iPhone Billing Problems

You should have seen my face on Christmas day when I unwrapped my new iPhone 3G. I spent the next couple weeks glued to the screen getting it set up just the way I wanted it. One such customization was to change the number that had been assigned to me to a new phone number. I made sure not to activate the default number and went to the At&t store on December 27th to get the new number set up.

After a month of blissful usage my problems began about a week ago. I got a bill from At&t for the number I had never used. When I called customer service the agent gave me a bit of a hard time until I pointed out there was no usage for the number so clearly it wasn't active. Then I got an SMS saying that I had racked up a big text bill. I called to straighten that out and the agent discovered that my request for the 200 text plan had never gone through. Today I logged in to my At&t account to find a bill for $1,269 which had auto charged to my credit card. Apparently, when they changed my number they didn't set it up on the iPhone data plan, which is odd because the agent didn't mention that when she added my text plan.

I think the interesting thing is that my iPhone bill was well over $1,000 for one month of data usage at $.01 per kb. When I was using the MediaNet plan for my old phone I didn't have a sense for how much heavy mobile internet usage would cost me so I just went with the unlimited plan. Of course, it is so much easier to use the iPhone data but I it just goes to show that At&t has decided to set up their pricing so that the unlimited plan (text and data) is really the only practical option.

After over 45 minutes of talking to customer service and a $1,200 credit card charge it would have been nice if they threw me a few extra minutes for free. All the agents were friendly enough but considering I'm accruing interest on my card it would have been nice to get a little compensation. A few years back when I was on T-Mobile they would always give some extra minutes if you had a major customer service issue.

Boston Mobile Investment

Along with the list of Boston area mobile startups, Xconomy (a great site covering Boston and Seattle startups) also posted an analysis of the total mobile investment which has been steadily growing. Interestingly, the 2008 investments were fairly steady despite economic issues.

"MoMoBoston didn’t detect any dropoff in mobile investment as 2008 progressed: the total of $562 million was invested in fairly even chunks across the four quarters, with a slight spike in the second quarter...With over half of a billion dollars invested in 2008 and 180 very diverse companies operating locally, Boston has quietly developed into the worldwide hub of mobile and wireless.”

Boston Mobile Companies

Xconomy, with the help of Mobile Monday, just posted a list of all the mobile startups in the Boston area. It is pretty cool to see Boston gaining a reputation in the mobile community. Some of the more notable statups include Skyhook, uLocate, and JumpTap. Here is the full list.

Mapping in the Web 2.0 World

As part of my MBA internship I had the opportunity to research mapping and location based technologies like wifi, GPS, UWB, and cell tower triangulation. Through the combination of these technologies there is an opportunity to guide people from the outdoors through an indoor environment to their destination.

My internship project work focused on thinking about how people navigate large indoor spaces like casinos or malls. It seems like almost everyone who has been to Las Vegas has spent a significant amount of time trying to find their way out of a casino or just trying to find what you're looking for in the casino. Although GPS is continuing to make headway as a location based technology outdoors, an indoor solution is still lacking (despite that fact that the technology exists). Further, most mapping / navigation applications continue to think of search in a 2D world rather than in the full context of the user's space, time, and situation. By combining customer information from a loyalty program (or other data source), time, and location there is an opportunity to drive behavior. I belive that this will be the future of search and location technologies.

I hope to post some of my location based services (LBS) research soon. Until then check out the video archive from the Web 2.0 Mapping and Social Networks meetup group. The group meets regularly in Mountain View, CA. Also, if you want to check out some cool ultra-wideband technology Ubisense has an interesting solution. It is a bit cost prohibitive right now but when used in conjunction with other lower cost technologies it has great potential.

BU Tech Strategy Presentation

I'm finally getting around to posting some of my work to Slideshare. Below is my team's winning presentation from the 2007 Boston University Tech Strategy Case Competition. Each team had 24 hours to address the subject, “What is the best way for Motorola to win in seamless delivery of media and entertainment?” We recommended that Motorola leverage their position in the set-top box market to enable a P2P media delivery system. Check out the presentation. I'd love to hear your comments.

Motorola's Strategy for Media Distribution

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: box set-top)

Mobile Start-Up Presentation

Slideshare is a great site for all kinds of useful information (once you sort through the junk). Check out the mobile presentation I recently found. Also, you can find a number of my presentations there.

The Mobile Start-Up Ecosystem - Rudy De Waele

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia startup)

An Open Platform for Mobile Application Development

As my MBA experience comes to an end it seems like a good time to post some of the project work I've done over the last two years. One of my main areas of focus has been mobile technology. This semester I took a class called Winning in Technology Markets which used System Dynamics as a framework for tech strategy. My team project was an evaluation of an open platform strategy for the Japanese cell phone company NTT DoCoMo. Here is our presentation deck. If I get the chance I will also post the full analysis.

View Upload your own

The Future of Mobile

The BU Tech Strategy Case competition is now a few weeks past but I haven't been able to stop thinking about my team's proposal. We proposed a new platform based business model for Vodafone with Ericsson (competition sponsor) as a strategic partner. Unfortunately, we didn't make it beyond the first round (more details later).

I sat in on the presentations of the four finalists. For the most part these presentations were high level type consulting reports that advocated moving to a mobile broadband world. It was disappointing to realize that the competition sponsors just weren't ready for an innovative idea like ours. On the upside I'm starting to realize that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Check out this great blog post and discussion from one of my favorite blogs, Telco 2.o. To quote from that post:

Then you have to ask: “Don’t we need a new business model here, in parallel with the 4G technical developments?” The answer is of course, yes, and we explained why to NGMN.org in detail over a year ago on this blog. But, of course, we’ve had a deafening silence from the tecchies about this (“Not
our problem!”).

New BlackBerry 8800 Announced

MIT Sloan Innovation Club partner Research In Motion is set to launch their new BlackBerry 8800 on February 21st. The device will be available through the new AT&T and will be the first BlackBerry to have built-in GPS. In addition, the 8800 incorporates trackball navigation, a multimedia player, and Push To Talk. Members of the Innovation Club have been testing two different BlackBerry models for the past year. Unfortunately, I was not one of the chosen few but hopefully it was worth the wait and I will get my hands on one of the 8800s. Check out the RIM website for all the specs.

RIM Co-CEO and Founder, Mike Lazaridis spoke at Sloan last week as part of the Dean’s Innovative Leader Series. Members of the Innovation Club had the opportunity to have lunch with Mr. Lazaridis and hear more about the company’s current strategy. Check back soon for video of the speech.