June 27, 2008
As the nation's fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile tries to one-up its competitors by being innovative and cheap.
Here's another example of that spirit: T-Mobile has a new add-on service called HotSpot @ Home, which allows your mobile phone to serve as your home phone.
HotSpot works with a special router that puts your calls through via an Internet connection. The call quality is nearly perfect. The cost? A mere $10/month add-on to your T-Mobile service - probably much less than you're still paying for a landline.
A whopping 97% of people who signed up for HotSpot went on to disconnect their landline and drop their monopoly local phone companies. That's very telling about how effective HotSpot can be. Another fringe benefit is that you no longer have any need for 2 phone numbers!
But beware, there's a serious danger if you disconnect your landline: You'll save hundreds of dollars every year! There's almost no reason left to have a home phone from a monopoly local company in today's world. Clark thinks about his 19 year old who certainly won't ever have a landline in her life.
Finally, Clark's Internet access glossary is now live.
June 19, 2008
Being a cheap guy, Clark is often willing to take a chance on a wide variety of thrifty things -- including dubious tech services that soon fail and go into his company graveyard!
The latest service that Clark's been excited about for some time is MagicJack.com. A scant $40 buys you 1 year of unlimited local/long distance VoIP phone service. An Internet connection is required for the hardware -- a jack that you plug into your computer's USB port to start making calls. Subsequent years of service cost around $20 annually.
Clark is going to Scandinavia in late summer and will use MagicJack with the free Internet connection in his hotel rooms to call back to the United States -- all for nada.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that MagicJack is the fastest growing phone company in the United States. It's supposedly racking up 9,000 new customers everyday. That blows away the traditional cell phone carriers who are probably losing that many customers on a daily basis!
MagicJack's business model is a complete mystery to Clark. He long ago expected them to be in the graveyard, but he hopes they stay around.
One caveat: We do receive customer service complaints about MagicJack on the show. But Clark is enamored with this service that works out to be about $3/month! It's unbelievable.
June 18, 2008
Clark recently told you about Time Warner's experimental metering plan for Internet service in Texas. They'll be charging their Lone Star State customers per kilobyte. Now AT&T has announced that such a plan is nearly inevitable for them.
What's going on here?
... More
June 4, 2008
AT&T has just settled (and T-Mobile is facing) a lawsuit over 3rd party aggregator charges. These are the stray charges on your bill for Internet services, ringtones or what have you. Your carrier gets a split of money from the crooks that post these bogus charges on your statement, a practice now being called "off decking."
... More
June 2, 2008
The Department of Energy is now saying that wind power could represent 20% or more of our future energy needs.
... More
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