Ready to POP

I've become a walking hotspot ...

Let's face it, we all hate to pay for stuff, especially when it feels like we're being overcharged. This happens especially in markets where pricing has not settled down yet, such as mobile data access plans. Rates on these things are nuts, obviously dictated by what some marketing department thinks the customer will bear rather than on the intrinsic value of the service.

Consider: I pay AT&T $20 a month for 300MB of data, and I usually use pretty close to that because I'm careful to do all my heavy downloading when I'm on WiFi. That works out to less than 7 cents per meg. But if I run a wee bit over I have to pay another $20 for another chunk of data I might not need. Effectively the price per meg could almost double. Make sense?

How about this: For an extra $10 a month I could get 3 gigabytes of data, or ten times the amount I get now. The price per meg then would be only 1 cent, or 1/7 what I pay for the smaller amount. This is intended to make the $30 plan hard to refuse, but sheesh, couldn't there be something in between? Or couldn't that low end be a bit more generous?

On top of this there is an arbitrary restriction on my service that prevents me from sharing my cellular data with another device through tethering (where the cell phone becomes a mobile hotspot). Now, if they're charging me by how much I consume, and if I'm already using as much as I'm paying for, why should they care if I divided my usage between two or more devices? Obviously, it's just a way to force me to buy a separate data plan for each device, or to upgrade my service.

How much more? Turns out it is a minimum of $40 for a 1 gig shared data plan, PLUS an extra $55 for each additional device. So instead of $20 or $30 per month I'd be paying $95 just for the ability to share access with my tablet. That's 9.5 cents per megabyte, or 35% more than my current plan, and 850% more than an individual 3 gig plan. Any rhyme or reason there?

Alternatively I could buy a separate data plan just for my tablet (assuming it had 4G built in, which it doesn't) for $50 per month for 5 gigs, or a penny per megabyte. But that would be in addition to the data plan for my phone, so I'd still be paying a total of $70 a month. And it might be way more data than I would need or use. Any wonder why it makes me crazy? Any wonder why people jailbreak their phones and install software that bypasses the restrictions? (Not me, of course.)

But hey, this is Capitalism, and market forces are beginning to work. When I heard about FreedomPOP's plan to give out 500 megs per month of free 4G mobile data I jumped all over it. All you do is send them a "refundable deposit" for one of their access devices and agree to pay reasonable overage charges of 1 or 2 cents per megabyte. If you want more you can buy it for amounts that make sense rather than nonsense, and use it with any number of other devices. Now we're talking!

I paid about $100 for a tiny (2.5in/6.5cm square) mobile access point that you can slip in a pocket and which will support up to 8 WiFi connections. I wouldn't expect very good performance with a maximum load, but it works just fine for my phone and tablet. If I use it for a year with no overages I will have paid about $8 per month for my 500 megs, or about 1.7 cents per meg. If I use it for three years the price will fall to less than half a cent per meg, or less than 10 cents per day. At prices like that I will gladly pay overages if only to encourage them to keep up the good work!

Got data leftover? FreedomPOP even lets you share it with friends who have their own FreedomPOP accounts. An inspired piece of viral marketing, but generous nonetheless. Try giving away your unused megabytes on [insert vendor of your choice].

The only drawback to the service is the spotty coverage map in my area, because FreedomPOP uses the Clearwire cellular network, but in the corridor between my home and office I'm gold. Clearwire has now been bought up by Sprint Nextel, so assuming they don't decide to drop FreedomPOP altogether, the coverage is likely to improve.

My only other concern is that the access point is so small it would be easy to lose. I misplaced it once already, forgetting that I had plugged it into my USB port to charge. But on the road it's easy to tuck away into a pocket of my computer bag where it's pretty secure. Now I just have to remember to turn it off when I'm not using it to preserve the battery. I did a dry run the first week, leaving it on during my commute to and from work even if I wasn't using it, and the charge lasted nearly 5 days.

Time will tell if this new "freemium" price model will hold up or will be imitated. It seems to be doing all right for services like Dropbox. And with both Google and the government talking about free super-WiFi over the whole country, I think it's safe to say that eventually the current draconian price structures of the phone companies will go the way of Compuserve dialup rates.

Remember those? It cost $6 per hour for a 300 baud connection, at which speed you could read text as fast as it downloaded across the screen. For $12 an hour you could upgrade to 1200 baud -- 4x the data for 2x the price. Now we get 3MB download speeds for as little as a dollar a day. And what ever happened to Compuserve anyway?

[Yet another price model is offered by Karma using similar hardware. They offer flat pricing per megabyte with no contract and no monthly allotment. Just pay as you go for what you use. The advantage there is that you never leave unused data on the table -- it just rolls over. A good fit if you need lots of time one month and little the next.]

[In the short time since this was posted, FreedomPOP has added a new level of service, possibly in response to the Karma plan. For 3.49 per month you can now get data rollover, accumulating up to 20 gigs from months where you use less than your allotment and using it when you need it. Obviously prices are still in a state of flux.]

My Device Family Tree

How many do YOU own ...?

For a long while now I've had multiple computers in my household, most of them mine. But until recently they were always some form of desktop or laptop connected through a router. Now I find I've accumulated a family of devices, each one smaller than the last, that seem to specialize in the jobs that each does best. They all feed from the same pool of online files and services, but each fills a niche based on the size of images it can display and the level of operating system it runs.

The Dell desktop with its 22" screen is still my platform of choice for web development. I can boot it into LinuxMint or Windows 7, and the ample display size is great for keeping multiple windows open. It has enough horsepower to run Windows XP in a virtual machine with VirtualBox while simultaneously playing music and browsing the Internet. For spreadsheets, document formatting, web pages, graphic design, and games, this is the place to be. It's a year and a half old with "only" a dual core processor, but 8 gigs of RAM keeps it going smooth as silk.

Next up is its little brother, an Acer netbook, which shows how much can be crammed into a much smaller package. This also boots my choice of LinuxMint or Windows 8 (I know, but I had to put it somewhere), and offers a more comfy way to answer email and do writing while ensconced on the couch. The 10" screen is easy to read while still compact, and the whole package weighs in at just 2 pounds, probably less than the power supply on the Dell. It also sports a dual core chip, though its 2 gigs of memory is only adequate, and graphics are just meh -- OK for games as long as they don't require 3D acceleration. Tiny and underpowered as it is, this gadget still outperforms the desktop system I had 10 years ago, and does it on batteries.

The newest size slot belongs to the Nexus 7 tablet, which is doing its best to displace my now archaic Sony as my ebook reader of choice. There is still something comforting about the solid e-paper display of the Sony and a battery that lasts for weeks instead of draining while you watch. But when it comes to magazines and news feeds like Flipboard, not to mention Facebook and Google+ updates, not to mention Youtube and Netflix, it's pretty clear where the future lies. We just have to trust that in the fullness of time Modern Science will deliver a combination of screen and battery technology that will give us the best of both worlds.

And when deciding whether to use the netbook or tablet, it's easy: am I going to be typing or reading? For us inveterate touch typists there is no substitute for real keys. I've tried a bluetooth keyboard with the Nexus and it feels OK, but if I'm going to put the keyboard on my lap where do I put the tablet? The netbook is a typewriter, amplified. And the tablet is a book, electrified. Simple as that.

"But don't forget me!" says my Android phone. (It's an HTC Vivid running 4.0.) After all, the phone started all this by showing me how much could be done in the tiniest of packages. It's my second one, but this is the one with a big enough screen and adequate resources to let me read books and watch movies. True, the 4.5" screen is kind of tight for those things, but I always have it with me in my pocket and it's always ready to whip out and go to work.

Now it seems as if the Nexus tablet is just a grown up version of the phone. It still runs Android with its wealth of apps and beautiful integration with Google's wide world of services, but now with a form factor that feels like a book and performs like a personal TV. Dare we imagine that a desktop version is in our futures? Rumor has it that Google is about to merge Android with its Chrome operating system to put the final desktop nail in the Microsoft coffin. Or if you don't care for that scenario, how about integrating a tablet with your home entertainment system? It can be done even now if you can assemble all the bits and pieces, but it's easy to imagine it becoming a seamless standard.

On the other end of the scale, we're about to see even smaller devices coming online. Pebble and Apple will be selling smart watches that we can expect to take on more and more of the things phones are doing. So instead of pocketing them we'll be wearing them. And then there's Google Glass which is pioneering the kinds of user interface we will need when the devices grow too small for a touchpad. The lower limit, it seems, has yet to be reached. And the upper one, too.