No big surprise.  After several months of media speculation, unlimited data is no more.  In the battle of network-thirsty-smartphones vs. capacity-constrained-data-networks, the score is Smartphones 1 Networks 0. 

Today’s AT&T announcement strikes me as more of a pre-emptive than reactive move, though.  If currently 35% of subscribers already use more than 200MB of data per month, that number is only going to skyrocket over the next 24 months as smartphones outsell feature phones in the US and become the most common access point to the internet. 

Clearly i’m now going to pay by volume of usage.  But an unanswered question is what happens to service quality as the network load continues to hockey stick?  Do I end up paying by volume and desired quality?

As the consumer dynamic evolves, two implications emerge for the enterprise as well:

• Real-time visibility into voice, SMS, and data usage becomes essential to prevent serious bill shock from overages
• Service quality monitoring becomes the best pro-active mechanism to protect the user experience, especially if network quality starts to erode

However, one of the major challenges companies will face is that you can’t control something you can’t see.  Most users have no idea how many KB a web page download is or how much traffic answering those 50 emails generates.  Without awareness, behaviors don’t change.

So in the age of variable pricing, visibility becomes paramount at both the individual and the corporate level.  Hold up a mirror and show me what I’m doing so I can make sure it ain’t crazy.

The FCC is following the lead of the EU and getting serious about data charges. There is a good article in GigaOm about this: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/11/fcc-seek-rules-to-avoid-24000-mobile-bills

The goal is to limit mobile data “bill shock” for consumers. I think of it as going for a 300-mile road-trip, pulling into the gas station, and realizing that gas is now $100 per gallon. If I’d known, I would have taken the train.

The basic issue is that consumers have no idea how much data is used when they browse a website, or stream a video, or download an email attachment.

We have two market forces crashing into each other:

• User appetite for mobile data grows and grows as smartphones become better and better at browsing and apps
• Operators get more and more concerned about the network infrastructure investments necessary to maintain service quality and keep up with this crazy hockey stick of usage

The “easy” solution is to charge, charge, charge, which constantly shocks the user and inhibits the expansion of the mobile internet.  But to paraphrase the FCC: “You can’t control what you can’t see.”  Real-time visibility into usage is the first step to both rational use and rational pricing.

But what about businesses?  Don’t they face the same issues?  Don’t they also need the same real-time visibility?

The answer is “yes”, their needs are similar.  Each company’s IT or telecom group will need to put its own strategy together on how to rationally manage mobile usage and expense as-it-happens.  

After all, the bill shock of my 300-mile road trip is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of getting it wrong at the corporate level.

Was just commenting on a post over at http://theemf.org/ about the constantly increasing complexity of mobile in the enterprise, especially given the recent introductions of iPad and iPhone OS 4.0. This is both the beauty and challenge of our industry. From the user’s perspective, the bar for mobile capabilities keeps getting raised and the experience keeps getting better and/or different.

The challenge is that enterprises aren’t used to moving at this kind of consumer-speed. It reminds me of that old car commercial (I think it was Lincoln from the 70’s) where a jeweler is sitting in the back seat trying to cut a diamond manually while the car speeds along at 70 mph.

The “jeweler” is the IT department and we (i.e. the folks building tools and platforms to help) are the car suspension. And it’s going to take a heck of a suspension to avoid the potholes!

2010 is shaping up to be the most fascinating and unpredictable year we’ve ever had in enterprise mobility.

We’ve been doing app development at work for iPad, so I was really excited yesterday to check it out on launch day. But the most interesting thing happened when I brought the iPad home. My two oldest kids, 12 and 5 years old, gravitated to it like moths to a flame. The “wow, this is cool” fascination that lit up their eyes really stuck with me.

On one hand, both have access to a home computer, a laptop, and an iPod Touch, so it’s not that they haven’t experienced a touch interface or lots of apps before. But the special sauce here was simply (and most powerfully) the form factor – small enough to be easily portable and large enough to do the things they care about – games, youtube, surfing, and messaging. Suddenly computing was available in every room and on every surface (couch, bed, floor, desk) of our house.

I watched my two little prognosticators of the future and realized that, in their minds, our home computer was now officially obsolete.

Enterprise Mobile announced a hosted management service today for smartphones in the enterprise (built on MobileIron).  http://bit.ly/ag8Y7u

There are a couple of interesting forces at work here.  Gartner published research last December predicting “by 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets.” The hypothesis is that the confluence of cloud computing, business process outsourcing, and the movement of smartphone/laptop ownership to end-users will result in a radically different IT model for a fifth of the business population.  That’s actually staggering in its implications – IT teams get smaller, cap ex shrinks, custom development becomes obsolete, and end-user support models are truly virtual.  It feels like smartphones are going to be at the front end of this shift.

Last year, IT departments spent a lot of time improving efficiency so they could continue to provide quality services in spite of shrinking budgets.  The rapid adoption of smartphones during that time was great for end-users but in some ways the worse possible thing for IT, which now had to deal with a whole new raft of security, cost, and usability issues without any additional resources to throw at it.

That’s why I think the Enterprise Mobile announcement is really interesting.  There is huge variability across enterprises in both capabilities and mindset for managing smartphones.  Some want it on-premise, some want to outsource it.  Some want just email, some want apps. But they all want choice because the smartphone market is moving far too fast to be predictable.

IT can’t do it alone.  Smartphones are coming in from all directions, many times driven by end-users.  And I haven’t seen many IT departments in 2009 flush with new resources to handle this influx as well as they would wish.  Employees need to share the responsibility with IT to manage security, cost, and mobile apps.  Think of it as self-governance guided by IT policy.

The basic notion of Cooperative Mobility is that most users want to do the right thing but don’t have the data or the tools to always make the right decision.  Cost control is a good example.  Everyone has their horror story of the $5,000 international roaming bill.  Usually it’s not voice – it’s data, because the user just didn’t know how much data traffic email and browsing actually generates.  In almost all instances, real-time visibility would have dramatically cut usage. 

But which behaviors can be realistically changed and which require tighter control from IT?  And what is the cost trade-off?  If the premise of Cooperative Mobility is correct, striking that balance will reduce IT costs, scale IT effectiveness and actually increase user satisfaction by pushing more visibility and control to the perimeter.