banking

Expectations that AT&T will lower the cost of wireless service for Apple's iPhone are growing. A $20-a-month data plan with limited access is a possibility for the exclusive U.S. iPhone service provider.

AT&T's monthly plan for the iPhone is currently $69 plus taxes and fees and includes a $30 unlimited data plan. A comScore study found that 43 percent of current iPhone users have incomes above $100,000, so AT&T needs a lower price for it and Apple to grab a larger share of the smartphone market.

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) monitors five groups for data breaches annually. It found that the financial, banking, and credit industries have remained the most proactive groups in data protection over the past three years. Businesses accounted for about 37 percent of the breaches, the highest number of any of the five groups studied. The government/military category has dropped nearly 50 percent since 2006, moving from the highest number of breaches to the third highest.

Michael Blim

Michael Blim

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is considering an Internet security bill. Cosponsored by Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the bill addresses potential threats to critical private-sector systems that could literally shut down our way of life, Rockefeller said.

"Our enemies are real, they are sophisticated, they are determined, and they will not rest," so "we must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs," he added.

Jack Bauer's Nightmare

William Safire, nine years ago, in the New York Times:

"Economic uncertainty" was the phrase of the day for Sprint Nextel. During a Feb. 19 conference call, executives of the No. 3 U.S. wireless service provider used the two words liberally to describe the company's fourth-quarter results. In the three months ended in December, sales fell, losses ballooned, and customers jumped ship. There was so little visibility into the future that the company declined to make a forecast for the current quarter.

The economic recession is hurting every industry, and technology is no exception -- big names like Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Dell Inc. have had layoffs as they try to cut costs and stay competitive amid declining sales.

But the effects of the meltdown haven't been spread evenly across the sector -- even within companies, sales of certain products may fall while others are more resilient. It seems that the health of tech companies has a lot to do with what they sell, and who their customers are.