Wireless

If wireless operators thought they'd faced a deluge of data traffic from the iPhone, they haven't seen anything yet, according to a survey from network equipment giant Cisco Systems.

Cisco, which makes the routers and switches that shuttle IP traffic around the Internet, has been using its Visual Networking Index to forecast Internet usage. On Tuesday, the company announced results from its Global Mobile Data Forecast for 2009 to 2014.

By 2014, researchers predict, mobile data traffic throughout the world will reach 3.6 exabytes per month, or an annual run rate of 40 exabytes. This is a 39-fold increase from 2009 to 2014, or a compound annual growth rate of 108 percent.

Researchers believe that the amount of data traffic traversing the mobile network by 2014 will be equal about 1 billion DVDs. By comparison that is about the equivalent of 133 times all the data that has ever been transmitted across a mobile network since networks first were launched in the 1980s until today.

Today, the average mobile broadband connection generates 1.3GB of traffic per month. This is equivalent to about 650 MP3 music files. By 2014, the average mobile broadband connection will generate 7GB of traffic per month, which is equivalent to about 3,500 MP3 music files, Cisco said. The rate at which data traffic is growing today is about 2.4 times faster than fixed broadband data traffic around the world.

What's driving all this growth? One major driver is the increase in devices that offer mobile data capabilities. Apple's iPhone, which was introduced in 2007, accelerated growth trends for mobile data. But in the next few years, there will be a whole slew of related devices that will hit the market, including dozens that will be powered by Google's Android operating system.

By 2014, researchers for Cisco's index estimate there will be more than 5 billion personal devices connecting to mobile networks, as well as billions of machine-to-machine devices also connecting to networks.

Doug Webster, senior director of service provider marketing for Cisco, said that mobile data traffic is growing faster than anyone had expected five years ago.

"The rapid consumer adoption of smart phones, Netbooks, e-readers and Web-ready video cameras, as well as machine-to-machine applications like e-health monitoring and asset tracking systems, are continuing to place unprecedented demands on mobile networks," he said.

Another important trend driving traffic growth is mobile video. Researchers estimate that mobile video traffic will represent 66 percent all mobile data traffic by 2014, increasing 66-fold from 2009 to 2014. This is the highest growth rate of any mobile data application tracked in the Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Forecast, the company said.

Some wireless operators are already struggling to keep up with demand. For example, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Apple iPhone, has said that its network traffic grew 200 percent in 2009. The company has been criticized by consumers for dropped calls and poor service in densely populated urban areas like San Francisco and New York City.

The company said recently that it's investing an additional $2 billion in 2010 to upgrade its network to accommodate the flood of traffic.

Other carriers are already starting to upgrade their networks to 4G wireless technology. Verizon Wireless is rolling out commercial 4G service using a technology called LTE later this year. And Clearwire is expanding its 4G WiMax network in 2010 and in 2011.

But Webster said that these newer, higher capacity networks could lead to even higher data consumption over the next few years.

"LTE and 4G wireless could exacerbate the problem and consumption may increase," Webster said. "The places where these networks will be launched first will be in areas where there is high demand for the service. It will be interesting to see what the monetization opportunities are with these new services."

Indeed, while many wireless operators have talked about upgrade plans for their networks, they haven't yet discussed how consumers will pay for these new services. All-you-can-eat data plans that encourage consumers to use as much bandwidth as they can will likely go away as carriers look for other ways to charge for these services. Whether new business models will change consumer habits and consumption is not yet known. But it's clear that consumers are hooked on mobile broadband.

Google has launched phone support for its Nexus One phone.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Google is answering the call from Nexus One phone owners.

More than a month after officially unveiling the new Android-based phone, the search giant on Monday launched a phone support line specifically to answer the questions of Nexus One owners. Phone owners can call (888) 48NEXUS (63987) between 4 a.m. and 7 p.m. PST and reach a live tech, Google advises.

Following the launch of the Nexus One, Google's online support forums were flooded with questions from customers who were having shipping and technical issues. Google attempted to direct questions to HTC and T-Mobile, its hardware and carrier partners on the Nexus One, but the Nexus One is being sold exclusively through Google at the moment, and it's the company that customers look to when they have a complaint.

The phone support line is a bit of a departure for Google, which has traditionally offered a pretty bare-bones customer support operation to this point in its history. Forums, FAQs, and e-mail support had up until now been pretty much the extent of what Google offers to everyone other than paid customers of Google Apps.

Google has since learned that that approach goes only so far.

"By design, we focused initially on providing the best possible customer support through our on-line channel, and our experience in the four weeks since the Nexus One launch enabled us to significantly enhance that on-line support offering. We have been able to address a large majority of customers' inquiries successfully through on-line support, in combination with phone support from our partners, HTC and T-Mobile," a Google spokesperson said. "That said, our approach with our new consumer channel is to learn fast and continue to improve...Live phone support from Google, combined with an optimized on-line support experience, enables a superior Nexus One customer experience."

Still, the phone support launch isn't a total surprise as Google recently posted a job opening ad for a "Phone Support Program Manager, Android/Nexus One," to be based at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

Nook e-reader

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)

Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader, which sold out over the winter holidays, is available online once again, the company said Monday.

The Nook is also expected to show up in most B&N stores by midweek.

After running out of the e-readers over the holidays, Barnes & Noble said it kicked production into high gear so it could ship the Nook to its stores by this week--in time for the next gift-giving holiday: Valentine's Day.

Those interested in buying the reader locally can check the Nook in-store Locator to see if any neighborhood Barnes & Noble store has one. If not, you can order one online for $259 with free shipping. And in case you want to be doubly sure to get that Nook in time to woo your sweetheart, B&N is offering free 1- to 2-day air service for online purchases so that the e-reader arrives in time for V-Day.

The company recently launched Nook version 1.2, which sent several updates to the e-reader, including the ability to wirelessly browse books, magazines, and newspapers via Wi-Fi inside Barnes & Noble stores.

To mark Valentine's Day, Barnes & Noble is offering related content via Wi-Fi within its stores this month, including:

• A short story by Adriana Trigiani featuring characters from her book, "Brava, Valentine."
• A Valentine's Day recipe for red velvet cupcakes from Anne Byrn, the so-dubbed Cake Mix Doctor.
• "Read Between the Wines," a regular feature by wine expert Kevin Zraly, which pairs books with wines.

It's still not clear how well Google will surmount challenges selling its Nexus One to ordinary folks, but when it comes to endorsement from the tech-savvy realm, it doesn't get much better than this.

Google's Nexus One

(Credit: Google)

Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel programming project, said Saturday not only that he likes the Google phone, but that it was good enough to convert him into a mobile phone believer.

"I generally hate phones--they are irritating and disturb you as you work or read or whatever--and a cell phone to me is just an opportunity to be irritated wherever you are," Torvalds said in a blog post. "But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner."

The whole idea of talking on the phone still isn't that exciting to Torvalds, though. Instead, it was other features that won him over.

"I've wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that Google navigation might finally make a phone useful," Torvalds said. "And it does. What a difference! I no longer feel like I'm dragging a phone with me 'just in case' I would need to get in touch with somebody--now I'm having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact that you can use it as a phone, too, is kind of secondary."

Google's Android operating system used in the Nexus One is built atop a Linux foundation, but the applications typically don't run on the Linux. Instead, they run atop Linux on a Java-like layer, Google's Dalvik virtual machine and accompanying software libraries.

More recently, though, Google issued a Native Development Kit for software that runs directly on the phone's Linux operating system. Through that technology, Mozilla is working on a version of Firefox for Android.

"Android has been pretty great to work with so far; it's a bit unusual platform for us due to its Java core, but with the NDK we're able to bridge things together without many problems," said Mozilla Vladimir Vukicevic, who's working on the software, on Thursday. "We're still a ways to go before any kind of usable alpha release, but we're certainly one step closer. We'll also be able to accelerate our progress now that we have some of the basic scaffolding in place."

Tyler Shields, senior researcher for the Veracode Research Lab.

(Credit: Veracode)

We've heard a lot about security issues with the iPhone, but the BlackBerry isn't immune to threats from malicious apps.

Tyler Shields, a senior researcher at the Veracode Research Lab, has written a piece of spyware that allowed me to shoot an SMS command to his phone and have his contact list forwarded to my e-mail address in a demonstration. With another short text command, I was able to get his BlackBerry to e-mail me any SMS messages he sends.

And if I had wanted--and he had allowed me--I could have seen a log of all his calls, monitored his inbound text messages, tracked his location in real-time based on the GPS (Global Positioning System) in his device and turned his microphone on to listen to conversations in the room and record them.

"It's trivial to write this type of code using the mobile provider's own API [application programming interface] they provide to any developer," Shields said in an interview in advance of his talk on the spyware scheduled for the ShmooCon security show on Sunday.

He calls his program "TXSBBSpy" and is releasing the source code but not an executable version of it. "My goal is to show how easy it is to create mobile spyware," he said.

TXSBBSpy "can take data from the phone, both in real-time and in snapshots, and send it off via SMS or e-mail to any Web server or TCP [Transmission Control Protocol] or UDP [User Diagram Protocol] network connections," Shields said.

While I was able to control the spyware using text messages sent from my mobile phone, the spyware had to be first installed on his BlackBerry for the snooping to work. This can be done by sending the target victim an e-mail or text with a link to a Web page where the spyware is surreptitiously installed. Or it can be hidden inside a legitimate-looking app downloaded from the App Store.

The risks are similar to those posed by Swiss researcher Nicolas Seriot in his iPhone spyware demo at the Black Hat DC security conference on Wednesday.

"These types of behaviors we're demonstrating will be universal across all mobile platforms," Shields said.

The BlackBerry platform has a "significant number" of security mechanisms in place that could be used to mitigate against these types of attacks, he said. For instance, the user can set the options to limit what access to specific types of data a particular app can have, he said.

However, many smartphone users either don't know about the security risks, don't think the risks are serious or don't know how to be more secure with their devices. A Trend Micro survey from last August found that only 23 percent of smartphone owners use the security software already installed on their device.

App stores also need to do more to vet the apps, Shields said--the same message Seriot had for Apple.

In the meantime BlackBerry users should be more cautious about what apps they download and what rights they give them. "Users should not hit the 'I trust this app' button," Shields said. "That will give it access to all your personal information."

Users should go into the app security configuration within the BlackBerry option screen and tell it specifically what information the app can access or set it to prompt if the app tries to access certain data, he said.

"The security models are inadequate because they trust by default," he added. "Sandboxing [techniques] only protect one app from another app; not from accessing user data. App stores give users a false sense of security."

Shields said he has contacted Research in Motion about the issues and the company's official comment was: "We won't make any comment on how the security of the App Center operates."

Shields has also created a video demonstration of his spyware.

A Research In Motion representative provided this comment: "Applications containing spyware cannot be installed on a BlackBerry smartphone without the user's explicit consent unless of course someone else gains physical possession of the user's device along with knowledge of any enabled password...the spyware app cannot simply install itself stealthily on to a user's device. Further, a user can review and confirm the list of installed apps on their device by looking in the 'Options' area at any time."

Updated 9:11 a.m. PST February 8 with RIM comment.

(Credit: Apple)

Although Apple's iPad has yet to hit the market, the Federal Communications Commission has expressed concern over its potential impact on AT&T's 3G network.

Without naming AT&T, which has secured a carrier deal for the tablet device, Phil Bellaria, director of scenario planning, and John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, outlined their concerns in an FCC blog post Monday:

With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing, or frustrate mobile broadband's ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.

The iPad is expected to come in two model types, one of which enables both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Amid widespread concern that iPhone data service use has been overwhelming AT&T's 3G network, the FCC may have good reason to be worried that the 3G iPad, also set to use AT&T's network in the United States, may exacerbate AT&T's perceived wireless-connectivity issues.

Cities in which the smartphone enjoys noticeable popularity, including New York and San Francisco, seem to be especially hard-hit by outages, dropped calls, delayed messages, slow Web access, and service interruptions. Heavy use of the phone's data services at large trade shows ranging from South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the NAMM music show in Anaheim, Calif., has reportedly brought AT&T's network to its knees.

In announcing its quarterly earnings in January, Apple said it sold 8.7 million iPhones, a 100 percent gain over the last year. Analysts are predicting that Apple could sell between 2 million and 5 million iPads in the first year. Obviously, between that and the continued sales of the iPhone, AT&T's network could quickly feel the strain. However, Apple seems to be standing by AT&T.

"As you know, AT&T has acknowledged they're having issues in a few cities" and are working on a plan to correct them, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said during the company's earnings conference call. "We have personally viewed these plans, and we have high confidence that they'll make significant progress in addressing them."

Working in customer service is never easy. People can be difficult, nay, impossible at times. But if there is one small rule, especially in this day of rampant networks with nothing better to do than be social, it's the one that says "don't insult the customer."

This rule seems not to have been followed by one customer service representative who works, at least for now, for U.K. wireless carrier Vodafone.

According to the Guardian, this individual posted a Friday tweet on Vodafone's official Twitter page that read: "VodafoneUK is fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver."

(Credit: CC Mark Hillary/Flickr)

It appears that at first, many of Vodafone's Twitter followers presumed that this was the work of a hacker. Now it appears more likely to have been posted by a homophobic slacker.

Perhaps he thought it was funny. Well, according to the report, the tweet seems to have been posted from the customer service center in Stoke, a town in the United Kingdom's Midlands and, truly, almost everything is funny in Stoke. You can imagine, however, that it didn't take more than a few hundred seconds for this homophobic tweet to have been seized upon by those who thought it humorphobic.

In an attempt to limit the public-relations damage, Vodafone replied individually to everyone who inquired about the tweet with this message: "We weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry." The company also announced that the employee had been suspended "until further notice."

Vodafone's eminently sensible response seems to be working. A poster called Denny, for example, sent this tweet Friday: "Just spotted all the excitement about your account today...hope it doesn't cause any serious changes, you do a great job."

The question remains as to why the employee has been suspended rather than fired. You'd think that there couldn't be a clearer case of customer disservice.

Google isn't marching into consumer electronics; it's tentatively dipping its toes.

For Google, the Nexus One is more than just a phone.

(Credit: CNET)

When word of the Nexus One smartphone broke, the consensus was that Google was about to challenge Apple for the high end of the mobile phone market. One month after its launch, it's clear that an awful lot will have to change before Google can truly be considered a viable competitor.

It's not that there's anything lacking from the Nexus One. It's easily the best Android phone produced to date, and CNET editors recently decided it outranked the iPhone 3GS, Apple's best iPhone to date.

But making a great phone is only part of the puzzle. Google has given itself quite a task: It's attempting to overthrow the established multibillion-dollar mobile phone business model. In a presentation in early January, Google rolled out the Nexus One and a Web store where it is selling the phone directly to the consumer, in the hopes that one day it can create an open market for phones and carriers.

Google's Andy Rubin cautioned that day that revolutions take time, and that Google had to enter the game itself before it could start changing the rules. It's hard to tell whether Nexus One customers are opting for the unsubsidized version of the phone or the T-Mobile two-year contract version, as Google declined to release sales data on the Nexus One this week. So it's not clear yet whether consumers are interested in joining Google at the barricades. But if Google really wants to make this experiment work, it's going to have to do a much better job explaining to people why its approach is better.

For every mobile phone owner seething about two-year contracts and locked phones, there are lots of others who simply want to buy a phone that works from a name they trust while traipsing through the mall on a Saturday afternoon. Those people aren't stupid, and they aren't lemmings, they just don't want to deal with complexity.

Consider the largest problem Google has had to deal with in the first month of the Nexus One: a customer support system overwhelmed by early adopters seeking information about shipping delays and glitches. In a way, it's evidence of demand for the product and Google's business model. But in a more telling way, it's evidence of Google's failure to recognize that its typical "launch early, iterate constantly" strategy doesn't fly when people shell out money: they want what they bought to just work out of the box, and they want answers when it doesn't. And these are the early adopters, the people who are enthusiastic about technology and what Google's presence might mean to the mobile phone market.

Google's success in search has much to do with the fact that the company focused on making the entire experience as simple and as user-friendly as possible. For some reason, it forgot those lessons when it introduced its first consumer product that actually costs money.

To Google's credit, it is showing that it's willing to make changes when they are needed. The company is planning to hire someone to design a phone support system for the Nexus One that will probably be just as annoying as every other phone support system but will provide the valuable service of giving customers the opportunity to make themselves heard. And if Google can actually find a better way to provide technical support over the phone--a low bar for such an innovative company--it will have a real selling point for its Nexus One experiment.

But that brings up the second issue: is Google willing to sell the Nexus One? I'm not talking about the physical infrastructure required to collect payments and distribute inventory: I'm talking whether or not Google is willing or able to create emotional appeals designed to get people to change the way they buy phones.

Apple's success with the iPhone can be traced to two equally important factors: it created a great product, and made people want to buy it with clever marketing. Google and its partners have figured out the first part, but it's not clear that Google understands how to do the second part.

Are small text ads enough to build awareness of a game-changing sales strategy?

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google is trying: it's hard to miss the AdWords ads for the Nexus One if you've used Google in the past month. But while Google itself is testament to the efficacy of search advertising, search advertising alone is not enough to get a new concept like the Nexus One off the ground, not when Apple, Research in Motion, Palm, Samsung, HTC, and even Microsoft are bombarding consumers with advertising for their products. And that's before you even consider the marketing done by wireless carriers.

If Google really wants to change the way phones are sold, it's going to have to convince the public why. It's actually not that difficult a message to craft, but Google has to take that message to the people in a venue that's larger than a small box alongside search results: "You can't position a brand with keywords," said Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on her company's last earnings call, and while she has a vested interest in making that statement, it happens to be true.

However, this is a real problem for Google, which is still trying to spread Android far and wide with partners such as HTC, Motorola, Verizon, and others who like the way phones are sold at the moment. Google certainly has the resources to create a big marketing campaign, but Android partners for whom phones are their entire business--not an interesting sideline--may not be all that crazy about competing for air time against Nexus One.

And Google does not have much experience with advertising to the general public, if at all. It is involved in marketing programs for Android phones such as the Droid and MyTouch, but selling a concept is more difficult than selling a shiny phone.

Handicapping Google's Nexus One strategy this early is a little unfair. But Google will have to make some tough decisions in 2010: Does it attempt to reach its goal of changing the way phones are sold by aggressively promoting its vision while risking the alienation of its partners? Does it bow to reality and settle for making Android the best it can be in the current system, with the Nexus One and subsequent devices as rare concept cars designed to show off what Android can do, rather than mass-market products?

Google has a chance to do amazing things to the mobile phone market. But the first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it.

Deutsche Telekom is looking into an initial public offering that could lead to spinning off T-Mobile USA, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Thursday afternoon.

The newspaper reported that the German phone company has held talks with banks about underwriting the IPO. Unnamed sources in the story said the proceeds from the offer could be used to spin off the wireless carrier or fund its expansion in the U.S. market. The company is expected to decide over the next couple of months if it will have an IPO and how it would spend the cash.

Deutsche Telekom declined to comment for The Wall Street Journal article, and T-Mobile USA representatives said they can't comment on speculation or rumor.

T-Mobile USA is the fourth largest wireless operator in the U.S., and it has trailed far behind its national competitors, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel. It has also been late to the 3G market, and the operator, which acquired more spectrum in the Federal Communications Commission's AWS auction, is still building that network.

In the past few quarters, T-Mobile has been losing subscribers, while AT&T and Verizon Wireless have added millions of new customers.

Spinning off the business while allowing Deutsche Telekom to retain some control of T-Mobile USA seems like the most likely scenario, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Deutsche Telekom has long been rumored to be shopping around T-Mobile USA. But the company's prospects of a merger are slim. T-Mobile is a GSM carrier, and the only likely candidates for a merger do not use the same technology. Sprint Nextel, which had been rumored to be considering buying T-Mobile, uses CDMA. Smaller regional carriers MetroPCS and Leap Wireless also use CDMA. That would mean transitioning and combining those networks would be expensive.