We all have credit cards, debit cards, passwords and other stuff we’d love to keep secure someway, somehow. OneSafe for all of the iOS devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – can do just that.

Lunabee Pte Ltd is proud to announce the release and immediate availability of oneSafe app, a reliable and secure password manager and data vault that securely stores confidential information relating to credit cards, bank accounts, logins as well as various types of documents and images. With a great interface and functionality, the powerful and feature-rich application is truly the place to store anything private or in need of high security.

OneSafe delivers a broad range of possibilities, enabling users to securely store passwords and logins, bank account numbers, loyalty cards, access codes, IDs and may more. The app protects the sensitive information using 256-bit AES encryption and locks the data behind a four-digit unlock code, visual pattern or an alphanumeric code. With unique browser technology, oneSafe automatically logs users into websites where they used those passwords. Ready-made templates are designed to enter the details and keep them in order. The data can be organized by categories, marked as favorite and easily searched.

The guys over at Lunabee have crafted OneSafe to be as easy to use and secure as you can be on your iOS device with an easy to use and remember pattern or alphanumeric code as well as browser integration for ease of automatic sign-ins.

Best of all, it’s free. But if you want additional capacity, you will have to purchase that via an in-app purchase.

[ Links: OneSafe via iTunes Music Store, OneSafe ]

First cable companies insisted that people canceling TV service weren’t real. Then, as companies began noticing the last two quarters that people were actually canceling TV service due to cost, they began insisting those consumers really don’t matter all that much (which is only true when looking at the relatively massive size of some companies). The reality is that you can’t continue to impose rate hikes twice a year and not see some consumer response; the cable industry just doesn’t care because they feel these consumers are little more than a statistical blip.

The seriousness with which cable companies take consumer concerns about high prices is reflected in the way they continue to gleefully impose rate hikes on not only cable TV but DVR rentals and other services. When they do try their hand at the unfamiliar idea of lowering prices, the end result is often somewhat insulting, like Time Warner Cable’s new entry level cable tiers that offer no consumer value and are loaded with restrictions like the inability to bundle it with additional services, or even use a DVR.

Following in Time Warner Cable’s footsteps, Charter is illustrating what they think about cord cutters and those struggling financially, by sending out notices saying they’ll be hiking the price of, well, everything:

effective with your January Statement pricing will be adjusted for TV Install fees: New Primary Outlet Installation and Reconnection will be adjusted from $29.99 to $39.00; Change of Service Special Trip from $23.62 to $30.00; Additional Outlet with Initial Install from $9.87 to $9.99; Additional Outlet with Special Trip from $29.86 to $39.00; Labor Charge (formerly Hourly Service Charge) from $34.85 to $39.00; Inside Wire Service Call from $35.00 to $45.00; Ancillary Equipment Install with Initial Install from $5.99 to $9.99 and Ancillary Equipment Install with Special Trip from $27.15 to $35.00.

Public Access Fee will change from $0.52 to $0.55, Franchise Fee will change from $1. 13 to $1.17. Basic Service Tier from $12. 85 to $16.21 an increase of $3.36; Expanded Service Tier from $48.14 to $44.78 a decrease of (-$3.36). Customers in a promotion will not see this immediate price change; however, new pricing will apply at the end of your promotional period.

While Charter jacked up the price of essentially everything, they did reduce the price of their “Expanded Service” tier from $48.14 to $44.78. However, they actually increased the price of their entry-level “Basic” service tier $12.85 to $16.21. Why? As Charter customers in our forums correctly note, Charter was seeing more customers downgrading to their cheapest TV tier due to the economy, so they raised the price and lowered the price of the next level tier in the hopes they’d upgrade. Cable’s borderline disdain for cash-strapped customers couldn’t be any more clear, and it will be a historical cornerstone when the story of the inevitable (but glacial) Internet video (r)evolution is told.

Link to the original article…

With Comcast and NBC’s immense lobbying firepower, there’s virtually no chance their merger will be denied by regulators and while there will be some conditions, recent history suggests the conditions may only give a quick nod to substantive consumer protections. According to the Wall Street Journal however, these conditions will be “significant” focused largely on preventing Comcast from withholding, or threatening to withhold, NBC Universal’s programming from competitors. The Journal also claims that the FCC is considering imposing some kind of network neutrality requirements on Comcast’s network:

The FCC is looking at all parts of Comcast and NBC Universal’s combined online-video distribution chain for ways Comcast could promote content over its rivals. The agency is considering imposing a “net neutrality” condition on Comcast’s Internet network, banning it from deliberately slowing or blocking legal traffic. FCC staff members are meeting twice a week with commission Chairman Julius Genachowski about the deal and have set an internal deadline of circulating proposed conditions by mid-December, according to a person familiar with the review.

Given the contentiousness of network neutrality and the FCC’s seeming unwillingness to seriously tackle this issue, any neutrality language will likely be very vague and focused on simple transparency if it even survives the final cut at the FCC. According to the Journal, final DOJ approval could come within weeks, though Comcast is apparently kicking back at any proposed conditions that would cover Internet video.

Link to the original article…

According to the latest J.D. Power and Associates Residential Television Service Satisfaction study, consumers are “notably less satisfied” with TV services than last year. That isn’t surprising given the relentless and often bi-annual rate hikes imposed by satellite, telcoTV and cable TV providers, which resulted in new and notable cord cutting last quarter. According to the study, Customer satisfaction with the cost of television service averaged 541 out of 1,000 in 2010, down 14 points from 555 in 2009.

The study measured satisfaction with TV services in four regions (East, West, North Central, South). AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS ranked highest among TV providers, though the cable companies ironically rank higher on residential phone service.

Overall, customers continue to be annoyed with price hikes, which are courtesy of the endless dance of death between broadcasters (who continually hike programming costs) and TV operators (who pass these costs on to consumers along side hikes and new fees of their own). Consumer annoyance has been amplified by a sour economy, and mirroring recent concerns from the investment sector, JD Power notes that these hikes can’t continue indefinitely:

“It’s apparent…that TV providers must better communicate their price-value proposition, as customers are increasingly voicing irritation with the amount of their monthly bill. Seventy-four percent of customers who say they definitely or probably will change TV providers in the next year cite price as a major reason to switch.”

Consumers (for now) continue to pay for services despite these hikes, which is obviously good news for TV providers. But despite changing state laws to ease telcoTV entry into the sector (many times at the cost of consumer protections, local rights, and increased deployment), TV price reductions promised by lobbyists never arrived. Carriers instead engage in non-price competition, and focus on creating the illusion of value through added services that are often half-assed (see AT&T’s Hulu clone, for example).

The TV sector is begging for disruption and the entry of inexpensive, simple, a la carte Internet video options. There’s an endless flood of articles insisting that Internet video isn’t a threat, but that’s largely thanks to the fact that broadcasters are constricting TV streaming licensing for fear of cannibalizing TV revenues, resulting in limited alternatives for consumers. If these endless carriage disputes continue, cable operators may eventually balk, and broadcasters may open their eyes to alternative delivery opportunities.

Link to the original article…

For some time we’ve been tracking how Verizon has been socking customers with a $1.99 data access fee on many phones which was incurred by users even if the phone was off or the battery was dead. Even users who had data access on their phones blocked were socked by the fee given that the message sent to users to tell them they couldn’t get data consumed 0.06 kilobytes of data resulting in a $1.99 data fee.

The fee was first exposed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer last year. It only gained the FCC’s attention after David Pogue at the NY Times posted a column featuring a Verizon insider who claimed Verizon was aware of the glitch but was too in love with the millions in additional revenue it generated to do anything about it.

Last December, the FCC began sniffing around the fee in their trademark faux-tough usual way, sending a letter requesting that Verizon explain themselves. Amazingly, despite employee leaks, thousands of impacted customers, multiple press reports, and the fact Verizon was already giving out refunds for the problem Verizon told the FCC the problem wasn’t happening:

Usage fees are not charged when a customer simply launches the Internet browser and lands on the Verizon Wireless Mobile Web homepage, which is the default setting.

The FCC apparently found this explanation sufficient and the issue quieted down. Over the weekend however, Verizon issued a press statement claiming they were going to be refunding consumers because of a billing glitch resulting in an estimated 15 million users being billed for data use when no data use was happening:

As we reviewed customer accounts, we discovered that over the past several years approximately 15 million customers who did not have data plans were billed for data sessions on their phones that they did not initiate. These customers would normally have been billed at the standard rate of $1.99 per megabyte for any data they chose to access from their phones. The majority of the data sessions involved minor data exchanges caused by software built into their phones; others included accessing certain web links, which should not have incurred charges. We have addressed these issues to avoid unintended data charges in the future.

According to Verizon, “in most cases” the overbilling resulted in charges of $2-$6, but you can assume many customers paid considerably more than that. While it’s nice to see Verizon finally pony up to the mistake, the Cleveland Plain Dealer was covering this story in early 2009, meaning it took Verizon more than a year and a half to finally identify and acknowledge a problem that was generating massive additional revenue.

So on to the math. Assuming Verizon is right and it was only fifteen million users, multiply those fifteen million users times $1.99 a month (at least) for the past several years and you’ll get quite an impressive total. The 50-90 million dollars we’re seeing estimated as Verizon’s payout here may be the deal of the century for Verizon.

In an alternate universe where the Times didn’t generate publicity and an FCC letter by piggybacking on the work of Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Teresa Dixon Murray — would Verizon have noticed and corrected a billing problem generating them tens of millions in additional monthly revenue? Did Verizon notice the billing problems and simply decide to not try very hard to resolve them? Do we have a tough regulatory agency on the beat willing to investigate further?

Link to the original article…

As noted the other day, Charter Communications has decided to add a new $1 “Broadcast TV Surcharge” to user bills, in order to offset the cost of network affiliates demanding higher carriage rates. Despite being simply the cost of doing business, the company is tacking the fee below the line to keep the advertised rate the same.

Worse perhaps, Charter tells Stop The Cap that “Charter Price Guarantee” and contract customers (who are supposed to have their rates locked) will also see the hike:

A Charter representative we contacted claimed the company will impose the fee on all customers, including those on contract, because of a clause in the terms and conditions which says, “The guaranteed price does not include the cost of installation and equipment, any applicable franchise fees, taxes or late fees, or costs for other ancillary services that you may order.”

Except one user e-mails us their latest bill with a notification of the new fee, and it claims contract customers and price guarantee customers won’t be impacted at least until their contract is up. We’ve reached out to Charter to clear this up but have a feeling Charter misspoke, given that promising customers a fixed rate then imposing a rate hike disguised as a below the line fee would be valuable fodder for class action attorneys.

Burying the cost of business in below the line fees so they can jack up consumer bills (but leave advertised rates the same) is bad enough.

Link to the original article…

It has been interesting watching Blockbuster video adapt to the broadband age, with the company seemingly not trying very hard, either out of fear of cannibalizing their brick and mortar revenue, or just a general fear of losing control. Early efforts to mirror Netflix’s success at broadband video delivery have seemed relatively lackluster, and the company’s CEO, when announcing such broadband initiatives, seems to almost expect them to fail.

Rumors of an impending bankruptcy have been around for a while, but a Blockbuster filing is now expected in September.

Link to the original article…

It seems like roughly once a week now that AT&T executives inform everyone that there needs to be a change in wireless broadband pricing – and by change they really mean you’ll soon be paying more money for wireless data. Carrier executives and investors want all users paying more for data as smartphones and open networks erode VoIP and voice minute revenues, though the carrier likes to pretend the changes are necessary because current (very profitable) pricing isn’t sustainable. Speaking on the company’s earnings conference call yesterday, CFO Richard Lidner again hinted at the looming change:

…you’re dealing with a situation where when you look at your customer base, even customers that are using similar devices, there s huge disparity in the amount of data that they use and the amount of capacity they consume. And so when you look at all of those things as an industry I think it will influence how in the future the pricing models develop.

And as an industry what the industry has to do is develop models that are understandable by customers, that customers you know can understand and live with, and at the same time is fair to customers in terms of the amount of a somewhat limited resource that they’re consuming. And so that’s kind of the whole thing on data pricing and it will I suspect evolve as we go forward in the industry and it ll evolve as applications and devices continue to evolve and data traffic continues to grow.

Again, while AT&T continues to hint at the fact they’d like some kind of pure per-byte billing model (which many people would be fine with), what carriers actually wind up implementing are pricing models where all users are funneled toward higher prices. If AT&T introduced pricing that really was based on usage – the vast majority of their subscribers would wind up with lower bills, which of course they don’t want. At this point we wish AT&T would stop talking about it and introduce their dream pricing model so we can see exactly what the hell they keep hinting at (and prepare to take out that second mortgage if necessary).

Link to the original article…

AT&T is once again dropping hints that the carrier wants to change (read: increase) wireless data pricing. Many investors have been pressuring the company to ditch the $30 unlimited iPhone data plan and instead replace it with some kind of metered billing model. That’s largely because as carriers begin to open their networks to push IM clients and mobile VoIP, they’ll be losing a lot of money on voice and SMS. The only way to counter those losses will be to charge more money for mobile data. Enter AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who this week tells Reuters the changes will be coming soon:

Stephenson expects changes in how the wireless industry prices its mobile data services going forward, with heavy data users being charged more. Smartphone users currently pay a monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data. “For the industry, we’ll progressively move toward more of what I call variable pricing so the heavy (use) consumers will pay more than the lower consumers,” Stephenson said.

What Stephenson calls “variable pricing” is confused by many to mean per-byte billing. While the idea of only paying for what you use sounds great to those not paying attention, the plans AT&T and Verizon actually wind up implementing are very carefully crafted to drive most user bills ever higher. Verizon for instance now offers users the option of paying either $9.95 for a phone data plan with a 25MB cap (20 cents per additional MB, 125 MB maximum), or $30 for “unlimited” (which actually means 5 GB a month) service. This is in addition to SMS, voice, and other monthly fees.

These plans really aren’t about making “heavy users” pay more, they’re about getting everybody to pay more. Since most users consume much more than 25 MB per month, they’ll all wind up upgrading to the more expensive plan in the belief it offers a better consumer value. But suddenly, here you are paying more than $100 a month for voice, data and SMS plan when you’re really not a particularly heavy user. Most users are somewhere around 200 MB a month, though you’ll note the absence of a $20, 300 MB plan.

Meanwhile, you’ve got AT&T and Verizon also now requiring that everybody have an SMS and data plan on their phone — whether they actually use data or not. What’s designed to look like value and choice is in most cases the exact opposite. When thinking of 3G pricing, picture a giant invisible funnel that propels users toward one inevitable outcome: paying more money.

Whatever pricing emerges, eventually users will realize they want to connect multiple devices to these 3G and 4G networks without having to pay a subscription fee for each and every device. While some people think the $15 for 250 MB a month or $30 for “unlimited” 3G pricing of the iPad is a “great” deal, most people simply aren’t going to want to pay yet another monthly fee just for iPad bandwidth after shelling out for both home and wireless connections. Amazingly enough AT&T agrees, Stephenson saying he sees the iPad as a largely Wi-Fi device as a result

“My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly “Wi-Fi driven product.”

Even the company that’s providing the iPad’s 3G functionality doesn’t think you’re willing to pony up the extra cash, which is saying something. Whatever changes AT&T has in store for their bandwidth pricing, make absolutely no mistake that the end result is going to be you paying more money for mobile bandwidth, regardless of whether you use 100 MB a month, or four gigabytes a month. It’s absolutely essential to carrier execs and investors eager to compensate for lost voice and SMS revenues. Anybody claiming otherwise is either selling you something or not reading the fine print.

Link to the original article…

Back in 2007, NBC lawyer Rick Cotton issued a statement to the FCC demanding they force ISPs to take action against piracy for the sake of the American corn farmer. According to Cotton, piracy was becoming such a menace it was keeping people out of theaters, in turn resulting in less popcorn sold. Cotton’s logic was back on display this week as the attorney spoke in Washington at a press roundtable outlining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s intellectual property agenda. This time, Cotton equated the trading of copyrighted movies and TV shows to a “tidal wave” and “virus” while seemingly embracing ISP filters:

“The ISP community is coming to that recognition,” he said. “We need them to be authorized to take those measures. The specific techniques they use are the second part.” When asked about whether filtering web content would violate web users’ privacy, he said, “Does a virus filter violate privacy?”

With a Comcast acquisition of NBC in process, not too surprisingly consumer groups quickly slapped Cotton in a statement claiming his comments were “unconstitutional and anti-consumer,” while noting that trying to install filters that could detect fair use of a copyrighted file would be impossible. Public Knowledge also didn’t much like Cotton’s virus refernece:

“It is simply ridiculous on any number of levels to compare filtering for copyright to viruses. ISPs are technically able to tell what is a harmful virus and what is not, unlike the situation for copyright content, which may be used legally. Viruses are a danger to the ISPs network, and it is in their best interest to protect against them.”

Cotton subsequently denied to Multichannel News that he was even calling for ISP filters, and that neither Cotton nor the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center he chairs were “addressing the question of what technique specifically should be adopted” by ISPs. As most people know, filters are expensive, depend on hardware that can’t always identify content properly, raise privacy issues, and most users would find a way around them anyway.

Instead, what the entertainment industry and ISPs have hashed out in private is a model whereby P2P users are threatened with account disconnection. As has been the case for years, the entertainment industry’s intelligence gathering outfits identify users trading copyright files, then send a DMCA warning letter to the ISP, who then forwards that letter to the users. What’s changed lately is that ISPs have agreed to subsequently threaten those users with account termination, though as we’ve noted in some cases the ISPs appear to be bluffing – wanting to keep the entertainment industry off their back, but not lose paying customers.

Link to the original article…

Broadbandreports.com recently noted how ISPs are seriously considering bundling subscription music services like Spotify (or creating their own) for a small additional, optional fee. Spotify, which offers users streaming access to music free with ads or for a monthly fee, is one way the recording industry can shake off the impacts of piracy without resorting to suing children and grandmothers. But Warner Music apparently is having none of it, and according to the BBC, no longer wants to offer its music catalog up for use by free streaming services:

Warner chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr said: “Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed. “The ‘get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price’ strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.”

One, Bronfman is pretending that he actually has a choice in the matter, when the labels can either adapt to what their audience wants, or go out of business. Two, Bronfman has ingeniously decided to kill off one of the major user alternatives to music piracy – simply because the avenue doesn’t allow Warner to charge the kind of high music prices they’ve grown to love. Mike Masnick over at Techdirt puts it this way:

You don’t compete with “free” by taking your ball and going home. You don’t compete with “free” by pretending that old artificial scarcities are coming back after the wall has been broken down. You don’t compete with “free” by suing customers. You don’t compete with “free” by shunning those who have business models that work. You compete with free by offering a better product and a better business model. WMG is choosing to go in the other direction. Best of luck to them…

Bingo. Couldn’t have been said better. Warner, RIAA… they all need a wakeup call and see that the “old way” doesn’t work well in these new times.

Link to the original article…

Fierce Wireless asks a number of vendors who make a living off of billing systems their thoughts on metered billing in the wireless space, and unsurprisingly is told by each one that a shift to metered billing is “inevitable” in wireless.

The article is full of the kind of talking points we’re used to from an industry that desperately wants to foist higher per megabyte fees on consumers. All major talking points are represented, from the “inevitability” of higher prices and the idea that consumers using your product is a bad thing, to the idea that heavy users “subsidize” lighter users:

“I think that it is inevitable for the industry to move toward this, otherwise the business model is not sustainable,” said Rafi Kretchmer product marketing manager for revenue management at billing systems vendor Amdocs. He noted that low-volume data users are essentially subsidizing heavy data customers. “In order to address this conflict, they realize that to not leave money on the table, they must differentiate the pricing.”

Ignoring for a moment that the wireless sector is already metered (which the article tries to) this idea that a shift from flat-rate to metered billing is inevitable because of either capacity or financial reasons is one of the broadband industry’s favorite, repeated mantras. Unfortunately, it’s also not true. Harold Feld found himself annoyed by the Fierce Wireless report and offered up a counterpoint of his own, with points usually not brought up in trade magazine reports that are frequently busy telling carriers what they want to hear, but not necessarily telling the truth:

The cost structure of building and maintaining the network is marked by high fixed cost and low marginal cost. That is to say, the vast majority of cost comes from building the network itself, regardless of how many customers use it. Once the network is built, the actual marginal cost of each customer is fairly low. Even an intense user does not consume very much of the network resources (the supposed bandwidth hog is a problem only because network capacity is ridiculously oversold). The argument that the majority of subscribers subsidizes the few bandwidth hogs is simply rubbish. The question is simply how obscenely high a rate of return can the network operator squeeze out of each customer.

And in wireless, the rate of return is rather obscene, when you figure Verizon recently decided that caps as low as 25 MB make sense in 2010. Of course all the talk about protecting the poor, “subsidizing” light users in nonsense. If you examine Verizon Wireless’s plan the ideal carrier pricing model isn’t about pure pay-per-use, it’s all about relentlessly pushing all users toward higher prices no matter how much they use. Not too surprisingly, ISPs, ISP investors, and the billing and support companies who’ll make a killing off of these reality-challenged pricing models think that’s just a peachy idea…

Link to the original article…