Separating Data

FreedomPop launched one of the country’s first all IP mobile services this month. Consequently, it has to deal with an interesting problem facing all future IP mobile operators: If all your traffic is running over the same data connection, how do you distinguish between voice, SMS and internet traffic so you can charge accordingly? The company is solving that problem by working with Telespree, which provides a cloud-based monetization service for carriers. Basically Telespree is picking apart all of the CDMA and WiMAX (and eventually LTE) data traffic that traverses FreedomPop’s phones. That way it knows not to count a VoIP call or an IP SMS message against a customer bucket of megabytes. Telespree can also track that voice and data traffic – translating kilobytes into minutes and messages consumed – which allows customers to monitor their data, voice and SMS usage. As an all VoIP provider, FreedomPop can layer things like video chat, group messaging and conference calling on top of standard voice and messaging much more easily than any carrier.

Primitive Uses of Technology

Have you ever owned a $600 three inch mirror? Of course you do, just check your pocket. Thanks to the front facing camera, the initial use being video chatting, we now have an efficient way to check if there is something in our teeth. Be honest, how many times have you actually used that camera for video conferencing? Now on to voicemails and the incredible inefficiency of them. It would just be faster to send a text message or an email than go through the whole process of leaving it and the other person taking the time to listen to it. Every single web site that we go to is also very insistent that we pick unique passwords each time. Which means to use the Internet as directed, we're required to remember dozens of unique, mixed-case, symbol-containing gibber-words, a feat that is more or less impossible for our caveman brains to manage. So we end up reusing the passwords. We all do it, do not deny it, because otherwise there would not be all those wonderful articles out about it. Think about it.