Blog Posts: Wireless

It’s been just about two years since Verizon announced it was planning to end unlimited data plans for smartphone users. And in 2011, Verizon made good on its promise, getting rid of unlimited plans for new customers and forcing them to pay at least $30 a month for limited plans.

Meanwhile, existing users with unlimited data have been able to “grandfather” in their special plans, carrying them over when they upgrade to new devices. But this week Verizon is dreaming again, this time of a future in which everyone must surrender their grandfathered plans.

Two new videos document the dangers of an approaching wireless-cable monster known in some circles as “Verizilla.”

This monster would rise out of a toxic deal between Verizon and a cable cabal of Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable. The group wants to divvy up the wireless Internet market and get rid of any meaningful competition among the companies involved.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: The wireless industry is a big racket.

Here’s one reason why: AT&T and Verizon are slowing down — or throttling — Internet access on smartphones, supposedly to manage congestion on their networks. Yet a new study supports what many of us have been saying all along: These companies aren’t throttling to save bandwidth.

They’re doing it to rip us off.

The first-ever study on mobile donors found that charitable donations made via cellphones have jumped in recent years. The report from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Pew Research Center analyzed the “Text to Haiti” campaign that followed the devastating 2010 earthquake.

The study shows that most text donors contributed on impulse as news about the campaign spread via friend networks. “Three quarters of these donors contributed using their phones on the same day they heard about the campaign,” the study notes, “and a similar number say they typically make text message donations without conducting much in-depth research beforehand.”