Slashdot Mirror
Will Cellular Swamp WiFi?
hhutkin writes "Sure, Wi-Fi is great for my home network. But what else can it do? After reading this article, I'm convinced that cellular is becoming more ubiquitous with wireless networking than wi-fi will ever be. Just look at all the devices that are coming on the market using cellular technology. I can send email and pics, browse the web, plus listen to MP3s all on one cellular device. It makes the notion of a hotspot almost meaningless." But 802.11x is high-bandwidth, and often unmetered ...
The Next Big Thing...The Cell Phone
Forget Wi-Fi. The real wireless revolution is being driven by the cell phone -- and is already creating rich opportunities for huge players and small startups alike.
By Rafe Needleman, Michael V. Copeland, Om Malik, July 2003 Issue
In a home recording studio near San Francisco, Del the Funky Homosapien's chart-busting rap tune "Phoney Phranchise" comes pumping out of a silver Kyocera (KYO) 3225 cell phone lying on a cramped desk. The little device is almost hidden by the computer gear, guitars, and mixing boards that surround it. Chris Dunn listens intently, then groans. "It just doesn't work," he says, snapping his gaze back to a laptop screen filled with audio mixing tracks. He fiddles with some of the digital sliders and plays the song again through the cell phone with the bass boosted an octave. Dunn sways to the groove, and a smile spreads across his face. "That totally works now," he says.
With his sideburns and Cat in the Hat striped socks, Dunn, 31, looks like the rocker he is. He's in a band, but he also has a day job as audio production manager for Faith West Inc., converting songs, sounds, and phrases into ringtones that cell-phone users can download wirelessly over the Internet. "Phoney Phranchise" is one of some 950 ringtones offered by Faith West's Modtones service and its partner Verizon Wireless (VZ) for about $1 apiece. In less than a year, the venture has attracted more than 1 million customers -- making it just a bit player in a huge new global industry. In the roughly three years since downloadable ringtones became widely available, consumers have spent an astonishing $1.8 billion on them. That's one of the faster zero-to-$1.8 billion sprints in business history.
You say you want a revolution? The wireless revolution is here, right now. It's presenting untold new opportunities for fortune and glory. But forget the hype and hysteria over Wi-Fi and other small-scale schemes for building wireless local area networks. As Dunn and his ringtone cadre demonstrate, the great engine powering us into the new wireless age is, of all things, the good old cell phone.
Make no mistake, Wi-Fi is indeed a promising technology for wirelessly connecting to the Web, and it has a role to play in the revolution. But as Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, observes, "There are 1 billion cell-phone users. That number means that the cellular people will have a lot more to say about what the wireless future looks like than anybody else."
Actually, Metcalfe is off a bit: There are 1.2 billion cell phones out there, one for every five people on the planet. By 2006 there will be 2 billion. Every year a third of all cell-phone users upgrade to newer models: phones with longer battery life, more processing power, and the latest features.
This relentless churn drives innovation -- advanced cell phones now sport cameras and keyboards, play MP3s, browse the Web, stream videos, and handle e-mail. Equally important, as cell phones morph from voice-only devices into ever more complex and potent machines, they are creating whole new industries and vast entrepreneurial openings -- Dunn's rocking ringtones being just one example. Each successive generation of devices makes possible new and more muscular applications, and spurs demand for more powerful chips and higher-capacity networks.
The cell-phone and data networks that now exist, imperfect though they are, have whetted the public's appetite for always-on anywhere connection to the Web. Who among us can't imagine a very near future when we'll get reports on dinner possibilities via video cell phones from spouses "embedded" at the grocery store? There's already a Nokia (NOK) video cell phone for sale in the United States, and at least 20 more videophones are on the way. Consumer demand for new tech leveled off during the past three years, but one of the few signs of a rebound has appeared in the cell-phone market, where sales rose 18 percent in the first quarter, fueled by consumer ap
Okay,
maybe not quite but since last week I have GPRS on my T68i and via Bluetooth I connect it to my iBook. So guess where I was sitting on the weekend: In a park with a coffee having full access to the internet.
Sure it was slower than my home network, but for shell, email and webbrowsing it works like a charm.
The costs? $50 / month: UNMETERED.
I am convinced.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
AT&T charges that rate for their "MMode" cellular.
I just canceled that. Totally useless. Plus, what the screen is an inch across? And I have to click 10 times to get to my.yahoo.com and then *try* to read it?
I was in the Seattle airport and downloaded several albums of mp3s for a 24 hour rate of 6.95 on the wifi network they have there (which is btw cheaper than the 9.95 AT&T charges in Denver). And ssh-ed to work. And bought more tickets. All you need is a laptop.
In terms of bang for your, wifi wins hands down. Though you have to factor the cost of an ibook in...
Ricochet had a metro-area wireless solution that was very cell-like, and they failed. Someone will eventually pick up the slack, but it's not going to be quick. I wish that Ricochet were available, now that I have a laptop, for it would be perfect for me.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Those are three very distinct technologies with very different uses. I recap and then we all shuddup, ok?
Bluetooth: Designed for tiny personal networks, i.e. connect your cell phone with the earphones and your pda without cables.
WiFi: Wireless lan since it's a wireless lan you can't really roam around outside of area, which is pretty restricted, nuff said!
Cell phones: Well, cell phones, you get the picturu
I thank you
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Actually, Ricochet is back from the dead, and providing service in Denver and San Diego. They are taking a much more conservative (post-dot-com) business approach this time. I had the service when I was in Denver, and it worked out pretty well. It's ~$30/month ($45/month if you want a mailbox, ha ha.)
I live in an area where DSL nor cable modems are available. Our telephone lines do not support any protocol higher than V.34, and I have use the Verizon Express Network and so far it's going great. For $80/month I get unlimited bandwidth and usage and I get pretty decent speeds (nothing major, 125k or so. But it works for me).
WiFi, unless it spreads everywhere really quick will be isolated to the big cities and forgotten by the rest of the country. Cellular is the way to go because of the availibility. Sure 802.11x has fast ass speeds, but I don't live anywhere close to a major city. So it's my tiny bit of bandwidth and go everywhere around here. Works for me, man.
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
Read on and be educated:
/ /shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html
http://shirky.com/writings/permanet.html
http:
-Shane
I love teh int4rw3b!!!!!111one1
Wi-Fi is for $1000 PCs, cellular is for $100 phones.
Wi-Fi is for broadband data, cellular is for voice and, at best, low bandwidth video on tiny screens.
Wi-Fi has a short radius and an IP address, cellular towers are ubiquitous and compatible with several voice networks.
How can these be said to compete? Sure, you can do a lot of PC-ish things on your dinky cell phone, but you can't do half the things a PC on Wi-Fi can over a cellular connection. The cost-per-megabyte is only half the issue. It'll be a long time before mobile phone networks can approach the bandwidth of wireless networking, and by the time they do Wi-Fi will have leapfrogged to a whole 'nother level.
There's a lot of growth in the buck-a-minute world of cell phone downloads and uploads. People are getting innovative, too -- I've seen blogs composed mostly of photos with some short text uploaded from people's phones, and my wife uses hers as an organizer, storing names, phone numbers, addresses and alarms. As more and more phones are sync-able with people's PCs, they'll become more popular as MP3 players as well as download tools.
So this is cool, although we all know there's a plateau out there somewhere and several phone companies will crash hard when they run off the edge of it. But so what? Wi-Fi won't lose marketshare to phone makers because it can do so much more (bandwidth, public hotspots) and so much less (limited radius, hub tied to a physical landline). There's overlap, but it's less than the article implies. Until cellular phones can do everything a laptop PC can do -- and with those tiny screens and thumb-only keyboards, that's not too likely -- there's plenty of room for both.
if the cell companies start offering data traffic for free, you'd be an idiot not to subscribe,
Not free but Sprint PCS has it for $15 a month (Vision plan), no minutes charged and no bandwidth fee's. I use about 500KB a month on my phone.
Sprint PCS.
Vision network.
3G (CDMA2000)
$15/mo unlimited data.
Did you want more than that?
Be sure from now on to check up on your facts before posting that something -does not- exist.
Let me start by saying that I am the Sr. Wireless Data Applications engineer for one of the top three cellular handset OEMs and have implemented numerous handsets currently on the market with both 1XRTT and GPRS data capability.
The idiot that wrote this article for Business 2.0 would appear to be vying to be the next Walter J. Mossberg (Wall Street Journal alleged Technology writer) in that he has absolutely no clue of what he's talking about, and proves it by comparing apples to oranges.
The 1XRTT technology currently rolled by CDMA carriers varies in speed (due to network traffic, implementation and other factors) from 40-105Kbps.
GRPS implementations can't make V.90 speed in a testing lab. To try to compare these to 802.11b or any other 1Mbps+ technology is ludicrous, much less predict that they will pass faster technologies by.
"4G" cellular services (3XRTT, W-CDMA, 1xEV, EDGE, UMTS, whatever)will likely never roll out, as carriers don't have the cash to improve existing network bandwidth as it is in the current environment, and these technologies aren't near as cost-efficient as 802.11b/f/g in terms of infradstructure costs.
A more likely future scenario (and part of the thrust of the actual changes in Windows Mobile/PocketPC 2003 or whatever Chairman Bill is calling it this week) PLUS the goal of the Cometa troika (IBM+AT&T+Intel) is ubiquitous 802.11b coverage with FALLBACK to 3G cellular service for converged devices.
Try a technical journal, rather than a business publication, for INFORMATION rather than ignorant trpe!
"$15/mo unlimited data.
... it's "SprintPCS Vision" data that's unlimited.
Did you want more than that?
Be sure from now on to check up on your facts
Actually I was just checking that particular fact
From their web site:
"Unlimited PCS Vision Access includes:
Unlimited Messaging, including text messages and email
Unlimited Web access"
So, email and proxied http traffic is not exactly the unlimited data that the Slashdot crowd is looking for.
No, I've been waiting on hold with everyone else everytime a phone company screws up my bill.
The corporate culture at the Baby Bell companies and cell phone companies is worse, if anything that AT&T was before the breakup.
Besides the logo and billing address, there is almost no difference between telecom providers in the United States.
WiFi runs in an unlicensed frequency band, so you do not need to be a large, multi-billion dollar company to get up and running. You are already seeing small companies providing WiFi access in apartment complexes, hotels and towns.
The small town where my parents live has an internet co-op that offers WiFi for town residents -- it is easy and cheap to do.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
> Look at the maps. I did.
I did, and I also did the "can you still hear me?" test. In the SouthEast T-Mobile has at least as good a coverage as anybody else, and often better. Here in Chattanooga for example I consistently get wider coverage with T-Mobile than my wife with Sprint. ATT is much worse here.