In an exclusive article posted earlier this week by Engadget Verizon appears to be following AT&T in heading toward tiered data plans in an effort to conserve bandwidth and bring in more revenue. The fact of the matter is Smartphones (particularly the Droid) on Verizon and other cell carrier networks are consuming much more bandwidth as users continue to use smart phones to search the web, view YouTube videos, socialize and so much more.

The carrier networks face bottlenecks which require massive influxes of funding to increase and it won’t be long before you will be hard pressed to find any carrier offering a free unlimited plan anymore. Verizon will be launching its new 4G LTE network and wants to make sure they don’t get into the same boat as Sprint is likely to be in with its 4G network. From the start the new Verizon network is likely to have tiered data plans with unlimited data not being an option.

One potential solution I see is to make Smartphone capable of using a wireless network much like the way the iPod Touch does now when one is available for Internet access, though of course this could lead to security issues which probably prevents this from being a popular solution. One thing these cell phone companies have to do is provide easier ways for people to instantly keep track of their data usage and even have alerts that can be setup at predefined usage limits so that users can’t be struck by hidden charges and have cell phone bills many times higher than what they would have expected.

Unfortunately with the major cell carriers looking to do away with Unlimited Data Plans this will stifle real time live streaming television and movies on mobile devices as watching online video consumes more bandwidth than almost any other activity on a smart phone.

You can read the detailed and full Engadget Article here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/verizon-switching-to-atandt-style-limited-data-plans-later-this-mo/

-Dragon Blogger

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Disclaimer: This was a sponsored post, commissioned by Jamster.com by way of PayPerPost. I was compensated to talk about ringtones and music mobile phones. The words and opinions are mine and mine alone.

I was browsing the Jamster ringtones list for this review and was thinking about some ringtones that I might want to download for my phone. Currently my ringtone is set to Paranoid by Black Sabbath, but I also have “Man of Constant Sorrow” by the Soggy Bottom Boys that plays whenever I get paged.

My wife has her ringtone set to Katy Perry “Hot and Cold” when I call her phone, she sets my specific ringtone to this because I can never make up my mind whenever she asks me a question like where we want to go to eat or when I change my mind on something I want to do.

Ironically I had not even heard about the snuggle song from Schnuffel until I did research on Jamster but it sounds like the type of music my kids would like at their age.

I think mobile phones will eventually completely replace the portable music player completely in the near future, there are just too many devices that you have to carry as it is and combining your phone/mp3 player into the same device reduces the amount of items you need to carry with you.

But mobile phones should have an application that can take any full mp3 song and set it to a ringtone (it auto plays the first say 22 seconds or you can type in the minute/second start and end times that serve as the ring tone).

So what do you all have set as your ringtone right now on your phones? Curious to know how many of you are ringing to Justin Bieber or Jay-Z out there.

-Dragon Blogger

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We are on the global verge where there will be no need for land line phones and most of the world will be using mobile devices as their permanent communication method. There won’t be minutes and you will be able to make any number of calls or receive for a set fee every month.

buzzirk mobile announces a plan coming soon that starts long this path, where for just around $80 dollars a month you have unlimited mobile phone incoming and outgoing calls to continental USA and Canada with no minutes and one flat rate.

zer01 announces Buzzirk Mobile which not only has unlimited minutes but unlimited Internet browsing and access for your phone for the same price. So be sure to check it out to see if it is something you are interested in.

-Dragon Blogger

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I should note that when I was looking for a way to download free ringtones for my blackberry and my LG cell phones, I was trying basically to find a service that was easy to use and had minimal cost involved. I think ring tones are kind of like your personality, I know my spouse has separate ring tones for each of her friends, text messages, voice messages and very heavily leverages ring tones. I want to use ring tones also to identify specific people by ring, differentiate between rings and just stand out. My company issues corporate cell phones and eight people I know have the same generic ring and it really confuses people when one of our phones go off when we are in the same room.

So I found that the site called Best in Cell Phones offers free Verizon ringtones which is the service provider that I have, so I decided to dig more and give it a try. I did note the following, my wife had ordered ring tones directly from Verizon and pays almost $2 per ring tone, which is expensive and can add up. There is no fee for ring tones from this site, however Verizon does charge $9.99 per month for the service, but you get 15 free ring tone credits. If you do the math this makes it 66 cents per ring tone, which is 1/3 of the cost of just purchasing a ring tone through the Verizon store.

The same applies to if you want to use this service to obtain free Sprint ringtones where the same fee applies. But you also get 15 free ring tones per month which equates to the same 66 cents per ring tone.

If you are looking for free at&t ringtones then you get 20 poly ring tones for the same $9.99 carrier fee which gives you an even better deal of 49 cents per ring tone which was the best price per ring tone out of all the service carriers that I could find.

Finally for those of you who have T-Mobile and are looking for free t-mobile ringtones they have the same rate of $9.99 for 15 ring tones.

Now, I do want to say you can get 1 free ring tone without having to sign up for any of these offers and any of the sites above list instructions on how to get your complimentary ring tone, and how to cancel the service if you don’t want to keep it. You can try and stop anytime, so if you want to just get 16 ring tones one month, you can end the service and start it up again six months later if you want another 15 ring tones or so. You don’t have to pay each month you may not need ring tones.

You also do not need any credit card at all, the charge goes into your normal cell phone provider phone bill, so you don’t need to have to worry about applying for credit, or having to put your credit card on file anywhere. You can start the service by registering your phone and using a PIN that is sent via text message to your phone as well. You can stop the service by texting a code word to a specific number as well.

All categories of music and types of ring tones are supported including, Rock, R&B, Movies, Jazz, Country, Hits, Pop…etc In addition you can get ring tones that are full mp3, or midi, for phones that are older and can’t support true tone sounds. In addition to Ring Tones, you can also sign up for other multimedia services.

I feel that the services provided by this company are a better deal than going directly through your cell phone provider and I encourage anyone out there looking to amass a collection of ring tones to give this service a try.

-Dragon Blogger

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