The Washington Post reported today that MCI was starting flat rate “all-distance” service. This is probably one of the most significant attacks in the great long distance/local carrier wars. MCI is essentially offering flat rate service for everything — local, long distance, voicemail, caller ID, three-way calling, and speed dialing. I priced it out for Virginia at $55.99 per month. This has got to be a crush to many of the smaller long distance carriers who have been competing on a per minute basis. While not everyone needs that much long distance, this should still offer a significant savings for most people. It will likely encourage more long distance land line use, which over the last few years has been whittled away by some of the cellular carriers. It will also help MCI predict its profits more easily — supply and demand will be based almost entirely on subscribers, not how many calls someone makes.

This is terrific for the consumer — probably the best thing to happen since the Ma Bell broke up years ago. It won’t be long before virtually all of the carriers are competing on the basis of monthly subscribers instead of price per call. I’m likely to switch over to the service after a conversation with them (there are one or two calling features that I need to see if they support). Obviously if you don’t use long distance or any of these features, then you should think twice — the key to flat rate pricing is a cost comparison. Make sure that you are spending more on the average for per call billing than you would be for flat rate service.

This approach is a sharp contrast to the way things have been moving in the rest of the world. The customer base elsewhere has continued to work on a “by-the-drink” basis — each call is still billed for cellular and land calls. I don’t expect to see that change quickly — the US is one of the few places where so many people prefer flat rate, “all-you-can-drink” pricing, that it’s hard to compete otherwise. Maybe it’s the consumption mindset of Americans — we don’t want to itemize that which we consume — it’s much more entertaining to go to the all you can eat buffet.

MCI continues that trend with this new plan. Look for AT&T, Verizon, SBC, and others to follow suit soon.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist posting this article. Mitsubishi has developed a pint beer glass with an RF ID tag that can signal when it’s empty. Read the details in this Reuters article. That coupled with a device that let’s me ping the waitstaff when I need something would about complete my ideal restaurant experience. There’s a restaurant chain — Bubba Gump’s — that uses table signs to accomplish much of this. On each table rest the signs that read “Run Forrest Run” and “Stop Forrest Stop” that indicate whether or not you need assistance. Not much more I can say about that except that they make good margueritas.

While this article got a laugh from me, there is a serious concept here — the implications of pervasive RFIDs. RFIDs — radio frequency identification tags — have finally become inexpensive and small enough to use widely. These will find their way into warehouses to mark each inventory item uniquely and track the movements of those items. They could be used in place of bar codes that require scanning to be useful. Keep an eye on this technology — you’ll start seeing it pop up frequently.

This in from the Times Online:

Woman “expecting cloned baby”

A woman is pregnant with the world’s first cloned baby, it has been reported. The claim has been made by Rome fertility specialist Dr Severino Antinori at a conference in Abu Dhabi, according to a report in the Gulf News. The doctor’s office has refused to comment on the report. The Gulf News quoted Dr Antinori as saying: “Our project is at a very advanced stage. One woman among thousands of infertile couples in the programme is eight weeks pregnant. We have nearly 5,000 couples in this project now.”

I’m not sure what else to add to this. It was going to happen sooner or later.

I recently read a bit of decent fiction about just this subject. The problem is — if I post the book title and author, I’ll be giving away the enough of the story that it may discourage you from reading it. So I’ll leave it at this — if you e-mail me for the title and author of the book, I’ll be glad to give it to you.

This in from CNet — Brilliant Digital Entertainment, a digital advertising technology company, has been embedding software in the Kazaa distribution that could turn every computer running Kazaa into a network they control. John Borland’s article says that Brilliant Digital could host and distribute content through this network or use unused processing power for grid computing tasks. He reports later in the article that, while the announced plans are to make the network opt-in, that the terms of service actually allow Brilliant to use the computers without any payment to or permission from the user.

“You hearby grant (Brilliant) the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing … The use acknowledges and authorizes the use without the right of compensation.”

Now there’s a little something to make your hair stand on end!

I’d say that this will cause a backlash against Kazaa and Brilliant Digital. No one likes the spyware or adware that gets dumped on your computer when you install someone’s software. But this is beginning to really step onto some shaky ground. Okay — show of hands — how many of you think it’s okay to have a piece of software installed on your computer that can use disk space and processing power for someone else’s use?