Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse says he hopes to keep the company's data plans unlimited as the company shifts toward faster 4G services through the WiMax technology it's rolling out in cities across the nation.

AT&T, which offers Apple's iPhone, is already capping the amount of data users get with a plan, and Verizon has talked about doing the same. The proliferation of smart phones and other wireless-enabled data-heavy devices has made consumers ever-hungrier for data, and carriers say they're struggling to accommodate the demand.

In a keynote yesterday at EmTech 2010, Hesse noted that when carriers moved to 3G technologies, "the solution was there before the problem", meaning few consumers used enough data to justify 3G. Today, Hesse says, consumers are waiting for faster networks.

Sprint is certainly encouraging people to think about what they could do with faster speeds. Its 4G network was turned on in selected cities over Labor Day weekend and will continue to expand to additional coverage areas. Its flagship phones for 4G, which can also operate on 3G networks, are the HTC Evo and Samsung Epic, both of which can serve as mobile WiFi hotspots in addition to functioning as smart phones. Hesse noted that users could run five or six devices through hotspots over 4G.

Hesse said consumers strongly prefer to pay a flat fee for wireless services. "Users will pay a premium for simplicity, for predictability, and for peace of mind," Hesse said. He believes Sprint can continue to provide unlimited data plans "as long as the usage is reasonable." He noted that the company will closely watch what happens as other carriers shift to metered plans.

One worry, Hesse said, is that heavy users unhappy with metered plans on other carriers might all shift to Sprint, overwhelming its resources. But he said the company would explore ways to handle changing demand for data before shifting to metered plans. For example, he said, because Sprint expected Epic and Evo customers to use more data than those with less-advanced phones, the company charges an extra $10 a month for unlimited plans on those models.

Ford announced its new MyFord system at CES yesterday. The driver-control system, based largely on Ford's Sync system, offers even more voice commands. But MyFord also introduces an 8-inch touch-screen in the car's dashboard for accessing the internet.

While Ford endorsed a proposed federal ban on texting while driving last year, its new system is said to allow drivers to interact with even more Internet-based systems, such as Twitter, Pandora, and Stitcher--although only through a voice interface. Still, multiple studies, including two from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, show that drivers are four times more likely to have an accident if they are talking on the phone--hands-free or not--while driving.

Ford, like other car makers, is trying to balance on the fine line between consumer demand and auto safety. It's a tough one to negotiate, but insurers are starting to come down on the side of fewer distractions of any sort. Nationwide Insurance offers drivers a 5 percent discount for using technology that blocks them from using a cell phone while the car is in motion, and State Farm, the largest insurance company in the United States, is studying the technology.

As a driver, I can clearly see both sides of the argument: it's convenient and tempting to talk or text (or use GPS) while driving--especially when stuck in traffic. But I know that I am more distracted when I do. Personally, I can't wait for cars that drive themselves, so I can do whatever I want in the car, whether I'm driving or not. But I'm not holding my breath.

This weekend a Swiss computer security researcher released an application designed to demonstrated the kind of personal information that a malicious iPhone application could potentially harvest personal from unwary users (pdf). The disclosure came just two weeks after the first truly malicious iPhone worm was released for jailbroken iPhones.

So, are we're on the brink of a mobile malware pandemic?

Not necessarily, says MikkoHypponen, chief research officer for the Internet security company F-Secure, based in Helsinki, Finland. Hypponen has been collecting mobile malware specimens for the past 10 years. His count, so far, is 454 mobile viruses and Trojans since 2004. And, despite many security experts predicting that serious attacks against mobile devices are inevitable, Hypponen has observed the opposite trend. "Instead of getting worse, malware on mobile devices has been slowing down over the past two years," he says.

The main reason, Hypponen suggests, is that most phone platforms exercise more control over the applications they run than desktop computers do. For example, mandatory application signing for the iPhone means that programs can't run without authorization from Apple. Android's open platform doesn't use mandatory signing, but Google has designed a new security model for the operating system to minimize the damage that can be done by a malicious application.

Hypponen also believes that fragmentation in the phone market has hindered malware writers so far: no single mobile operating system dominates the way Windows does on the desktop, so it's hard for virus writers to know where to focus their efforts. Furthermore, he says, far fewer people have the sort of low-level knowledge of specific mobile devices that's needed to create successful malware.

However, Hypponen notes that the malware observed so far requires a user to install something malicious, instead of exploiting a vulnerability in the operating system itself. The real danger, he says, is when malware authors discover ways to attack a mobile device without that level of user participation.

"When that happens," Hypponen says, "everything we know about mobile malware will have changed."