USA based AT & T has announced that it will scrap the costs for sending messages overseas for customers on its Mobile Share and Mobile Share Value plans, which provide unlimited text, picture and video messages.

I have been asked some questions following the news that Wallaby has released the first native payment app for Google Glass last week.  This, I thought, was something that could be really interesting but alas I ended up being disappointed.  My first major issue is that it isn't really a payment app - its a retail / financial app but in this instance Wallaby for Glass does not allow you to make a payment and Glass does not become the mechanism for making that payment.  Perhaps it is an interim step - it recommends which of your cards linked to the Wallaby app will give you the best return/offer/reward but the consumer still pays by card.  In the future perhaps it will be possible to pay with your phone or Glass but this is not what it shows in demos yet.

The way to look at generations of mobile wireless baseband technologies is by understanding the different dimension of spectrum the technology accesses.  Multiple standards can be built around a new generation of mobile baseband technology.  Looking at arbitrary groupings and arbitrary performance requirements is useful for spectrum alignment and adherance to the upper end of performance goals, but viewing the way the technology leverages spectrum leads to the simplest and clearest way to look at generations.

Last week saw an interesting strategic partnership being announced in the IoT space, as Cisco and AGT International  said that they had agreed to form a “Smart City Global Strategic Alliance” to drive future smart-city deployments and innovation.

Israel is currently home to one of the most active cybersecurity start-up markets in the world. The scene is certainly more energetic than anything coming out of Europe or Asia Pacific at the moment, and is rivalling US dynamism. The number of dedicated cybersecurity firms to come out of the region has been staggering: over 100 in 2013. Alongside more entrenched Israeli players such as Check Point and Cyber Ark, some notably successful start-up companies have emerged. Established players in the North American market are snapping up Israeli companies; Trusteer (acquired by IBM), ThetaRay (acquired by GE), Najavo Systems (acquired by Salesforce), NDS (acquired by Cisco), Versafe and Magnifire (both acquired by F5) have seen successful exits in the U.S. market.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had been promising for many years to make a decision on a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) mandate in the US before the end of 2013. It missed that deadline, but on February 3^rd 2014 it announced it will soon start work on “….a regulatory proposal that would require V2V devices in new vehicles in a future year…”.  Work on legislation will start following the publication in the next coming weeks of a research report summarizing findings of the V2V trial that took place in Ann Arbor in 2013 with close to 3000 vehicles involved.   The full text of the press release can be found here.

On January 6, 2014, China's Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) issued a new policy to further open its value-added telecommunications services (VAS) to foreign investors. The enterprises that operate the regulated VAS business should register in Shanghai's free trade zone (FTZ), and the service facilities should also locate in the area. The relaxed foreign ownership currently only applies to the enterprises that meet the requirements.

It is interesting to note the similarities between how Wi-Fi and cellular technologies are developing.  In a very general, rough way, the following are comparable:

One of the leading M2M/IoT verticals, Smart Home is a field that we at ABI Research are covering extensively under our dedicated research service. My colleagues who specialize in the subject matter are currently working hard to analyze what Google’s acquisition of Nest, for no less than US$3.2 billion, will mean for the sector’s market dynamics. Meanwhile, I’ll give in the following my take on what it may mean for Google itself, as well as its IoT strategy.