No Contract Cell Phones Consumer Report 2010

In a survey performed by major US cell phone carriers, contract plans still dominate market with steady 90% and no contract cell phones plans take the remaining 10%. While this seems like very small percentage, it has shown large increase compared to survey results from previous years.

Compared to customers with monthly plans, no contract users made fewer calls and rarely use data services. While this can be explained with simpler needs or lower expectation, lets keep in mind that no contract service providers usually have rather steep prices for high speed data services or messaging plans compared to customers with monthly plans or customers with long term ties. Overall data shows that no contract users are more satisfied with the service compared to users who have monthly plans or have long term agreements.

This service is more suitable for lighter use, but survey shows that no contract cell phone options are expanding rapidly and new services and options become available more frequently. No contract data services along with the phone is a good example, becoming more popular. Carriers that specialize in no contract services - Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile are offering more smartphone models that can be purchased without signing a long term contract. Verizon and T-Mobile are also following these footsteps and offering to their customers almost all their smartphone range with the no contract option. Many big name cellular network carriers offer their no contract cell phones under different brands, for example Sprint's Boost and Virgin.

No contract phones usually cost full price because there is no subsidy from the cell network carrier, but with the contract a portion of the fees are a lease payment for the phone itself and, in case of breakup, there are usually substantial fees. This is not the case with no contract option and users can expect lower monthly bills because of that.

Editors note

While survey shows that 90% of the US market is still dominated by contract phone plans, there is no doubt that no contract plans will become more popular in US and will take up a big chunk from existing market. I have reason to believe this because of the market tendencies in Europe, which is, by no secret, slightly ahead of US in cellular communications both with cheaper prices and wider options to choose from. European cell phone market shows that no contract cell phone is a popular choice for kids, elderly people and is often used as a tool to protect privacy.

HTC Wildfire S Is the Best Mid-Range Smartphone You Can Buy

It is pretty well-known fact that the HTC is probably the best mid-range smartphone that money can buy today and it has established this sort of reputation by introducing a number of new features into the segment. However, it is not the perfect phone by any means since it had a lot of problems. Most important of them was the resolution of the touch screen display, which was not suitable for the phone to be used for web browsing and movie watching. It has been rectified in the new Wildfire S that has been recently announced by the company.

It will not be having any ground-breaking features in terms of the design or in terms of the screen size. Both remain very similar to the ones that have already been seen in the predecessor, but the resolution of the screen has been improved to a whopping 320 by 480 pixels. This is going to make a major difference to the quality of the content that is going to be displayed by this touch screen display. It will be offering the gorilla glass display and all other features in a similar manner to the predecessor, but the other big change will be coming in the form of the operating system. While the previous HTC did not have the latest operating system, the Wildfire S will be coming with the Android 2.3 operating system that is going to make a significant difference to the way that the phone is going to be used.

In order to supplement this powerful operating system, the HTC S will be coming with a slightly improved processor. Previously, the HTC wildfire came with a 528 MHz processor, but the HTC Wildfire S will be coming with the 600 MHz processor that is going to make a slight difference to the way that the phone is going to be used. The HTC Wildfire S will be coming with 512 MB of RAM that is going to be extremely useful since the processor is not the one that is found in the high-end smartphones. Instead, it is going to be a processor that is used in the mid-range smartphone and without the services of a sufficient amount of RAM, the HTC Wildfire S will be struggling to handle all the applications.

However, due to the usage of this amount of RAM, the HTC Wildfire S will be facing no issues with regard to running the Android 2.3 version and also the numerous applications available for this operating system. The HTC Wildfire S will be offering the five megapixel autofocus camera for taking images, which does seem to be on the right side of things when it comes to taking videos as well. The HTC Wildfire S is a mobile phone that was launched in the UK markets only recently by HTC and it is going to be available in contract options from just under ? 230. This does not represent a significant increase from the previous version.

Old Cell Phone: What to Do?

Cell phones are being introduced here and there. A lot of companies are definitely generating millions and millions of dollars thanks to cell phone sales. They release a lot of mobile phones with all the fantastic features that being "updated" with the gadgets and gizmos is almost like having a new phone every month.

As fun as it is to have the hottest phone from the stores, the common question is what to do with the old ones. Being outdated or even obsolete may mean that not everyone would be interested to buy it as a second hand or used item. The owner has a lot of other options when it comes to old phones. Here are some:

1. Use it as back up phone.

One will never know when to use a phone. Sure, the new one may have super awesome features that could put the old phone to shame. However, what will happen if the new phone malfunctions, gets lost or goes to waste? The best choice is of course the old phone. It can even come in handy if the new phone drains its battery.

2. Sell it online as mobile phone

Instead of keeping it in drawers to meet up with dust bunnies of all sizes, why not sell it online? Sure, asking am officemate or a friend to buy a phone may not have a good chance of selling it but things are different when done online. There are a lot of sites that can evaluate the condition of the phone and offer a price to buy it. To make it easier for the owners, they just have the unit shipped to them and the payments be deposited a few days later.

3. Find a recycling company

Do not dispose old batteries and phones. Phones contain rechargeable batteries which operate using heavy metals and other harmful elements locked inside. Storing it for a long time may cause these batteries to leak which could cause adverse effects to humans and environment. The best way to prevent this is to have a recycling company take the phone and put it for recycling and proper disposal. Some even offer incentives and buy it per pound.

Do not throw away old cell phones. With just the right method of disposing it, it can be easily converted into quick cash just to sell cell phones. At the same time, it can also help save the world.

Mobile Backhaul Revolution

The increasing demand for bandwidth combined with new mobile equipment like smart phones, tablets, and laptops is creating new challenges for mobile operators. As more and more customers are adopting these devices and using them for a growing number of services, we are witnessing an unprecedented growth in the mobile telecommunication market. The smart phone applications market is booming, with hundreds of new apps presented to the market every day creating an explosive demand for bandwidth. According to new figures from Juniper Research, the amount of mobile data traffic generated by smart phones, feature phones and tablets will exceed 14,000 Petabytes by 2015, equivalent to 18 billion movie downloads or 3 trillion music tracks.

But while mobile traffic is going up, revenue is going down. Data now accounts for about 33 percent of the average revenue per user (ARPU) for U.S. operators. To minimize the cost of delivering these services and improve ARPU - while providing the bandwidth scalability to meet future needs - mobile providers must re-evaluate their networks.

The mobile data surge, together with the LTE and LTE-Advance standards, represent many changes both in technology and in the business models and opportunities for operators and providers in this domain. To meet these bandwidth demands, mobile providers have to increase the bandwidth they deliver to every cell tower.

Using legacy backhaul base stations based on PDH, ATM or SONET would require that the number of lines be increased - creating a proportional cost increase thereby reducing the ARPU realized by the mobile operation even further. Packet-based base stations, on the other hand, could handle the increase in traffic, without the need to add costly leased lines.

This may mean that the mobile operator will need to lease dark fiber from the wholesale providers who already have a footprint in the service area, clearly creating a huge opportunity for utilities, wholesale providers and even the incumbent fixed broadband operators to provide the infrastructure that mobile operators will require for mobile backhaul.

The need for higher bandwidth is also driving mobile providers to look at femto and pico cells as part of their backhaul strategy. These are smaller base stations have been designed to support smaller areas, allowing the mobile operator to offload the larger cell traffic and offer higher bandwidth to areas with high density user areas such as shopping malls, convention centers and transportation centers.

Mobile Backhaul Challenges and Solutions

While using Ethernet for mobile backhaul is a cost-effective and scalable solution, it is not without its challenges.

Timing and Synchronization

As a packet-based technology Ethernet was not designed to support the timing requirements of a circuit-based technology like TDM. Therefore clock synchronization poses a major challenge for backhauling cell traffic. To further complicate matters, these radio access networks generally contain multiple generations of cellular technologies from different vendors, each based on a different standard. As a result, one of the most important requirements for backhaul solutions is to be able to interconnect multiple generations of mobile technology within a site and across multiple cell sites, supporting multiple protocols over the same transport infrastructure.

Frequency synchronization is required for all mobile networks for accurate call handoff. LTE, 4G and WiMAX also require phase/time synchronization. There are several ways to maintain base station timing and synchronization using Ethernet. Among the schemes commonly found in this market are the following:

- IEEE 1588v2 (Precision Timing Protocol) is a packet-based protocol and is carried in-band with user traffic. It can support both frequency and phase synchronization. Devices in the path that do not support 1588v2 will transparently pass the protocol, which eliminates the need to replace these devices while allowing sync requirements to be met. However, without strict QoS policies applied to all devices in the path, it is susceptible to network congestion.

- Sync-E (based on ITU.T G.8261) is a physical layer technology and is not affected by network congestion. However it requires that every node in the path have hardware support for Sync-E. However, Sync-E does not support phase synchronization, so in order to support 4G technologies, Synch-E will need to be supplemented by 1588v2 or some other mechanism to provide the phase synchronization requirement.