EvDO High-Speed Wireless vs. 802.11

willll writes "The Washington Post is running a story about EvDO (Evolution Data Only), a high-speed wireless technology. It can work anywhere that a mobile phone can work, one of its main advantages over WiFi. Companies such as Verizon and Lucent are looking into the technology." From the article, I'm not sure that EvDO can be directly compared to WiFi connections (and the article does not mention current long-range 802.11 ISPs), but it's still interesting.

Comments

Learning Hard Lessons

[I am the blob]

From the article:

But after learning some hard lessons in the last few years, the U.S. wireless industry is skittish about investing heavily in anything that does not have immediate promise of improving its bottom line.

It seems to me that they've learned the wrong lessons, then. The correct response to "We got burned investing in things which could never generate sufficient revenue to earn a return" is not "Invest only in things that will yield immediate returns".

In fact, I'm almost certain that our current economic woes are due primarily to a management mentality that focuses on this quarter's numbers withou scarcely a thought toward two, five, ten years down the line.

How about trying to invest in things that will secure enough revenue to cover the cost and earn additional income over whatever the life of the technology may be?

I mean, this is, I think, basic economics. Isn't it?

--blob

Verizon vs. the Ants

[ScottForbes]

The problem with this technology is that WiFi is doing to 1xEV-DO what cellular did to Iridium, what CD-ROMs did to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and what fax machines did to ZapMail. WiFi's footprint may only cover 5% of what a cellular telephone network does (at first), but it'll be the 5% where I actually care to have high-speed wireless data: Airports, coffee shops, and my home.

I don't need 1xEV-DO at work, because work is crawling with Ethernet cables. I don't need 1xEV-DO at home, because it's cheaper to buy WiFi equipment directly instead of paying for wireless by the packet. The only reasons I need wireless data in my car are for driving directions when I'm lost, which - being male - I wouldn't use anyway, and for streaming audio, for which I have a hi-tech device called a "radio" (or, more likely, a "six-disc CD changer").

By the time 1xEV-DV gets to market, McDonald's will have WiFi and you'll get free bandwidth with your Happy Meal. (They'll sell your data to advertisers and interrupt with McDonald's ads, but, hey, free bandwidth.) WiFi destroys the business case for cellular data, just as the unregulated Internet destroys the business case for pop music, and in the long-term WiFi even threatens the core cellular business of providing wireless voice.

Perhaps the real question is whether the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) will someday find itself where the RIAA is today - fighting its customers in a desperate effort to squeeze the last dollar from a dying business model. Time for the Free Spectrum Foundation?

Um... faster than WiFi... I don't think so

[zejackal]

EvDo looks interesting, but this article reads like a paid advertisement. The article says that EvDo is "10 times faster than any modem"... well since modems (and I do believe they are talking about dial up modems, not cable modems) only get up to 56kbps, we're talking about a whopping big 560kbs... My 802.11g gives me 54Mbps. The spectrum concerns are also real. Cell phone companies are not going to give up revenue generating bandwidth for a new service that people aren't screaming for.