphone plans could do away with the notion of “minutes” within the next two years. Speaking at the Sanford Bernstein investor conference in New York, Stephenson said “I’ll be surprised if, in the next 24 months, we don’t see people in the market place with data-only plans.
I just think that’s inevitable.” Stephenson’s prediction hinges upon cell carriers deciding that audio calls are simply another form of data transfer, a la Google Voice or Skype services; the problem with this idea is that audio calls and texting still provide phone companies with the bulk of their revenue, with data revenue coming in at a significantly lower level. Amy Webb: Big data, mobile payments, and identity authentication will be big in 2012. Big Data Information is everywhere, and more than any previous year in our history, 2012 will be the year of data.
We’re recording our daily activity with BodyMedia arm bands and syncing our biometrics with our Android phones. Hacker-journalists are converting huge datasets for use by everyday newsroom reporters. Hyper-creative data visualization teams, such as JESS3, are creating stunning charts and graphs appealing to the non-geeky set. Untold amounts of healthcare, government, personal-location, business, academic and transportation data can be mined for research as well as to generate answers about our efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. OR (object recognition) Oblong Industries recently unveiled its g-speak spatial operating environment, which was the culmination of three decades of research at MIT and uses object recognition. Graphic Interfaces In 2011, we saw a number of new graphic interfaces. Topics Privacy Concerns Women Ethics Concerns and Digital Content. PayPal's Coolest Mobile Wallet Feature: The Oops Button.
Intuit Partners With Verizon Wireless To Sell Square-Competitor At Retail Stores. Inuit’s GoPayment reader, which competes directly with Square, is making a significant move in the mobile payments space today, partnering with Verizon Wireless to sell its credit card readers in Verizon Wireless’ 2,300 retail stores and business-to-business sales channels.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone). Now, GoPayment will be offered in retail outlets and on Verizon Wireless’ website for $29.97 but you can receive the reader for free with activation of a GoPayment account and a mail-in rebate for the purchase price. Intuit says that it will consider similar partnerships in the future.