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Entries Tagged as 'Mobile UC'

Will UC Channels “Train” Business Users?

Most discussions about UC enabled applications are rightly focused on implementing and integrating communication and business application technologies. Such concerns include exploiting public and private “cloud” based services, as well as integrating legacy telephony systems and business applications. Clearly, the complexities involved will demand external expertise on an ongoing basis as software based changes constantly evolve and BYOD policies allow business users to utilize mobile devices of their own choosing.

I have noticed that many articles on the new responsibilities of traditional telephony VARs will have to be expanded to extend their old roles in training users for desktop phones to using desktop “softphones” and a variety of UC enabled smartphones and tablets. But it is not just person-to-person contacts that are involved, but also communication enabled business process (CEBP) applications that will come into the picture. This will be particularly true for desktop applications that are adapted to mobility or “mobile apps.”

As organizations cross over into UC enabled mobility, end users will have to be guided into the interface options that they will encounter with a variety of applications. The question is how will that be done and who will have what responsibility is supporting such education?

Obviously, from an end user’s perspective,  there are two sides of the coin here. There is the basic, person-to-person communication usage, including all forms of communication that UC enables, and then there are the business applications that are UC enabled. As has been pointed out by many, the experts in communication integration will be the most likely candidates to educate end users, especially when “cloud” services are involved. Such education should not require manual training classes, because it can be handled via online applications and “help desk” services.

When it comes to mobile and desktop UC enabled business applications that have been integrated by solution channels, the education of end users can be accomplished in the same manner, except that more responsibility will fall to the the business application developers who design the user interfaces. This is where partnerships will come into play between channels and application developers.

Because UC enabled business applications will become a huge opportunity for hosted service providers, channels, and application developers, the question of how and who will be responsible for supporting end users is very important. The technology vendors are relying on both their own resources for consultative and managed services, as well as using channel expertise. This will be an issue that will be on the table for discussion at UC Strategies annual conference for consultants and VAR channels.

Check it out to qualify for an invitation to this unique event:

UC Summit

You might want to follow the posts of the UC team on this website for more details on what is involved with implementing UC enabled applications.

Do Smart Phone Users Need “Smart Communications” or “Smart Applications?”

I have constantly been looking for a term that would be understandable to consumers and end users who don’t really understand or care about technology and infrastructures, just what it does for them (UC-U). So, while it is the “user experience” and user interfaces that come into play here, that doesn’t explain anything about the flexibility that UC-enabled applications gain from the technology.

As I have mentioned in the past, the “smart phone” became the flagship for UC in many ways. Not only did it bring greater convenience and contact accessibility to end users, but because it was multi-media, it also supported UC-enabled integrations for both communications and automated business applications (including “mobile apps”).  I thought that if consumers already understand what a smartphone does, they could then readily identify  that with UC capabilities. So, if we use terms like “smart communications” or “smart applications,” users would immediately recognize them as something that smartphones enabled and identify the benefits they get from UC-enablement.

So, I started Googling the Web for the term “smart communications” and found that most of the announcements came from a leading wireless services in the Philippines that calls itself “Smart Communications.” Needless to say, they sell a lot of smartphones and associated mobile services.

We can use the “smart” adjective at the application levels that UC-enablement can be applied to, e.g., CEBP and “mobile apps.” In particular, we can describe contact centers as being “smart”  when they handle any form of contact, inbound and outbound, and use contextual information to simplify the end user interface and minimize manual effort. For self-service online applications, voice commands can be used when desired, rather than error-prone keyed inputs, and application outputs can be visual rather than speech. Addresses for messaging or call initiation can come from online directory look ups or contextually from any document or message being viewed, rather than the contact initiator having to know this information beforehand.

I guess the bottom line for “smart” applications is that it lets end users do things easier, faster, and in any mode of user interface that a multi-modal mobile device provides. It lets applications be more responsive to the end users “on the go” who can’t spend much time doing things interactively. The desktop user interfaces for the same applications don’t really have to change much to meet the new demands of mobility, they just need mobile UI front ends for the different mobile devices being used.

However you look at UC flexibility, it is most useful for “smart” users who are getting more mobile all the time!

Thanksgiving Week Evokes Thoughts of Hospitality in Unified Communications

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged about the hospitality industry, although I always pay attention to the telephony infrastructure (Ok, the phones in the room and behind the front desk) wherever I stay. I’ve seen a lot. There is a lot of old Nortel out there, particularly as they had a hand hold in the hospitality industry early on, for example. But more and more I’m seeing newer, higher end phone sets in rooms, along with newer entertainment options as well.

Last July Mitel announced that the JW Marriott Indianapolis had selected and deployed Mitel’s Unified Communications solution based on its Freedom architecture. Mitel’s UC solution is a pure IP voice infrastructure spanning all 33 floors and over 1000 guest rooms, as well as the adjunct 104,000 square feet of convention space. The hotel has used this infrastructure to give guests new services not possible before, such as web-based information and other services on the phones in the rooms, as well as mobility options for guests.

When I was at the Cisco Collaboration Summit in Miami earlier this month I got to take part in a site visit of JW Marriott Marquis and Hotel Beaux Arts in Miami. This is a unique hotel from the perspective that it is a Marriott on the lower part, and an embedded smaller hotel on the 39th floor. It is also technologically unique as well. Cisco, along with partner Modcomp, used the Cisco Connected Hotels framework to combine 12 Cisco technologies to deliver guest services, including physical safety, Medianet, video and collaboration.

The hotel has the most pervasive and creative uses of video I’ve ever seen in a hotel.  Up in the ballroom, which can double as a basketball or tennis court, is the biggest video board in the world, at 450 feet, made up of 52 inch Cisco LCD Professional Series display boards. This screen is amazing and multi-use. A basketball team could show replays, corporate events could show video presentations, etc. I could think of all sorts of uses. What came to my mind were those embarrassing childhood videos that brides and grooms sometimes torture each other with at weddings. But Cisco took this idea farther by saying that guests could use video devices to record and stream video during or after the wedding/reception. I don’t know about this one.

The hotel has video signage throughout the building for guest services, Cisco IP phones with video-enabled screens, and a TelePresence concierge in the lobby. The latter is almost a test case on how to introduce TelePresence to the mass market. They have positioned the board at some distance away from registration. However, during peak hours when there can be a line, those in the back of the line could have the opportunity to interact with a life-size video concierge that can show them restaurants options, Google Maps, menus, etc. The hotel says that they will be placing a printer there shortly so that guests can print out things such as Google Maps and directions.

For guests, there are wired and wireless options, including being assigned a wireless IP phone in their room, which they can take with them throughout the property. Guests have the option of using TelePresence rooms for meetings, can also request a mobile video concierge so that they can interact with a concierge without leaving a meeting room.  Once in their rooms, guests have multiple options of services on the phones, and the hotel has used the same for targeted advertising to guests. For example, during a slow time in the spa, they might put an ad on the phone with a discount during a specific time period that the person can get by mentioning a code on the display, or perhaps get a free drink or appetizer in the restaurant.

Finally, Cisco also took too care with security by using Cisco Physical Access Control, and Cisco IP Video Surveillance technology, coupled with Cisco Emergency Responder for 911 calls. This was really a great hotel, and don’t even start me on how nice the rooms were. I didn’t want to leave.

 

 

Doctors Shouldn’t Text Orders? Try Mobile UC and CEBP

UC and CEBP Can Provide Fast, Secure Communications

Health care activities have long been recognized as a big target for UC flexibility, particularly for mobile end users and for personalized automated notifications. However, a recent announcement by the health care industry’s Joint Commission showed the potential for another way UC-enabled applications can play a key role for convenient and efficient contacts.

The Joint Commission stated that texting medical orders directly is not acceptable because of authentication and record keeping requirements. Needless to say, the convenience of using mobile smartphones and tablets would be limited. However, while person-to-person texting is prohibited, person-to-process-to-person should be acceptable, and that’s where Mobile UC flexibility and CEBP come into play.

The doctor who wishes to initiate a medical order can simply do so through a mobile app that first requires secure access and authentication, including a written signature or voice ID if necessary. The order can be input as speech or typed, and then becomes a text message that is then deliverable to authorized recipients, which can include hospitals, pharmacies, and the specific patient. The voice recording of an order is also useful for validating a record of the medical order.

The patient involved can be immediately notified and have access to a copy of an order to be aware of what will be done and to quickly follow up with timely usage of any medications involved.

Doesn’t that look like a multi-modal UC application to you?

UC Interoperability Responsibilities

UC Interoperability - Technology “Separation of Church, State, and End Users”

Unified Communications (UC)-enabled applications must be supported in various ways and “interoperability,” a loose term being used to describe a major challenge (see No Jiitter post by Fred Knight) in supporting UC’s operational growth. For many providers of UC applications and services, interoperability simply means getting old and new communications applications integrated to work together at various levels, including network access, application user interfaces, and endpoint device form factors and operating systems. However, every organization will also have to consider interoperability as a means of gracefully transitioning from the past to the future. This will not only be a challenge in transitioning operational communications technologies, but also a challenge to the future role of an organization in controlling access to both its information resources and its communications between people (internal staff, customers, and business partners).

Business communications (particularly voice telephony) are transitioning away from hardware-based, location-based technologies to “open” software and “virtual” applications that can more easily interoperate with each other. They are also shifting to application-driven real-time notifications and multimedia self-services rather than requiring person-to-person phone calls for real-time information access and delivery. Bottom line is that traditional requirements for enterprise communication control is expanding away from just the wired premise desktop to multimodal, mobile BYOD devices that will be primarily controlled by the individual end users through UC and shared for the many different contacts with other organizations that the individual end user has “business” relations with.

These technology shifts would suggest that much of yesterday’s real-time, voice-only desktop telephony requirements will be significantly reduced in favor of multimedia user interfaces, asynchronous forms of personalized contact, and real-time mobile notifications, with the option of “click-to-call/talk/video” connectivity based on accessibility and availability (presence). End users will be initiating voice conversations differently and managing responses to such contacts differently than traditional call management.

So, the basic question really is how will that transition take place from the perspective of enterprise technology? Will it shift (slowly or quickly) completely or partially (hybrid) to virtual cloud based IP network services that can satisfy application customization, management, and security needs? That’s where standards and interoperability become key and both the industry and the markets still have “one foot on land and one foot in the canoe!”

IBM Practicing What We Preach - Mobile BYOD For UC

The big news in business communications is that IBM is supporting its employees use of their own mobile devices (smartphones, tablets), while focusing on secure access to internal information. By the end of the this year, 100,000 IBM employees will be able to securely access IBM internal networks with their own devices and network services that will also be used for personal applications and entertainment (dual persona). In 2012, another 100,000 employees will also be BYOD enabled.

Employees will be paying for their own devices and will require loading IBM management software for security purposes. In addition, IBM will require passwords and use VPNs for access to information applications. Initially, IBM will provide contact and calendar access through its Lotus Traveler.

In addition to allowing employees to use public mobile apps, IBM will also provide approved third-party and internal apps from its Whirlwind app store, launched in late 2010.

IBM’s move to BYOD will expand the role of UC for its mobile users, enabling both person-to-person contact flexibility and CEBP notifications from time-sensitive applications. IBM’s BYOD policy  is setting an example for large organizations to migrate their legacy telephony business communications to a more cost efficient and productive virtual and mobile UC environment.

See article

UC Cutting Corners in the Contact Center

UC Short-circuiting Call Centers?

Although my wife doesn’t want to use a computer herself, she is very aware of using it to go online for information, book airline tickets, and exchange email, etc. So, I am now her personal secretary to do all those things for her. She is also a big “shopper,” always checking the local newspaper ads, but most also watching for deals on the TV shopping programs.

The other day she complained about the fact that one of the home shopping shows she was watching kept announcing that a product on sale was all sold out even before they showed it on the program. Buyers (customers) were seeing the announcements on line and placing their orders on line without getting into any phone line connection queues for IVR applications or live call center agents.

So, what does this have to do with UC?

Contact Center Evolution – UC Self-services and Live Assistance

As more and more consumers start using smartphones and tablets to access web information and initiate business contacts, they will become less dependent on traditional customer call center agents. Basically, customers will really need live assistance by talking to someone only when they have a problem. In the case my wife experienced, there was no problem for those customers who could go online or be notified on their smartphones, either from getting information about a product sale or in placing their order. So, why would they need to get into a voice telephony call at all?

Historically, the call center has always included self-service applications based upon Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications that used the Telephone User Interface (TUI). With improvements in speech recognition technology, speech input rather than Touch-Tone inputs were accommodated. However, the basic limitation of IVR applications had to do with output, i.e., the complexity of menu choices for specific applications, as well as the amount and type of output from the application. Voice was absolutely useless if the output wasn’t short and simple. In such cases, the caller was put into a queue for live assistance in the call center.

Now that the “phone” has evolved into a multi-media (smartphone) device, it can be increasingly exploited for multi-modal, self-service applications, thus minimizing the need for live assistance. In particular, self-services don’t have to be initiated with the limitations of a traditional phone call or IVR application, but can flexibly use voice commands and screen based input responses. With UC capabilities, the mobile smartphone customer can “click-to-connect” for live assistance when needed in the mode that is appropriate or desired (message, voice conversation, callback, etc).

Bottom Line

What my wife experienced was the frustration going through the limitations of a telephone connection and an IVR application interface, only to find out that the sale item was sold out. People who went online did not have the same problem, and the consumer adoption of smartphones (or tablets) will expand the consumer audience beyond those with desktop or laptop computers, i.e., everybody!

Customers can now do things faster and more easily with self-service applications, and with the power of UC for “click-to-call,” can still get access to live assistance on-demand as needed. Furthermore, such contacts will be contextually more intelligent than a simple “blind” phone call, and can enable better and more efficient interactions with an appropriate “agent.”

So, UC flexibility will pay off significantly to any organization that provides contact center services for live assistance, by minimizing the need for such help in the first place, and secondly, by providing more contextual insight in providing such help more efficiently.

Let’s Get Social – Dreamforce ‘11 Tuesday Keynote

I just returned from Salesforce.com’s annual conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. dreamforce ‘11 had a record attendance of over 40K participants. Frankly I’m amazed at how smoothly the whole event was run as I didn’t see a glitch. The theme of “social” was prolific, with “Let’s Get Social” and “Welcome to the Social Enterprise”, everywhere. After two days of social it makes me wish this keyboard had a like icon on it, but alas it doesn’t.

CEO Mark Benihoff’s two hour (yes, two plus hour) long keynote on Wednesday was all about social, and how the concept of being social has created a social divide between the enterprise and users who have grown accustomed to having access to all manner of social applications. Of course he was here to fix all that, and this theme was the backdrop to a score of new feature enhancements and applications that were unveiled at the show. In his keynote Mark provided a three step process to bridging the divide between the enterprise and the end user:

  • 1. Create a Social Customer Profile - keeping track of your customers and growing and evolving your information about your customers, in terms of the social media they are using, and building that into your customer profile so that you know what they are saying on Twitter, liking on Facebook, etc.
  • 2. Create an Employee Social Network that is more than creating a private Facebook type of application for your employees, which includes collaboration, but not another island of collaboration or data. Mark spoke about integrating collaboration into all areas of the enterprise, including custom applications, sales, service, etc.
  • 3. Create a customer social network and product social network - hooking products onto the network, including social media.

A primary theme of the event, along with social, was of course that the core of the social enterprise is multi-tenant cloud computing. Mark said that the cloud should be fast, no hardware or software required, easy to use with automatic upgrades and a pay-as-you-go model, open, and available to everyone.

Then it was time to roll out the announcements, which included:

● Chatter Now: providing Chatter users with presence capability so they can see when other users are online, and chat and screen share without leaving Chatter.

● Chatter Customer Groups: allowing Chatter users to invite people outside of their organization into their Chatter network to collaborate. This extends collaboration outside of the organization, and Salesforce claims it has done a huge amount of work on making this private and secure, so invitees only see what you or your group members allow them to see, and users can’t accidentally invite a bunch of people in that shouldn’t be in the group, for example.

● Chatter Approvals: will enable users to take action on any approval process from directly within their Chatter feed, of all types such as sales discounts, hiring decisions, vacation requests etc.

● Chatter Service: Salesforce claims this will be the ultimate self-service destination for the social enterprise, allowing customers to pose questions in a familiar social feed, and get instantaneous answers from multiple sources including those from within the company and from outside social networks. So it might be a knowledge base, the community of experts or a service agent, Facebook, or some other repository.

● Data.com: provides sales and marketing professionals from within Salesforce.com the information they need to effectively plan, target and execute sales and marketing campaigns, by helping them to build and maintain social customer profiles, by unifying socially-crowd sourced contact information from Jigsaw and company information from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B).

Beyond all the social networking bells and whistles that were announced, was delivery of those bells and whistles. Mark announced Touch.salesforce.com, which will leverages the open standard HTML5 technology to provide an optimized experience of Salesforce applications and customizations for multiple smart phones, tablet devices and operating systems.  

Mark also talked at length about new advancements in development as well, with more details to be found on the Salesforce.com website.

The demos were pretty good. For example, there was a demonstration of Salesforce.com being run natively on multiple devices, and it showed that from within the Chatter feed a user being able to get everything, on the device, including running multiple windows, looking up all customer data, including all of the social feeds available on the customer, conducting a meeting, closing a sale, and log the deal.

Mark ponied up some pretty key customers, such as Burberry and Toyota, showing their customer portals and all of the things that can be done to build a brand and following using Salesforce.com as the core. Maybe I’m a sucker for the hype, but I “liked” a few of them on Facebook as a result just to see what things were available. I’m expecting my Burberry’s free “new scent” sample any day now. Seriously, in all dreamforce, and the new products announced were an impressive lot.

Avaya Aura Contact Center – the Most Successful Product in Avaya History

Now that I have your attention, this was a statement made at the recent Avaya Contact Center Analyst day in San Jose. What it referred to was that the Avaya Aura Contact Center from launch to booking, was the most successful new contact center product in Avaya history. Why is this important for Avaya? It is important because, today’s announcements should add even more fuel to the bookings fire.

Today’s announcements were anything but ho hum. Avaya tackled and delivered upon all the current trends that are evolving in the contact center; trends that are taking the traditional self-service (IVR) and agent handling of calls, to a new level of customer care.  In the past several years, Avaya has been part of this industry evolution already, but continues to add onto these trends, including social media integration, UC and the contact center, and elevating the customer experience across multiple channels. 

In their announcement material Avaya makes numerous points about how they  commissioned a study (Avaya Contact Center Customer Preference Study) that showed that 40% of consumers prefer alternate methods of contact (i.e., chat, text or email) for customer service, compared to the phone. Studies like this are ok, but they really just back up what the industry has been trying to do for a decade in creating multiple “customer touch points” or channels as alternatives or addendums to the contact center. We have been saying for years that we want to be able to provide customer service in the manner in which customers want to receive it, and we all are witness to the growing use of the Internet and mobile devices to access customer care. So it’s not revolutionary that Avaya is saying this, it is the way these announcements deliver on this that is important.  

Avaya Aura Contact Center (AACC) 6.2

At the core with this release Avaya is making it easier for the content/context of any interaction on any channel to be seamlessly transferred to another. So whether someone prefers chat, text, or the IVR, for example, when they want a live agent, their initial “customer service investment” is not lost in transition. This integration makes the experience consistent for the customer.

With the 6.2 release, Avaya added the ability for agents to easily bring in experts to assist in any call with a customer, in a collaborative fashion, along with additional integration with social media. Here is the difference. AACC takes the call, gathers all pertinent customer context, including the requisite customer account number, history, and anything else pertinent to that customer, and matches it to the most appropriate agent.  This is not just plain skills-based routing, but a far more fine-tuned version of that, plus, the agent simultaneously has the right resources, including any potential experts, displayed along with the call, so that they can seamlessly bring in additional resources if needed into the call. 

Collaboration is done through the combination of AACC and Avaya Aura which displays, using presence, experts that are appropriate and available for the particular call that came in.  This means that the agent doesn’t have to go and search for an expert, as one or more are populated on the agent desktop at the time the call is received. This is all configurable by the contact center manager based on skills, or time of day, or particular need. 

In addition to the experts being shown on the agent desktop, Avaya has also has provided for the integration of social media as well, so that agents can respond to social media postings such as tweets and Facebook updates, but in a single consistent view, making it easier for the agent to get the full picture without having to go to a separate screen or application. This is facilitated through the addition of Avaya Social Media Manager.

Along with the integration of Social Media Manager is the addition of a new Social Media Consulting Services practice, which really is critical for companies to provide to their customers as those customers start to navigate through the development of social media strategy. In the case of Avaya, this new consulting practice follows a consistent methodology to lead the customer through the creation of their own strategy, including a “social assessment”, creation of a roadmap, and a social media adoption plan.

Avaya Aura Experience Portal

 

Next, Avaya didn’t just strengthen the agent side of the contact center experience, but the self-service side as well, across multiple channels as mentioned above with the introduction of Avaya Aura Experience Portal.  The most significant capability of the portal is a more seamless hand-off of customer data, as well as context, from any self-service session to AACC agents.

On the deployment side, Avaya added new development tools to help develop applications that seamlessly hand off the data to the contact center, making it faster and easier to deploy self-service applications that improve the customer experience. This is done by the new Avaya Aura Orchestration Designer.

As for the nuts and bolts part of the announcement, AACC will now support up to 90,000 agents in a single virtual network, due to new integration with Avaya Aura.  Experience Portal can also be deployed in a virtualized environment, which converts a single server into multiple virtual servers too, reducing TCO.  In addition, AACC 6.2 is now unified with Avaya’s automatic call distribution application, Avaya Aura Call Center Elite, enabling unified desktop, reporting and administration.  To protect the investment of existing self-service customers, Avaya Experience Portal software and tools unify migration of standards-based applications from Avaya Interactive Response, Avaya Media Processing Server and prior releases of Avaya Voice Portal. 

In all, this is a well thought out and solid announcement, and should continue to help make those bookings numbers look good.

Is This the Beginning or End of the Tiered Data Pricing Saga?

Like AT&T Mobility’s earlier move, Verizon Wireless introduced tiered 3G/4G prices, and is discontinuing a flat fee for “unlimited” data. While the majority of current Verizon Wireless 3G/4G subscribers will only feel the effects of the new usage-based data contracts at subscription renewal, Verizon Wireless appropriately introduced some new free tools for usage-based subscribers to track their monthly data usage now. They include:

  • #DATA - Customers can check data usage by dialing #DATA and pressing send from Verizon Wireless phones to receive a free text message with the information.
  • My Verizon and My Verizon Mobile - Customers can monitor data usage directly from their handsets via My Verizon Mobile or online through My Verizon.
  • Data Usage Calculator - At verizonwireless.com, customers can learn about common features and activities that utilize data and determine estimated total monthly data usage using the Data Usage Calculator. It can be found by simply searching for “data usage calculator” on the Verizon Wireless website.
  • Data Usage Widget - Customers with data plans also can download a Data Usage Widget to most AndroidTM smartphones, BlackBerry® devices and tablets. The widget tracks usage with a quick glance at the phone screen and with one click connects to the customer’s My Verizon Mobile account.

There’s nothing wrong with these tools per-se, except:

  1. Each requires that subscribers perform new behaviors, which people typically do not like to do.
  2. All mobile providers tell us that a small number (less than 5%) of subscribers exceed the standard limits on “unlimited” data plans. If a comparably small number of users are the “problem,” why not ask them to take on new behaviors like those above? Why require everyone to change?
  3. In the future when Verizon Wireless introduces its anticipated family shared data plans, tools like these must track usage across multiple devices. But just like yesterday’s new price structure and tools, it’s a virtual certainty that the company will introduce both concurrently.

But more importantly, what Verizon Wireless is doing reminds me of the TSA’s approach to airline security, which nobody likes but everyone must endure. But unlike the TSA, mobile customers:

(1) Have other provider choices, which at least some will prefer. I don’t see Sprint dropping its unlimited plans anytime soon.

(2) Will loudly complain to the media, consumer protection groups, government bureaucrats and elected officials, which they will do. The last thing mobile providers want is any incremental regulatory scrutiny or oversight. Given the increased scrutiny the industry is already receiving from AT&T’s earlier introduction of tiered data prices and its planned merger with TMo, it’s a mystery why Verizon Wireless would go ahead now (vs. wait) on any major (unwelcome) change.

If the country’s largest providers introduced usage based billing along side of “unlimited” data plans, it would expand, not contract, subscriber choice. Billing systems are flexible enough to offer both unlimited and tiered plans simultaneously. Maybe it’s part of a plan to reintroduce “unlimited” plans  at a higher rate (once LTE is more geographically ubiquitous).

But one thing that’s a no-brainer: these recent provider moves, combined with the prevailing mood throughout the country, signal the beginning of the usage-based mobile data saga. We are far, far from the end of it.