Last week, Saturday Night Live presented a very telling parody commercial for Verizon in which an overenthusiastic salesman attempts to sell 4G LTE to a customer who just wants to know… what is it? Is it faster? Is it better? The salesman never quite explains.

Saturday Night Live asks a very reasonable question here, one which is basically impossible to answer just by watching commercials or browsing promotional literature. What exactly is 4G, and why should anyone buy it?

4G stands for fourth generation cell phone mobile communication standards. These standards, defined by a governing body appointed by the U.N., are what mobile communication companies use as benchmarks for performance on multiple levels, the most pertinent of which for consumers is network speed. So in terms of practical usefulness for the everyday consumer, a 4G network is just a network that is capable of offering a stationary download speed of up to one gigabit per second and a moving download speed of up to 100 megabits per second. This makes the 4G standard 250-500 times better than the top standards for 3G.

Unfortunately, you can’t get a 4G phone that meets those standards in the United States. American vendors are using the 4G name without truly meeting the 4G standards set by ITU, that U.N.-appointed body responsible for deciding what those letters and numbers are really supposed to mean. 4G phones may well be faster than their predecessors, as promised, but they aren’t likely to be breaking speed records. Perhaps this is why all those ads about 4G get a little cagey when it comes to explaining exactly what it really stands for.

There’s no doubt that phones and other mobile devices are getting better and faster every day, and part of the really is the development of better, faster networks and infrastructure. But as of now, the salesperson pushing 4G from your wireless carrier probably isn’t really offering you something as exciting as the name and standards suggest.

It’s rare that Advantix comes across a company that isn’t spending too much on their wireless plan. Seeing the average 25-45% monthly savings that we can net for our clients has made us really passionate about spreading the word that wireless companies might not be quite on the level with the plans that they are offering for enterprise wireless contracts.

That’s why we’re so pleased to see the Wall Street Journal reporting this week that so many companies are wasting money on their wireless plans.

An average company will spend $850,000 per year on wireless costs, including a $14,568 loss just for fees from excess text messaging and over $13,000 for out-of-plan long distance. Another $6,500 comes from unauthorized downloading and data plan usage, including downloads of adult content onto employer-owned phones (a result of poor policy writing or enforcement).

If you’re one of the 44% of companies that don’t have a comprehensive mobility management and optimization plan already in place, you’re overpaying on your wireless plan. A good enterprise mobility management system will include fee negotiation and reduction, usage and spend reporting every month, and customized recommendations for plan and rate negotiations, policy changes, data plan adjustment, device management, and more.

Take a good hard look at your wireless spend. You may be surprised to find out how many thousands of dollars are being wasted through lack of careful wireless plan management.

Some wireless industry strategists have started predicting that Apple might soon begin providing mobile-phone or data services directly to its customers in lieu of continuing to use companies such as Verizon as middlemen, perhaps by offering mobile data plans as a bundle with the iPad.

A number of consumers are using iPads strictly as WiFi devices, not bothering with expensive data packages and cellular internet connections. But is that enough to push Apple to start offering data? The cost of buying data service at wholesale from carriers could be very high, to say nothing of obtaining wireless spectrum of their own. Furthermore, providing data or other a la carte wireless services that customers currently purchase from wireless carriers instead of from Apple puts Apple at risk of angering or alienating wireless carriers altogether.

Given the rarity and expense of wireless spectrum, and the resulting need to continue working with existing wireless carriers to even provide a service like this, is it necessary or even practical for Apple to consider? It seems like a move more suited to Google–high-risk, high-reward, and one step closer to total world domination.

Welcome to Carnival of the Mobilists #269! Here at the Advantix Solutions Group blog we spend quite a bit of time scouring the web for the best of the best in mobile blogs, and we’re very excited to be able to share this week’s best mobile blogs with you as curators of the Carnival.

We’ve collected some of the best articles from this week that talk about mobile apps–including marketing, distribution, development, and more.

First, from Lynette Hundermark’s Gadgets and All Things Digital blog (Twitter: @lynetteanthony) we get a thoughtful appraisal of the new LinkedIn iPad App. The question: Is the lack of innovation from the LinkedIn app a sign that app development and innovation have reached a plateau?

Lisa Ciangiulli of Optism (@LisaCiangiulli) shares about the use of mobile apps in marketing, discussing the use of applications such as FourSquare, Checkpoint, and shopkick both to reward and shape consumer behavior and to gather data and feedback about the effectiveness of products and marketing campaigns.

MobyAffiliates (@mobyaffiliates) has come out with a great list of the best mobile app promotion agencies, networks, and tools for marketing and distributing mobile applications.

Finally, from MobileGroove, there’s a fantastic piece by Joy Liuzzo (@joyliuzzo), discussing the change in consumer attitude among consumers of mobile marketing, and how the abuse of personal data has led to a backlash from users who are now exercising more and more control over advertising and personal information as consumer trust of mobile marketers diminishes over time.

Want to learn more about mobile apps, especially their place in regards to data security and business? Check out our Webinar series, Mobile Data Security & Applications in the Enterprise.

We’re honored to have been your hosts this week for COM #269. Don’t forget to check out last week’s Carnival, hosted by Optism.

Want to be featured on Carnival of the Mobilists? Submit your best mobile blog to The Mobilists this coming week for COM #270, hosted by MobileGroove.

Are Digital Natives a liability in the workplace?

A new study commissioned by Time Inc. finds that Digital Natives–people who have grown up exposed to mobile technology–switch between devices and platforms 27 times per hour. The study also found that they use media and technology to keep their mood stable and avoid boredom or feelings of tiredness by switching their attention to new stimuli.

Conventional thinking holds that in technology-heavy industries, Digital Natives are an asset because of their comfort with multiple forms of digital media. The Time Inc. study seems to bear this up, pointing out that Digital Natives are less bound to linear thinking and able to switch rapidly from one platform to another while barely even noticing that they’re doing so.

But is it possible that perhaps Digital Natives are a little too comfortable with mobile technology? Digital Immigrants (those of us who grew up before mobile tech was ubiquitous) are more comfortable putting their devices down, walking away from their phones, and focusing for a long period of time in spite of boredom or fatigue. Traditionally, these have been valued qualities in the workplace. The need that Digital Natives seem to demonstrate for constant mental stimulation makes it more challenging for employers to provide a stimulating and fulfilling environment for younger workers, leading to ennui and dissatisfaction.

Dealing with the shortcomings of a generation of Digital Natives is only going to become more difficult as more companies embrace BYOD. Jobs that can’t provide competing entertainment value will have to compete with Internet and social media, or disallow them completely and deal with the loss in productivity and increase in workplace discontent that are sure to follow.

Want more on mobile? Don’t forget to check out Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted at Optism this week. COM provides a great roundup of mobile topics across the web, curated by mobility bloggers of all kind. Advantix will be hosting COM next week and we can’t wait!

Advantix Solutions Group was featured on the Adobe Acrobat blog as part of their eSign success series. Advantix has been using Adobe EchoSign for some time now during our client and partner contracting processes, as well as during our hiring process.

Thanks to Adobe, Advantix is leading the way in these areas, setting a standard of shorter wait times for signing documents and eliminating the risk of bookkeeping errors and lost paperwork. We’re proud to be an EchoSign success story.

Want to see what else Advantix has been up to recently? Check out our news page for the latest updates.

App47 has released a new version of their innovative mobile application management (MAM) software. Mobile application management allows businesses to oversee and monitor application use on employee smartphones and tablets. With the newest version of App47, businesses can now buy multiple licenses for an app and distribute them automatically as a single transaction.

Previously, automation such as this was not available and purchase of multiple user licenses required significant extra time investments to allow for management to train all target users in download and setup of a purchased app, and then follow up to determine which employees were making use of it. App47′s new UX integrates Apple’s Volume Purchasing Program (VPP), which streamlines the purchase process.

Advantix Solutions Group CTO Josh Lipton noted that, when selecting a solution for mobile application management (MAM), “by integrating Apple’s Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) into their solution, App47 has created a powerful yet simple way for organizations to manage this important aspect of enterprise mobility. . . [Advantix continues] to pay close attention to companies like App47, which are building practical answers to the complexity of mobile application management.”

Five years ago, it was still easy for employers to tell employees that personal mobile phones weren’t allowed in the workplace. Texting and taking personal calls was typically viewed as a big hindrance to productivity and being caught with a personal phone in some offices could mean disciplinary action.

But those workplaces are becoming rarer, and those policies are increasingly seen by a generation of digital natives as being outdated, draconian, and unreasonable. Here are four reasons why, right or wrong, if you hire an employee under the age of 30, they will probably hate you a little if you don’t let them use their smartphone at work.

1. You’re Taking Away an Endless Supply of Information

With a phone in hand, any piece of information you want is readily available. Google and wikipedia are at your fingertips 24/7. And don’t just think that people use those recreationally. For every five minutes of productivity that you lose while employee John Smith reads up on the recent discography of Devo, you’re gaining hours when he finds a website that tells him exactly how to write that piece of code he would otherwise have had to figure out on his own. On a smartphone, he can digest all of the boundless knowledge of the Internet–including information relevant to work–while also walking to the water cooler, heading to the second floor to make copies, or sitting in the break room eating lunch.

2. You’re Making the Time Pass More Slowly

It’s a rare individual who never has a work day that drags on and on. The hours between 1 and 4 p.m. tend to stretch out endlessly, especially on a bad day. Texting your significant other, cousin, cat, coworker, or best friend is a way to make the time go a little faster. Stopping to check Facebook, watch a YouTube video, or do a crossword is a quick way to take a break, rest your eyes, and break up the monotony of a long day. Not to mention that it’s far more healthy than a cigarette break and has been shown to actually increase productivity.

3. You’re Disconnecting Them From Their Schedules

An increasing number of people use their smartphones to manage their time, both at work and at home. Gone are the days of hard-copy personal planners or (heaven forbid) calendars. A phone isn’t just a phone anymore–it’s a record of your past life events and a reminder of everything coming up, from the meeting with sales at 2 o’clock to the poker game on Saturday night.

4. They’re Addicted

Although it isn’t official yet, an increasing amount of literature is showing up describing heavy smartphone users as experiencing symptoms of smartphone addiction. Users not able to check or use their phones every so often experienced anxiety, frustration, anger, and difficulty concentrating. They describe themselves as feeling naked and deprived when their phones are taken away. Insist that they have to give up their phones when they enter the workplace, and your employees are either going to deeply resent you, completely ignore you and use their phones anyway, or both.

Now, here’s the big question…

Does all this mean that you should let employees use their phones freely at work?

The answer to that question isn’t as easy. Employee smartphone use does pose problems that are very real, no matter how many complaints they have about workplace fascism. It can introduce malware into your network, enable laziness in already unmotivated workers, and reduce your ability to control the workplace environment of your business. If you do allow employees to use personal devices at work, you’re asking for trouble unless you have a well-written, strictly enforced policy in place to keep things under control.

If you’re considering a strictly BYOD option, be aware that your IT team will still have a lot of administrative responsibilities, including enforcing mobile policies across a wide range of device types, plans, and providers, and you may well need to provide some level of technical support to minimize downtime when devices are broken or malfunctioning. In certain cases, this is actually more expensive than simply providing work phones to the employees who really need them.

Keeping your employees happy is important, but keeping your data safe and your company solvent are even more so. Unless you’re Google, which as far as we can tell is the Big Rock Candy Mountain of tech workplaces, you can’t always afford to be the cool parent. Limit what you feel you have to limit, and ban what you feel you have to ban, but do it with clear policies, consistent enforcement, and a little leniency where you have room to bend.

It’s been a few days since the iPad 3 came out, and it seems like the hype is already dying down. Gizmodo “gave people an iPad 2, told them it was the new iPad,” and got rave reviews. What they didn’t get was a lot of people saying “hey wait, isn’t this an older model? Why doesn’t it do X? Why doesn’t it look like Y?”

A few folks from Advantix dropped by their local Apple store to have a look at the newest Mac offering and found them to be pretty much indistinguishable. And InformationWeek is reporting that there are some issues with the iPad 3 that are actually worse than its predecessor, such as battery problems, added weight, and a 116-degree running temperature.

These issues are, unfortunately, the price consumers are going to have to pay for the intense high-resolution display of the new iPad, the best ever achieved to date on a device of its kind. The power and graphics of the new iPad take a lot of wattage. But is it worth it? If you aren’t a graphic designer, the chances are that all that increased resolution is going to make much difference for you. For now, it may well be a better bet to just hold on to the iPad you’ve already got.

This is a controversial thing to be saying, what with the crowds lining up to snag the newest iteration of the ever-popular iPad, but it’s got to be said. Why are people still paying through the nose for cellular connectivity and data plans on the iPad?

With the ever-expanding availability of WiFi, and the increasing number of public free WiFi connections being offered by the likes of Starbucks (who, word is, have finally gotten with the program and stopped charging for it), McDonald’s, and your local street corner hot dog vendor, a cellular signal and data plan are just not that important for most of us anymore. When is the last time you were somewhere, really needed to use your iPad for something, and couldn’t find a WiFi signal? They even have it on planes now.

Sure, nobody wants to give up the pleasure and novelty of being able to stream their favorite YouTube clips during a road trip with friends and family. But unless you’re involved in door-to-door sales and spend a lot of time on the road traveling from one WiFi dead zone to the next, in the business world there just isn’t a lot of need for 3G Internet on a WiFi enabled device.

Are you at the office? WiFi. At home? WiFi–we assume, because doesn’t everyone have that by now? At a conference? WiFi. At a hotel? WiFi. At a business dinner? It’s a good bet, and getting better by the minute–WiFi.

Usually, the WiFi network is even free, or very cheap, especially when you compare it to the cumulative monthly fees of iPad data plans, the usage caps, and the overages when you’ve miscounted your remaining data.

The iPad is really just another very pretty, very fancy tablet computer. Do you actually need it to pretend it’s a phone as well? Cut yourself free from the fake-out “freedom” of data plans on your iPad. For most of us, all they do is suck money away with minimal return.

How do you do it? Well first, don’t forget that most data plans come bundled with very hefty early cancellation fees, so check the status of your contract before you make any changes to your plan. Ready to start browsing with WiFI? Go to your iPad’s “Home” screen. Find the “Settings” menu and then look for “Cellular Data.” Turn it off, and your iPad should begin automatically detecting any WiFi connections in range.