11 Nov 09 Google Christmas Gift: Free WIFI to Holiday Travelers
This Christmas season Google will be offering free WIFI at select airports across the United States. While my home base- San Diego airport has free WIFI already, it is quite slow! I’m excited to try out Google’s new offering and see how the results turn out. I’m guessing this will be a big hit for everyone with a laptop, wifi-enabled mobile phone, or net-book users. There are currently 47 airports participating in the Google Free WIFI Christmas Gift and they can be viewed here: http://www.freeholidaywifi.com/
From a business perspective, I believe it makes sense for Google (or any provider) to offer Free WIFI or WIFI paid by sponsorship/advertising year-round. How things are now, we show up two hours early to a flight and sit around bored, pretending to read a book, or jamming out to our iphone. We scroll through our Microsoft Outlook inbox and attempt to find things to do. But with no live internet connection, it’s tough! Being connected at a high-speed at the airport will be a nice step for business productivity, consumer efficiency, and in general, the traveler’s happiness and morale. I’m going to estimate that by Spring of 2010, most airports and airplanes offer free WIFI. Currently Virgin and Delta Airlines are offering Free WIFI on a temporary basis, but I believe it will become fully active permanently. There has got to be a way for these companies to provide free WIFI to the end user and still make it worthwhile for them. I’m thinking a sponsorship or advertising model will suffice. Just having ‘Free WIFI powered by Google’ signs at an airport should be enough payback to them for the costs of free WIFI.
I’d be interested to hear my reader’s thoughts on this? What do you think about this whole Free WIFI vs. Paid WIFI battle that is going on now at airports, coffee shops, and public access points across the world? Do you have a proposed solution?
Tags: Communication, Mobile Internet, Technology, WIFI
22 Jun 09 T-Mobile Makes Mobile Internet Affordable
I’ve had T-Mobile for my mobile phone provider for over 5 years now. Previously, I experimented with Verizon and Cingular (AT&T). Hands down, T-Mobile has the best overall package. When evaluating a cell phone provider, or any business for that matter, I look for value and performance.
Top Importance for Me:
Coverage/Reliability
Price
Customer Service
Problem Resolution
Technology
My T-Mobile Experience
T-Mobile is 5 stars across the board. Whenever I’ve had an issue I can be assured when calling the customer service line, I’ll be taken care of professionally and promptly. There’s no long hold times or robotic support agents at T-Mobile. The customer service is what keeps me a customer. They are always willing to help you with any problem, and are quite creative in finding the best resolutions. They even support ‘non-supported’ phones. Ask for the ‘Tier 3 Data Support’ and you’ll be transferred up the ladder to the best of the best phone support techies who can answer any phone compatibility questions, regardless if T-Mobile sells it or not!
‘Unlimited Minutes’ Cell Phone Plan
Now on to the best part- pricing! T-Mobile recently started offering an unlimited nationwide minutes plan for their ‘loyal customers.’ While there were not any explicit requirements to meet this need, they were rather choosy the first 2 months of this offering. Since then, it appears it is now a plan that can be obtained by anyone. So for just under 50 bucks a month you have unlimited phone calls to anywhere in the U.S. It’s a great price and most competitors charge over $70 for this.
Cheap Mobile Internet
On my plan I’ve always had the $19.99 all you can text feature. Previously, it would cost an additional $19.95 for unlimited internet access. I opted to just roll with the minutes and text features… until now! T-Mobile just launched a new preferred pricing plan for mobile internet. You can now take advantage of unlimited text AND mobile internet for $19.95. So I am only paying 5 bucks more a month and can now fully access the T-Mobile 3G Mobile Internet network. It is a rather fast internet connection and every month there seems to be new phones added to the 3G lineup. You of course can still access the ‘edge’ network for slower speeds, but yet still very reliable.
In Conclusion
I believe T-Mobile is the BEST cell phone provider in North America. I’ve had no issues with coverage or calls being dropped off. Their customer service is tremendous and I always feel like they’re willing to work with me to find the best solution to my problems. They always ‘make things right’ and are a pleasure to speak to on the phone. Now with the preferred pricing and excellent packages, I believe T-Mobile is hands down the leader in mobile communication.
Tags: Business, Communication, Mobile Internet, Technology
01 Jun 09 First Ever Link-Up Orange County a Success
Link-Up Orange County
I just got back from my first ever ‘Link-Up’ in Orange County, California. I came up with the idea after being on Linked In for some time and having great success in making online as well as offline contacts. I originally posted messages on the ‘groups’ section of two different Linked In Groups I am a member of. The summary of the message explained about the new group and it’s not a typical ‘networking group.’ In fact, this group is anything but one of those groups. Not to say that networking groups are all bad, but when I hear that word, it brings to mind people wearing nametags passing out business cards and asking ’so… what do you do?’ before even getting to know the person. So I decided to come up with something more personal and down to earth in a format that promotes small groups so that we all can get plenty of talking time.
The 5 people who came out saw my message from various sources- Linked In group post, Twitter Tweet, and one referral from a friend. Considering the group’s focus on entrepreneurial thinking, innovation, technology, internet, and sales & marketing; I think we were off to the right track since Rob (one of the members) actually found me from a twitter tweet! Our discussion started at 8:00pm promptly and we all spent the first 20 minutes getting to know each other and learning that we all came from diverse backgrounds. For example, Mike and Peter are accountants/consultants that focus on a very specific niche of small business owners, Rob is a software developer who’s worked for IBM and is now actively involved in a tech startup that is involved in creating a sales & marketing platform, and Behrouz is a programmer developer with an interest in tapping a specific internet market and wants to provide solutions that help people monetize various sources of content on the web. I myself have an extremely diverse path ranging from technology sales to working for a Wall Street firm to starting my own business to working at a startup and innovating new e-commerce sites. I think the diversity is what made our group unique but the technology discussion is what kept us interested.
We are planning on setting up regular weekly meetings on Monday nights from 8:00pm-9:30pm in Laguna Hills, California in Orange County- just in between Los Angeles and San Diego. The next meeting will be on Monday, June 8′th at 8:00pm in Laguna Hills. Please feel free to contact me about it or join our Linked In Link-Up group here. Our group focus will be to discuss entrepreneurship, technology, sales & marketing strategy, and help each other establish new businesses, grow existing businesses, and share how technology & the internet is helping us to solve problems, provide solutions, and help run our businesses with more automation and simplicity.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Internet, Linked In, Marketing Strategy, Orange County, Technology, Twitter
13 May 09 My Blog Objectives
My objective for this blog is to provide insight and valuable information to readers interested in Marketing Strategy, Sales & Negotiation Strategy, and how to utilize emerging technology & the internet to make your business more effective. Much of my writing will come from personal & business experiences in Marketing, Sales, Entrepreneurship, and communicating with people. I believe to really be successful in business, you have to have excellent communication skills. I also believe that even if you have a Master’s Degree, there’s still a lot more that can only be learned by getting your hands dirty, experimenting, taking educated risks, and working with people in ‘real-time.’ I’ll provide insightful recommendations & reviews of ‘must-read’ business books that have helped me immensely on my personal & business journeys. I’ll incorporate real stories of my experiences and include actionable items that you can use to learn from my past successes and failures.
Tags: Business Books, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Strategy, Negotiation, Sales, Technology
