This morning, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) has announced their intentions of creating a unified open platform that would allow develops of applications to create an application program one time and that app would be able to be deployed to work on any carrier, device and operating system – universally.

The number of companies backing the WAC are 24 and include some of the biggest names in the wireless business today.   Of the largest names participating include AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Verizon, Sprint and device manufacturers LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.  Such an idea, if successful would be an incredible dream for mobile developers as it would allow them to create an application one time rather than have to redesign the same application for different platforms and networks.

While some view it as a huge announcement that could potentially change the face of the applications, there are a few who view it as a potential disaster.

We’ll leave the pundits to argue whether such an organization’s grand plans will actually work or fail, what is obvious to us is absolutely certain, mobile devices are NO LONGER simply communication services that can be regulated from a spreadsheet.  There is potential for your organization to at the very least incur added charges to your monthly bill to, at the worst case  incur a data breach or malware attack from a rogue app.

The role of the mobile device is quickly changing, it is your responsibility to find the right way to manage those devices such as a software application that knows everything from keeping a mobile device policy, average departmental spend and accounting for inventory control.  An automated program can alleviate those type of headaches.  Talk to your telecom management firm to learn more about your options and how you can get ahead of the ever-changing mobile landscape.

Now if you’re currently using AT&T, you won’t see sudden cutoffs on your data where it will stop working, rather, AT&T is attempting to rein in “excessive” data use by  forcing customers to pay premiums for high usage or optimal quality of service.  It seems that 3% of their smartphone customers currently chew up 40% of their network capacity.

According to a Rethink-Wireless Article, Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s head of wireless indicated “We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites,” he said, though he was short on actual details of how this would be achieved.

What this will do is create two areas for the consumer to be concerned with:

1.  Learn what applications are the bandwidth hogs and mitigate your current usage

2.  Application developers will have to re-write applications and design future apps to be more conservative with data usage.

AT&T is not the only mobile carrier concerned with customer usage of it’s data services.  Sprint/Nextel CEO Dan Hesse commented at its investor conference: “When you think about postpaid …. it’s not just going to be your phone. It’s going to be your camera, your iTouch, your gaming device – they’re all going to become wireless, so what’s going to be the right plan for those? As we move into 4G, it’ll be much less about minutes and more about gigabytes as the main driver of what customers are buying per month, because it’s going to be VoIP oriented. Minutes will be largely irrelevant.”

Regardless, the future of wireless is about to change and for some, it’s dramatic change.  If you thought a flat-rated plan was your answer to leveling your wireless costs- guess what?  It’s only about to get more complicated.