Ericsson Predicts Swift End For Wi-Fi Hotspots

mikesd81 writes "Mobile technology group Ericsson is predicting a 'swift end' for Wi-Fi hotspots, according to the PC Pro site. Johan Bergendahl, the company's chief marketing officer, offers this analysis: 'The rapid growth of mobile broadband is set to make Wi-Fi hotspots irrelevant ... Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era. Industry will have to solve the international roaming issue ... Carriers need to work together. It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad.' He also pointed to a lack of coverage as a potential hindrance to the growth of the technology."

Comments

no more starbucks wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Now people will just go to Starbucks for the overpriced foo-foo coffees.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[MrCrassic]

Starbucks coffee sucks, but I still go there because it's social environment setups are ingenious and almost unique to them. Their teas are pretty good, when well done...

Speaking of HotSpots, I think that they will really lose traction when mobile providers drop the price of data plans or simply integrate them into current mobile minutes plans of today. This is a trend that is becoming much more noticeable with the unification of data and voice by landline telcos, a trend that makes sense given the increasing usage of broadband.

I do hope that when this happens, that HotSpots will be free add-ons instead of simply not existing. For certain situations (i.e. Starbucks in remote area; no other wireless networks to join), they are extremely useful.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Midnight Thunder]

Now people will just go to Starbucks for the overpriced foo-foo coffees.

Customer: Could I have small coffee
Server: That would be a mezzo, sir
Customer: what the f*ck? mezzo is medium, piccolo is small
Server: sir mezzo means small
Customer: never mind, I'll a medium coffe
Server: That would be a grande, sir
Customer: Whatever, just give me a medium coffee that is actually a small.

foo-foo coffees and no grasp of language.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Virtual_Raider]

I hate that too. "Grande" means big in Spanish, so as a native speaker it just sounds wrong to me and when I go I ask for a "medium-sized whathaveyou" and they ALWAYS try to 'correct' me. I usually politely reply that I refuse to to use their marketspeak and I point to the medium-size display glass that they usually have and repeat my request. I'm polite 'cuz it's their job, but I really hate that stupid naming convention.

I always leave comments to that effect with different pseudonyms every time I go to a new store. No, I don't expect it to have any effect but it's not a life-or-death matter either so that's enough to calm my nerves. ;)

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[zippthorne]

The fast food places do the same thing, without needing a fauxtalian translation to bring about. Like starbucks they did it not by renaming things to make people think they're getting bigger drinks, but by refraining from advertising the smaller sizes available. (starbucks has a secret, smaller size, but I forget what they insist on calling it. I don't shop there that often because I don't like coffee enough to pay tree-fitty a cup.

But yeah, it's pretty annoying, anyway. I usually just go out of my way to be "extra-clear." Like something like, "I want whatever is the middle size"

Next time you're in there, try ordering in the language of the originators of the coffee craze: Amharic.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[TheLink]

"I want whatever is the middle size"

Careful with that though, many companies realize people do that - that's why they keep making really huge burgers (and drinks).

So the big burgers start becoming middle.

And _your_ middle starts becoming big ;).

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Fred_A]

I know that when I first set foot in a starbucks (somewhere in California I think) I couldn't even figure which thing was the plain coffee since everything had weird names I'd never heard before, being European.

So I asked for a small black coffee, which luckily was available (can't remember what it was called).

They have opened a number of outlets in Paris nowadays :( and don't even offer free WiFi. So there's no real point in going there. I entered one once, couldn't make sense of the product names there either so got out and went to a café instead.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[zmollusc]

Mobile providers will drop the price of data plans only when they need less cell towers because they can bounce signals from flying pigs.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[badfish99]

The first time I went in a starbucks, being unfamiliar with the brand and wanting a coffee, I asked for an espresso. The person serving me looked at me as though I were a stain on the floor, and said "you *do* know what that is, don't you"?

It turned out to be a small cardboard (!) cup of disgusting coffee. Now I know why everyone else buys coffee-flavoured milk in those places.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[dimeglio]

Thank goodness we have Tim Hortons here in Canada where a Small is a small, a Medium is a medium, a Large is a large and an Extra-large is, you guessed it, an extra-large.

No they don't have wireless but they do have great coffee.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

"American coffee is like American beer. Bland."

There is an element of truth in that, it has to be said.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[aclarke]

Ah, but there you've nailed the issue. If you go to a Tim Hortons in the US, their "small" is the same cup as our "medium". They don't have our small. If you order a "medium regular" there you'll get get the same as a Canadian "large regular".

The reason Starbucks' small is called a "mezzo" and their medium is a "grande" is because their medium is really large, and their smalls are not particularly small. Therefore, although it may be Starbucks' smallest size, it is not actually a small cup of coffee. From that point of view, I think that although the names of their coffees are definitely foo-foo, they are also an honest reflection of thir size.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[hey!]

The thing is, they must know something about how language is wired to the buying impulse, because they're extremely successful and extremely insistent upon this point.

My brother is a bigshot in the food service industry. He's very good at what he does. One day I mentioned to him that I'd ordered a medium soft drink at a fast food restaurant and it turned out to be 32 ounces -- as much soda as we used to order for the entire family when we were kids. According to him, this is a way to maximize sales. People tend to order a "medium" drink, regardless of the actual volume that is called "medium". They can't complain they aren't getting a good value, because it is, after all, a whole quart of soda.

In the grand -- or shall we say "venti" -- scheme of things, what Starbucks is doing is not especially nefarious. They aren't manipulating their customers into drinking whole quarts of sugar water at a sitting. In a sense, by introducing a completely meaningless terminology to describe sizes, they're making it easier to actually think about how much you really want.

In any case, the thing I like about Starbucks is that they hire good people and seem to keep them happy. It makes the place pleasant to visit, although I don't think their coffee is particularly good. I also like the way they try to tie each store into its neighborhood, instead of each being completely alike. My neighborhood Starbucks operates as a gallery for artists in town, hosts regular performances of local musicians, and is active in community philanthropy.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[jo42]

Tim Hortons ... they do have great coffee Oi vei! Unless you think off-tasting brown water is 'great coffee', they have lousy coffee. Second Cup has "good" coffee. The stuff I brew at home is "great" coffee.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Midnight Thunder]

The fast food places do the same thing, without needing a fauxtalian translation to bring about.

That is another place that gets it so wrong. First time I looked at a menu in the states I saw "entrees", and thought to myself that the 1/2 lb steak was a bit much for a starter, though it turns out it was the main course. Speaking French, where the orginal version comes from "entrée" means starter.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Midnight Thunder]

Thank goodness we have Tim Hortons [timhortons.com] here in Canada where a Small is a small, a Medium is a medium, a Large is a large and an Extra-large is, you guessed it, an extra-large.

Ah, but you have never asked for a "regular" coffee. Turns out "regular" has different definitions depending where you are. Sometimes it is a double-double, sometimes its black and so on.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[wpiman]

Only ten Euros a day. At the rate it is going, that will be like $20 US.

So the question is, which is greater $20 or $0?

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

My pet peeve: servers who 'correct' me when I order 'bru-SKET-ta.'

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[zippthorne]

Oh, that's my pet peeve, too. A half-pound steak is even a bit much for a main course, unless you're having a one-course meal or it was really fatty before cooking, that is. But the restaurants have: appetizer, salad, entrée, and dessert (and the entrée will usually have some kind of sides, I'm not sure where that fits into the course-plan), and somehow seem to expect you to order all of them despite each being large enough to be considered a full meal.

Gah. Just have smaller portions. If you're a restaurant, you don't want people taking home food, anyway, since then you'd be competing with yourself. And anyway, a little bit of really good food is a lot better than a whole pile of garbage.

What do you call the main course in french, btw?

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[Midnight Thunder]

What do you call the main course in french, btw?

In French it is called "le plat principal", which word for word translates to the "the main plate".

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[jonbryce]

In Britain is is £10 per month from Three for the cheapest price plan - about 13.00 or $20.00.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[rebelcan]

And here I was, thinking Tim Hortons was a Canadian only franchise, but apparently they're expanding into the northern states. Not entirely sure how I feel about that.

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[the 99th penguin]

starbucks has a secret, smaller size, but I forget what they insist on calling it.

Short (as opposed to the Tall size)

Re:no more starbucks wireless

[uniquename72]

No Sbux fan, but...

I usually politely reply that I refuse to to use their marketspeak... They are required to use that terminology for their jobs; you are not required to be a dick.

Simple, right...

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad.' Ten Euros a day? Well gee, at that low low price, Wi-Fi hotspots don't stand a chance! /sarcasm

Re:Simple, right...

[Anonymous Coward]

WiFi hotspots generally cost that much for an HOUR, some even more.

The only time I've ever encountered a free one, has been some idiot's misconfigured AP.

Re:Simple, right...

[nova_ostrich]

Yeah, and for most of us, that's laughably expensive. I can't wait for the day when mobile broadband costs about as much per month as my wired broadband at home. I switched my phone service entirely to my cell when that became reasonably affordable, and I imagine I'll do the same for wireless Internet when it isn't priced at point only the wealthy or desperate will consider.

Re:Simple, right...

[tirerim]

To be fair, that's the price he cited for international roaming. TFA cites prices "as low as 20 euros per month" for regular mobile broadband usage in some countries. That's a lot better, though I'm still not going to pay it until the coverage is better and the speeds are actually comparable to a hotspot.

Re:Simple, right...

[Demerara]

I pay about US$0.20 per Megabyte here in Pakistan. For that I get HSPDA and, so long as I'm in a city, it work well, reliable and fast.

When I go home to Ireland, I put an Irish prepaid SIM card in my phone. I asked them (wisely) how much their 3G service costs. They told me it was Euro10.00 PER MEGABYTE. Needless to say, I disabled all the data functions on my Windows Mobile smartphone.

Why the phenomenal difference between the two data tariffs? Nobody could tell me. Some media stories surrounding the announcement by the European Union that they were looking at Roaming charges suggested that the high price of data services cross-subsidises lower voice and SMS costs. In any properly regulated telecoms market, that sort of cross-subsidy should be banned. It is no longer business customers who want data services - telcos who stack it high and sell it cheap will gain market share and should smell the coffee.

In fairness, a post-paid data-only 3G subscription is available in Ireland for Euro50 (for the dongle) and Euro15 per month (that will increase after three months and the service is capped at 5Gb per month). This is more reasonable. But 10 per day? No way Jose...

Re:Simple, right...

[Z00L00K]

I see a problem here.

• The price model for a hotspot is different from the mobile broadband model (OK, this can change)
• The reliability of mobile proadband is not very good. At least the GPRS net (OK, not really broadband, but anyway) is prone to drop UDP packets too often, especially when there are some interference like when you are riding a train.
• The bandwidth may be a lot better from a hotspot.

Re:Simple, right...

[ichigo 2.0]

the high price of data services cross-subsidises lower voice and SMS costs. In any properly regulated telecoms market, that sort of cross-subsidy should be banned.

Why on earth? Do you also think loss leaders should be banned?

I'm guessing the operator only takes the 10e per MB on pre-paid SIMs? At least that's the way it works in Finland, pre-paid cards have much higher prices (some don't even have data services) but if you have a "ordinary" subscription you can get unlimited data access for 10e/month.

Now I do agree that roaming charges are pretty steep, but as someone who doesn't need to roam I have nothing against that. In fact, I'm opposed to any regulation that forces me to subsidise other people's roaming costs in my phone bill. ;)

Re:Simple, right...

[teh kurisu]

GPRS is designed around the idea that you'll probably go out of coverage while using it. The network will try to maintain your connection with whatever you were accessing while it waits for you to come back into coverage. Sometimes this method works well, and other times it has a tendency to break things.

This is as opposed to WiFi, where if you lose reception, you lose your connection. WiFi is only really good on a train if the train itself has a hotspot (I think GNER has them, but you have to pay extra for access), and that access point could easily be replaced by a 3G femtocell in the not-too-distant future.

Re:Simple, right...

[emj]

Well Just go abroad for one day, and you will feel the pain, I did when I went to Finland.. It's not about not needing roaming, it's about not using roaming because it's impossible to use. I don't know much about roaming in the US but I'm guessing it's actually possible to use the same service in NYC and LA, in Europe that's impossible.

We are the hillbillies of roaming.

Re:Simple, right...

[Yvanhoe]

This is a quasi-monopolistic-racket situation. They make you pay what you can pay. 10 dollars per day looks acceptable for some rich americans, 0.2$ per megabyte is something a bit expensive but affordable for Pakistanis. We all know that this is not related at all to their real costs.

Re:Simple, right...

[fastest fascist]

Presumably the telco figures they get more money that way. Or they don't want people to use 3g for data.

I don't know, if your subsidy theory holds true, the telcos over here seem to not have caught on. I pay 10 euro a month for a 384 kbps 3g connection, no data transfer limits apart from the speed. And the calls and SMSs aren't that expensive, either.

Re:Simple, right...

[ichigo 2.0]

The reason for that is that the European networks consist of many local operators. Vodafone, for example, only owns networks in roughly half of Europe, and they're a huge operator. Most operators are tiny in comparison, which is the reason they are forced to rent networks from other operators when their users are roaming. Hence, the large roaming fees that go to the operator who owns the network you are roaming in.

I do agree that it's very expensive, but I don't think regulating it will fix anything. That would only bring up the costs for the majority of mobile users who don't need roaming. I'd prefer a huge, free WLAN mesh network that covers most of (urban) Europe. Then we could get rid of the middleman and ignore the whole issue.

Re:Simple, right...

[SgtChaireBourne]

I pay about US$0.20 per Megabyte here in Pakistan. For that I get... ... the privilege of financing spam.

Re:Simple, right...

[fartrader]

There is a way to address this if you are in the US, I can't speak for other countries. On numerous occasions when I have been hit with outrageous data and voice roaming charges I've simply called the cellphone company and complained that the bill is unreasonable. In many cases the agent will adjust the amount. For example on a recent trip to the Czech republic I was hit with a $500 bill for voice and data roaming - I called my US provider and they slashed it by 50%, still a significant amount but better than before. It's a buyers market - especially when the level of fees gets so stupidly high that paying the contract cancellation fees would be a small drop in the ocean.

Re:Simple, right...

[jrumney]

Some media stories surrounding the announcement by the European Union that they were looking at Roaming charges suggested that the high price of data services cross-subsidises lower voice and SMS costs.

I doubt it. SMS at 20 cents per 160 bytes works out to be a lot more of a cash cow for the networks than 3G data, even at 10 euros per Mb, and I doubt the networks get enough volume at that price for data to provide a non-negligible subsidy for voice. The EU needs to get stuck in to the providers for their data charges. At advertised data rates (which admittedly you are never going to get anywhere near), they amount to about 500 euro per minute, and you can double or triple that once you start roaming.

Re:Simple, right...

[TheRaven64]

SMS isn't being subsidised. On any modern network, SMS is tunnelled over the data connection, and with a maximum of 160 bytes per message you pay £500 per MB if you are paying 10p/message. Even the 'cheap' 1p/message rates are £50/MB (more if you don't use exactly 160 characters).

You might also check if the rates are capped. I pay 0.73p per KB, which sounds very expensive until you realise that it's capped at £1 per day, so anything over 137KB is unmetered. If I only want a couple of plain-text web pages, I pay less than £1. If I use the data connection a lot in a given day it's £1. (This is on a pre-pay plan, so no contract).

I think TFA is probably right. 3G data is just about fast enough to use as a primary Internet connection (one of my friends did for a year). 3.5G and 4G services that are starting to be deployed will make this a lot more reasonable. My home Internet connection is being upgraded from 4Mb/s to 10Mb/s soon, but I very rarely saturate the current one so (in the summer, at least) I'd be more interested in 1Mb/s that worked in the park than 10Mb/s that worked in my home.

Re:Simple, right...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Plus GSM (Poland's mobile phone network operator) it costs 0.11 or 0.09 USD in packets 20 or 50 MB, so it can be used as a mobile modem sometimes.

Simple yes, cheap no

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Carriers need to work together. It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad

Sure it's simple, but it's not cheap.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[mabhatter654]

consider many wi-fi spots are free, and the most expensive are $29 (15E) per MONTH these guys are on crack. Even ATT is giving away wi-fi access to their paying DSL customers of premium packages.

What they really mean is that Google's 700Mhz gambit will make paying more than $15 per month for a wireless device that's only a phone, or only Wi-fi go away... cleared that up!

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[leenks]

Maybe in California, but most of the rest of the USA you still have to pay for Wireless - at least that has been my experience so far. Other countries can be far worse - the UK is EXTORTIONATE in comparison, although the launch of 3G wireless contracts for PCs is helping with that.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Klaus_1250]

It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad.

Someone need a reality check. Why would anyone pay 10 euro's per day if you can get WiFi access for free or as low as 10 euro's per month? Sure, there are people who are willing to pay those amounts, but personally, I rather spend my vacation money on beer than watching YouTube over 3G.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[c_forq]

Maybe it is because I have only lived in cities with colleges in them, but in my experience free Wi-Fi is EVERYWHERE, even places it doesn't really make sense (like bars, tanning salons, and barbers).

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Simian Road]

I've yet to find free wifi in the UK (around where I live anyway). The wifi that I do find is all attached to different service providers too, so you have to sign up for 3 or 4 different wifi providers just living in the same city.

Mobile broadband would annihilate wifi over here.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

> some Other countries can be far worse

Some other countries, are *far* better. China, for example, never charges for wifi - well, I've never found a place that charges. Even Starbucks has it for free. SPR Coffee. Pacific Coffee. All free - not even a home page or login. Just fire it up and go - like at home (probably very similar equipment and service).

I use a free product called Devicescape where you can add hotspots and other wifi access points; it'll create a single fake access point on your device and automatically switch between the real ones when it finds them. Works pretty well on my Nokia E90. I added 'linksys' and a few other common SSIDs and it gets my email while I'm walking down the street, or on a bus :)

But, yes, that certainly isn't cheap.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[shellbeach]

Sure it's simple, but it's not cheap. And besides -- if mobile broadband represents the future of phones, why is nokia including wifi with all their latest top-end phones? Clearly wifi access is a selling point, and it's a selling point because it's free ...

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[mollymoo]

The UK was extortionate till very recently. Last time I looked, about four months ago, you were looking at insanity like £6 for an hour or £40 for 60 hours over the course of one month. When I looked a few days ago, I found The Cloud (one of, if not the, largest providers) now charge just £6.99 for a month's unlimited access for one device, with no contract. That's not too bad.

Anyway, I don't give a shit any more as I've now got an HSDPA phone. 1Mbps or so (real world, theoretical limit for my setup is the 2.1Mbps throughput of bluetooth EDR - cables and dongles suck) is enough for me on the road. TFA is right - I just don't care about hotspots now I've tasted decent mobile data. Anyone from the UK remember Rabbit? No? Neither do most people. They were the mobile phone equivalent of hotspots.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[larry bagina]

However, when they imprison you for using that wifi in subversive ways, they'll bill your family for the cost of the bullet used to shoot you.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[vidarh]

Because of (lack of) availability. If you're a business traveller in the US, for example, you will likely find yourself regularly in places where only a few expensive providers have hotspots. When I was traveling regularly to SFO last year, for example, I frequently paid $10 I think it was for a day pass even though I was only at the airport for 2-3 hours. $10 is still cheap compared to the salary I was paid to sit there and do nothing if I didn't have internet access.

And that meant I had to drag out my credit card. If I could have it billed straight to my cellphone subscription I would've loved it. And in fact, I could've, except for the times when I forgot to re-enable my UK T-Mobile hotspot account, but I'd still need to keep the login details with me and go through a login procedure instead of just plugging in my USB modem.

Face it, most people aren't picking their providers based on roaming costs, and most people that use roaming extensively abroad are business travelers, who WILL pay extra for the convenience.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[kinabrew]

10 Euros is not equal to 10 dollars. It's more than 15 dollars.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[tompaulco]

Come on by my salon in Norman, Oklahoma and enjoy free wireless, or go back behind us to the Burger King to use theirs or across the street to B. Dalton to use theirs.
Back to the subject: I don't believe that mobile phone internet has the slightest chance of pushing out free wireless hotspots unless and until they can manage to make data rates both faster and cheaper. I have no data plan on my phone and WILL NOT get one until they come up with an unlimited plan with 54Mbps transfer rates for about $20 a month. With the threat earlier today that, due to the interfaces on these mobile devices, the internet will now become even MORE image-based, the data rates on these phones are going to have to play catch-up in order to display the web pages built for their use.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[xSauronx]

for christs sake, the wendy's in this podunk town of 11,000 offers free wifi. im not about to consider buying a mobile internet card.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[anagama]

Obviously, my town isn't everywhere in the country. I live about 90 miles north of Seattle, but there are at least three local coffee shops with 3 blocks of my office with free wi-fi. Maybe it isn't just CA that's hip to access.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Red Flayer]

Let me guess, you saw "10 Euros a day" and flipped out.

Note what the context is: international roaming.

Considering the current cost of data services on a cell phone, 10 euro a day is not out of line for complete data services across multiple continents.

voice usage --international calling plans get heavy quickly. Now that data is such a big part of cell service, I'd expect that my monthly bill would be even higher if I were still traveling all over the place and doing almost all my business via cell phone.

So, sure 10 euro a day looks like a lot... but blanket access? Even when at a client site with locked down systems & no wi-fi? It's worth US$450/month if you're already paying $700/mo for voice.

Yes, there are only a certain number of customers that would find it worthwhile to use a plan like this, and I don't think open wi-fi is going anywhere for a long time... but I do think that business travelers would find a service like this very useful -- particularly those who don't have the time to swing by Starbucks to checktheir emails. People traveling on business tend to pack a lot of work into their day.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[bendodge]

I added 'linksys' and a few other common SSIDs and it gets my email while I'm walking down the street, or on a bus :) You can quickly get a lot more than email doing that.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[plague3106]

Well, let us know when the US gets a taste of decent mobile voice, as there are still many areas where "you can't expect it to work in your house!" is a common message from customer service reps.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

I added 'linksys' and a few other common SSIDs and it gets my email while I'm walking down the street, or on a bus :) You can quickly get a lot more than email doing that. Oh? Care to elaborate?

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[cjb658]

All free - not even a home page or login. Just fire it up and go - like at home (probably very similar equipment and service).

That's probably because in China, they don't have to worry about customers suing them if they download viruses, run botnets, etc.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Zontar The Mindless]

10 Euro a day? Somebody's severely deluding himself here, or my name's not Napoleon.

I pay ~21 Euro (199 SEK) a *month* for roaming WiFi in Stockholm, and the only reason I pay that at all is because I can't access any free hotspots reliably from the café where I like to work. I suppose I could find another hangout, but it's close to our office and the owner's a friend of mine - I figure all the free coffee more than offsets what I pay for the RoverRabbit subscription.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[darkpixel2k]

for christs sake, the wendy's in this podunk town of 11,000 offers free wifi. im not about to consider buying a mobile internet card.

No kidding. I just called Verizon about a corporate cell phone plan for one of my clients. They were quoting $1,000 for 10 lines with 1,000 minutes per phone, and no extra services. Data cards were $55/mo for 2 GB service plus something ungodly like $0.45/MB after you hit the 2 GB cap. And if you wanted text messaging it was just under $20/month/phone...and that only got you 200 text messages. Seriously Verizon, what the fuck? Slashdot mobile bandwidth price article here.

Too bad there isn't a cool open linux-based handset combined with a cheap radio running on a linux-powered box that could be used as a cell 'hotspot'...then you could start deploying them all over the place in a mesh and charge a flat monthly fee for unlimited in-network calls and a small per-minute fee for off-network calls which can be routed through some VoIP provider to POTS numbers...

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

It is illegal to steal internet access from people who are not smart enough to enable security on their wireless routers.

Just like it is illegal to steal a bicycle that someone is not smart enough to lock up on their front porch.

By looking for any of the common (IE default) SSIDs out there, you are exploiting people who are too ignorant (IE uneducated in how to secure their wireless) to lock down the bandwidth that they pay for. Sure, some businesses offer free WiFi, but most of them will at least change their SSID to something relating to their shop.

So, "You can quickly get a lot more than email doing that" most likely means that you can get trouble. Lots of trouble. And a google search or three or more will turn up people who have already been charged with stealing wireless access. In multiple countries.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

Wow. You're amazingly clued up on Chinese law.

So, how should I distinguish between the hot spot run by SPR Coffee in DongZhiMen shopping mall who's SSID is 'D-LINK' and some nearby home who also have a d-link router but hasn't secured it? Seems impossible to me...

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

Perhaps, but I like to think it's because, if they didn't run it for free, a lot of their customers would just go somewhere else that does have free wifi - I know that's true for me.

I know of one Starbucks in Beijing that doesn't have wifi at all - in Beihai (IIRC) - and I've not been there again. All SPR Coffee and Pacific Coffee shops have free wifi, their coffee is just as good (though I'm not from the US so I'm not as fussy), and the seats are just as comphy.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[el americano]

Not immoral, and not illegal in many places. ...and never comparable to stealing a bicycle. Was that a troll?

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[samkass]

Ever since I got an iPod Touch I'm a lot more aware of who does and doesn't have wireless. Starbucks' wireless usually extends hundreds of feet from their actual location, most of the airports I go to have free wireless (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh... Newark costs a lot for theirs) , and as you say even bars have it. But it's really nice checking email, directions, sports scores, or wikipedia anytime, anywhere.

As long as Apple's selling more and more iTouches, wifis only going to get more popular.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[davolfman]

Spoken like a man who's never eaten at a Panera's. I can get free WiFi in any major city in Colorado. And that ain't exactly the center of American civilization. Vons/Safeway as well. Just because Starbucks charges doesn't mean they're the rule.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

This guys company makes cell phones and he thinks carriers will work together.
So clearly he is not one of the people making the phones
or dealing with the carriers

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[alexborges]

"Too bad there isn't a cool open linux-based handset combined with a cheap radio running on a linux-powered box that could be used as a cell 'hotspot'...then you could start deploying them all over the place in a mesh and charge a flat monthly fee for unlimited in-network calls and a small per-minute fee for off-network calls which can be routed through some VoIP provider to POTS numbers..."

Enter google android. And we are going to make this cellphone company punks run like HELL for their money. The net has won, all we have to do now is defend it from this jerks.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[that this is not und]

Face it, most people aren't picking their providers based on roaming costs, and most people that use roaming extensively abroad are business travelers, who WILL pay extra for the convenience.

Face it: most Wi-Fi users are not international business travelers. So there's no swift end in sight.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[yog]

Precisely. This is non-news. Wifi can be offered for free. Cell phone broadband costs money, by definition, and cannot be offered in a coffeehouse (that I know of). Every few months this kind of story comes along and I am starting to wonder whether they are planted by the mobile phone carriers to prepare us for the demise of wireless networking and the inevitable domination of costly per-minute or per-month broadband plans on cell phones.

Contradictory to TFA, T-Mobile has been offering phones that can switch to wifi VOIP service seamlessly. When you enter an open hotspot, your phone automatically switches to the wifi carrier and you thus save on daytime minutes. This is much more the direction we should be going. Let the customer have more freedom of choice and maximize the use of appropriate networking resources instead of forcing us to always hew to some particular system.

In various places of work, my phone has not worked well, but with wifi it would have been fine. This is the wave of the future and not cell phone broadband, in my opinion.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[jewelie]

Probably just a misunderstanding of the location. Certainly here in the UK it is illegal to use an open WiFi hotspot without permission, and people have already been convicted of such offenses.

Ithink Ericcson's suggestion is similarly dependant upon location - I'd have to agree with them in respect to the UK. WiFi hasn't really taken off, and free hotspots are non-existant, whereas mobile broadband packages using the 3G/HSDPA (up to about 2Mb at the moment) are available that pretty much match what you can get with ADSL now. For financial reasons Ino-longer have ADSL, and use my mobile for internet access exclusively now - it is actually cheaper than the cheapest ADSL offering, and is only a flat rate fee of £10 (US$10) a month on top of my normal mobile contract, and Ican drop it at any time should finances become any tighter. Ibelieve this pattern is similar over many other places in Europe - free WiFi never took off, but fast flat-rate affordable mobile-broadband is.

BTW I've actually got to the point where Idon't even bother to turn the computer on much anymore, do most 'net access via Opera Mini on a Nokia N70 and a fold-up bluetooth keyboard. Even got a MSN & Yahoo IM, that pop up an alert on the mobile when I've got a new message. Similar polling/alerts for e-mail. Why wait for the computer to boot up, when Ican quickly grab the mobile and do what Iwant there and then (being short-sighted probably helps here.)

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Anonymous Coward]

their coffee is just as good (though I'm not from the US so I'm not as fussy)

If it's any reassurance, US coffee snobs hate Charbucks. It's consistent because it's always so over-roasted that you can hardly taste whatever beans they happened to have handy.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[genericpoweruser]

Bullshit. First and foremost, you're not stealing anything. It's more akin to enjoying music someone has playing on the boom-box in their window, or hell, even enjoying someone's shade--they obviously paid for the thing that's blocking the sun, you mooch. Second, by virtue of being able to connect in the first place, the hardware has acted on behalf of the owner to allow you to use their connection--the router says, essentially, "Here I am! My name is Linksys! Connect to me!" and your laptop says "Hi Linksys, gimme some internet access" and the router says (via DHCP) "you're good to go." Also, in the US at least, people buy unlimited (unmetered) access, so they would never even know or ever have to pay extra.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[jsiren]

I just checked my carrier's (Elisa Finland, affiliated with Vodafone) roaming charges. If you transfer an average of 2 MB/day or more, 10 euros/day is actually cheap.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Anonymous Coward]

It is illegal to steal internet access from people who are not smart enough to enable security on their wireless routers. What happens when the clueless laptop owner wanders into range of the clueless open access point and his PC joins it based on nothing more than the fact that the laptop is powered up? Is the access point owner guilty of hacking or sniffing traffic from the laptop owner, or is the laptop owner guilty of stealing the service?

Can we actually prosecute anyone who inadvertently joins an open access point? There must be some way to monetize this. I am envisioning special "data cops", funded by a tax on internet service that will chase the offenders (at high speeds in cars, if necessary), to issue "tickets" to fine the offenders. For this, we need a new law: the "Moratorium On Ripping Off Networks (MORON) Act". Oh yeah, that'll work.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

I guess you aren't aware that Time Warner cable in parts of Texas is starting to charge by how much you download. You must have missed the articles posted here on Slashdot.

I guess you aren't aware of the Charter and Roadrunner customers who have gotten letters from those two companies, informing them that they have been downloading illegally (torrents), only to have those customers claim ignorance and point to their open routers saying "It must have been someone on my wireless doing it." If it was LEGAL to just connect to any wireless you see and use it as you see fit, then the person with the wireless access point would be legally responsible for anything that occurs on it.

Your description of how the hardware works, does not make the fact that you are illegally connecting to someone else's wireless actually legal. You are skipping over the simple fact that it is exploitation of ignorance. YOU know that the owner of that home wireless should be securing their shit. You know it, and since they didn't, you feel it is too bad for them and you are gonna use their shit.

And that makes it the same as stealing someone's bike off their porch. Because YOU know what you are doing is wrong. It is not the same at all as listening to someone else's radio. If anything, it is the same as mooching off someone's cable. You seem to think that since it is broadcast through the air, that means it is free. It is not. Satellite is broadcast through the air. It isn't free. Are you saying that if you could hack a satellite box, that makes it free and legal to just grab satellite TV? Normal TV and Digital TV are INTENDED to be free, and thus if you have an arial on your TV or digital receiver, you can watch those channels for free. As I said, they are INTENDED to be free. That is why it is not illegal to watch them.

A better example, would be the way that cable USED to be transmitted. All the channels used to be sent to your home. All of them. The box you had decided which channels you could watch. Your argument says that since all the channels are potentially available, that if the cable company is to stupid to check to see what box you are ACTUALLY using, it should be legal for you to watch all those channels, not just be limited to the ones you pay for.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[simplesteps]

Hold on now... no one proposed "hacking" anything so comparing it to "hack[ing] a satellite box" is absurd. The description of how the "hardware" (more than hardware actually) works is extremely relevant... in this case one item is advertising availability and another device says "hi here's who I am (mac address) may I have access?" and the first device responded "certainly, here is an IP address and other info (dns, etc)". IANAL, but that sure sounds like an agreement was made (as opposed to your stealing a bike example because no one *offered* a bicycle and no one *asked permission* to use it and no one *granted* such use).

Also, I suggest that many people intentionally leave their access points open as a form of hospitality, etc. One very public example is security expert Bruce Schneier http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html . So one does NOT need to assume that the person offering an open access point is "ignorant". Clearly the temporary use of the offered access is not ironclad "exploitation of ignorance".

Absurd or greedy use of an offered courtesy (e.g. downloading such massive amounts of data that cause degraded service to others or surcharges) is inappropriate and impolite but that does not automatically make something illegal. For example if cookies are offered for free I don't let my children take all or even a large portion of them; however I would be shocked if someone suggested that someone taking most or even all of the offered free cookies was a thief and should be prosecuted.

Also, your assertion about legal responsibility for what occurs through one's access point proving use of open access points to be illegal seems extremely questionable at best to me and most likely IMHO not relevant to whether or not use of an open access point is "theft" like stealing a bicycle.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[Ender_Stonebender]

Do you really think that people who are too ignorant to change the SSID of their router are going to think to go look at the logs to see if anyone else has been using it? As long as you don't do anything illegal that results in their computer equipment getting seized by the police, chances of them noticing are incredibly slim - unless you hang around outside to do some surfing, which is not what the original poster was talking about. I seem to recall one of the cases that you couldn't be bothered to Google was based on someone seen sitting in a car with no apparent reason to be in that location. But if you've got a portable device that's just receiving e-mail as you travel past - well, it's like speeding: It may be illegal, but your chance of getting in trouble for it are very low.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

There is no agreement made, because there are no people involved to make the agreements. The devices are not authorized on their own to make legal and binding agreements and contracts. The wireless card cannot determine on its own who owns the wireless access point to be able to decide if what it is connecting to is a free hot spot, or just someone who left it open because they did not know any better. A wireless access point can make the determination if a client that is attempting to connect is allowed to connect, but only after the owner has authorized the appropriate mac addresses in the router's software. If more people were properly educated as to how to do this, they would. Sure, some people would leave their wireless open for everyone to use, however, if more ISPs follow the example of Time Warner in Texas, those private individuals who leave their access points open will drop significantly.

Assuming that *if* an access point is unsecured that this means they are leaving it open for everyone to access freely, is no different from assuming that *if* someone leaves their bike unlocked, that this means anyone is allowed to take it.

Again, describing how the process works by humanizing the actions taken does not make it legal when someone who does not own the wireless access point (or someone that has direct expressed permission to use it) decides to allow their hardware to connect to it.

If a business owner is providing free wi-fi, it is in their best interests to customize the SSID. This not only makes it less confusing for patrons to use the wireless, but it is a form of cheap advertising.

Bruce Schneier's page reads very well, and he is a polite, well spoken individual. He acknowledges being in the minority. He states very clearly why he leaves his wireless open. He doesn't state whether or not he leaves the default SSID in place, which is actually a pivotal point. If he makes it clear that he knows something about his wireless and gives his network a unique name AND leaves it open, that indicates that he most likely has left it open on purpose, since he obviously knows enough about his wireless to be able to change his SSID. However, as a tech that works in a computer repair shop, and as a tech that continually has to perform housecalls to setup and secure customer's wireless routers, I can tell you that the majority of people out there who have open wireless routers using the default SSIDs DO NOT KNOW ABOUT SECURING THEIR WIRELESS EQUIPMENT PROPERLY!

And there is a massive difference between a plate of cookies with a sign above them that expresses in plain english "Free for the taking" and a plate of cookies just sitting on a table. The former are there for free, and the number of cookies taken is irrelevant. The latter is undefined as to their "free" status, therefore any number of them taken could be construed as theft, if they are not indeed intended to be free.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

"It may be illegal, but your chance of getting in trouble for it are very low."

I've been saying all along that it is illegal. Thank you for agreeing with me. Speeding is illegal also, as you say. Just because people don't get caught speeding EVERY TIME, doesn't make it alright to speed. And yes, I'm one of those annoying jerks who drives the speed limit.

Yep. I could not be bothered to google stuff that I did not need to read. However, I'm glad YOU bothered to google it, since you needed to see that I was indeed right about people illegally stealing bandwidth and being arrested for it.

Stealing little things from the corner pharmacy, is no better than stealing stereos or Plasma TVs. The fact that the police officers were stealing during and after Hurricane Katrina, did not make it alright for the everyday Joe to be stealing the same things. The argument, "Just because everyone else is doing it" just doesn't cut it. Neither does "It's only a little theft."

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[genericpoweruser]

Hm.. As a thought experiment, what if someone put a sign on their plate of cookies that is meant to say "Joanna's snacks--please leave them alone", but since Joanna doesn't know how to read she just clipped a piece of a magazine article to use as a sign that actually said "free cookies". If I take a cookie, am I stealing? The sign, which acted on Joanna's behalf, says I can but Joanna doesn't want me to. She was ignorant of what the sign meant to other people.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

I guess people are disagreeing with the law, if it says that it is illegal to use an open access point.

What happens when you have your device set up to use a commercial open access point, and some one's home also has the same setup?

As far as I can tell, there's no way for your device to distinguish between the two. So, short of switching off the device, you can't help but break the law.

In my case, the coffee shop offers free wifi and hasn't changed it's SSID. As far as I know, that's not illegal. So, I use my device to connect to it. Now my device will connect to any network with that SSID - even if I am *in* the coffee shop I don't know why network is the correct one.

I'm going to change my home's open wifi's SSID to 'Starbucks'. Does that mean I help people break the law?

This law is clearly wrong, IMO - and I think others agree. It's a good job there actually has to be a legal person involved in order to discern between the different cases.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

People in China think it's free because they have little to no interest in anything from other countries. It's mostly radicals and people from other countries who want to disseminate their illeducated opinions into China that care about the censorship.

Of course, we're really talking about the web here, not the internet in general.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

This sounds more like the "Million Monkeys write Shakespere" thought experiment. First, without knowing how to read, she was able to randomly grab a sign that said the exact opposite of what she meant to say? Sorry. I reject your thought experiment at the moment.

I suppose though that would be similar to a record store accidentally tagging a boxed CD set at 1/10th the retail price it should be (16.99 instead of 169.99). They did not intend to sell it for that price, and would rather NOT sell it for that price. However, the law in most US states indicates that if a customer sees that price, they are allowed to purchase it at that (mis)tagged price, regardless of how unhappy it makes the store.

The major problem with your thought experiment, is that an SSID of "linksys" does NOT equal "Free Internet Access" regardless of whether or not you want it to. Also, the lack of security on a wireless connection does NOT equal "Free Internet Access" regardless of what you might personally want.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

And I want to be clear on something... something unrelated, yet something that should put my feelings into perspective.

Smoking Grass is illegal. It's not wrong. It's just illegal.

Now, I'm going to use that word "wrong" again. When you see someone doing something wrong, aren't you obliged on some level to inform them of what is right? I didn't say on Every Level.

I've been to Coffee shops where they left their SSID set to the default out of the box setting. And although I didn't get every owner/manager to change their SSID, I did get more than half of them to change their SSIDs to one that related to their particular shop. I explained to them why. I told them that by doing so, they were not encouraging people to connect to other people's home routers by the same name. They were increasing their advertising. They were showing tech savvy people that at the very least, they knew how to get into their router, and they were willing to make a technological effort. In a few cases where the shop owners checked their router logs, the owners noticed a significant drop in the attempts of their "customers" to try to log into the admin panels of the routers... AFTER just that simple change of their SSID. So you would be doing a coffee shop owner/manager a service if you mentioned to them that they should get rid of that default SSID and replace it with one that pertained to their business.

If you want to offer free wireless privately, what's wrong with showing a little insight and intelligence, and renaming your SSID "Free Wireless Here"? That removes all doubt.

The law is clearly NOT wrong... and it will be even more clearly NOT wrong as more ISPs get on the bandwagon of charging for bandwidth used.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[phulegart]

You said it yourself.

"free internet access"

That's what equals free internet access.

You have no way of knowing what someone intends, just by seeing "linksys" or "default". You have no way of knowing if they intended to leave it open, or if they just did not know. You can NOT go on the assumption that since it is the default SSID, and that since it is unsecured, that it MUST be because they intended it to be so. That logic is faulty, simply because it is a well known fact by computer repair technicians (and others) that the majority of wireless access point/wireless router owners out there know little to nothing about securing their network.

Now, I agree completely that if you want to keep people off your network, you have to secure it. I tell this to my customers. I get PAID to go to their homes and do this for them. Every week. I can only tell so many people though. I've walked over to my neighbors houses (three of them) and informed them that I could see and access their wireless networks. All three were surprised. All three asked me if I could "fix" it for them. I did.

How much educating of the public do YOU do? Or do you just shrug and say "Screw them. If they are too stupid to know better, they deserve the loss of bandwidth."

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[dwater]

When you see someone doing something wrong, aren't you obliged on some level to inform them of what is right? Not at all. It's none of my business. That's right, I'm not an American.

Of course, I might want to anyway, but still, I can't since I can't speak Chinese.

If you want to offer free wireless privately, what's wrong with showing a little insight and intelligence, and renaming your SSID "Free Wireless Here"? That removes all doubt. Well, perhaps, and I do, but I don't see why *I* should have to do that since there's already a mechanism to do that - that's the purpose publishing of SSID and lack of username and password. To me, that makes it quite clear that it is open for use. I mean, you need a username and password to change the settings on the router, so, even if they are well known, it is clear that 'just anybody' is supposed to use it.

IMO, this problem is all due to the stupid router manufacturers not putting a username/password on their wifi networks when they're shipped. I don't care if the username/password are all the same (though they could use a LAN MAC address or something to make it unique), so long as there is a username/password, then I *know* I'm not supposed to use it and I have to take action to connect (it can't happen automatically).

This law has it all backwards, IMO.

Re:Simple yes, cheap no

[bendodge]

I was talking more about malware. Making innocent-looking access points is a popular technique for crackers, sniffers, virus-spreaders, what have you.

I fail to see the correlation.

[Damocles the Elder]

If I sit down at a place and have the option to either A.) Connect to a free wireless hub, or B.) Pay exorbitant amounts to connect my phone to my computer and connect at a horrible speed, which one am I going to choose?

Wait, don't tell me, I can figure this one out...

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[One Childish N00b]

The correlation is this: Ericsson are a dealer in mobile internet devices. It is in their interest for people to move to mobile internet devices as people who buy mobile internet devices might by an Ericsson one. Ericsson don't do wifi hotspots, so there is no way using wifi hotspots puts money from your wallet into Ericsson's pocket. This displeases Ericsson, so they will now crow from the rooftops that wifi hotspots are dead, in a bid to drum up business for their absurdly-tariffed mobile internet devices.

Does anybody seriously listen when companies come out with this sort of self-serving 'analyses'? Do they think these companies make these statements out of the goodness of their hearts? If one person switches to a mobile internet device because of this, they're an idiot. Doublly so if they buy an Ericsson.

(Posted from a wifi hotspot).

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[e-Flex]

Actually Ericsson does do hotspots: http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson/press/releases/20040921-961341.shtml Also I've seen them live at various locations around Sweden.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[bjourne]

While that is true, it is also true that the situation in Europe is very different from the US. Western European countries have large built out mostly under-used 3G networks so carriers offer fairly cheap access for mobile broadband. 7 MBit for 19/month is not that bad. And at least in Sweden, free wifi hotspots isn't that common. The fee at hotels is about 20/week and on the train it is 10 for a 5 hour ride. Both wifi and mobile operators are trying to screw you so you just have to roll with the one that manages to screw you the least.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[TubeSteak]

The correlation is this: Ericsson are a dealer in mobile internet devices. It is in their interest for people to move to mobile internet devices as people who buy mobile internet devices might by an Ericsson one. Ericsson don't do wifi hotspots, so there is no way using wifi hotspots puts money from your wallet into Ericsson's pocket. Sony-Ericsson makes plenty of cellphones with WiFi capability.

I dunno whatever happened to the Ericsson femtocell, but even that was going to come with wifi.

No matter how you slice it, wired broadband is cheaper & VOIP is the cheapest way to talk.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Deliveranc3]

That's not the question though... the real question is do you share your wireless?

If you acknowledge the importance of free wireless do you help things or do you think "meh others can just pay for it, I need 5k more for bittorrent!"

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[robertjw]

And at least in Sweden, free wifi hotspots isn't that common. The fee at hotels is about 20/week and on the train it is 10 for a 5 hour ride.

Why is this? Doesn't seem to make economic sense, especially for the hotels.

Here in the US the situation is pretty simple. The only people who charge are large established businesses with little competition. Starbucks charges because they have a large customer base. Every other coffee shop in town gives it away for free as an incentive to visit their location. Same thing with many hotels. Holiday Inn offers free wifi. I know, I borrowed it once (and my brother in law stays in a lot of Holiday Inns). About the only time a business charges for wifi is if they know people are going to come in and they can sell it as an upgrade. Wifi is a very cheap service to offer, so everyone else uses it as a loss leader (bars, tanning salons, dog groomers, whatever)

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Damocles the Elder]

Actually, it's debatable that seeding torrents is good too, but yes, my wifi net is open.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[cjb658]

Does anybody seriously listen when companies come out with this sort of self-serving 'analyses'?

Apparantly, because companies keep doing it.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[penix1]

If you acknowledge the importance of free wireless do you help things or do you think "meh others can just pay for it, I need 5k more for bittorrent!"

More likely not getting the throughput you are paying for because some asshat leech is running a BT client off your hotspot. Not to say anything about the legal issue you run when the MAFIAA (or worse, another 3 letter agency) come knocking down your door.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[mrbluze]

In Australia, the 3G network is freaking expensive and just not an option for anyone who wants wireless as a replacement for wired internet (eg: out-of-city residents). Word has it, however, that the roll-out of Ericsson based wireless will mean an end to Telstra's monopoly on wireless broadband and some seriously competitive pricing (meaning the same cost as wired broadband with the same data plans).

If that does eventuate, then I'm definitely buying!

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[CoolGopher]

Also, keep in mind that this was the company that predicted that WAP was going to be the Next Big Thing(tm)...

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[raddan]

Thing is, these patently false and self-serving claims seem to have a big effect on a very important group of people: CIOs. I'm not saying that CIOs are stupid people per se, but in my purely anecdotal experience, there's been a strong correlation. It's like they lack the brain structure responsible for critical thinking or something...

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people here seem to be unaware of the lack of Wi-Fi hotspot coverage in Europe. And I didn't even mention the word free. In Finland, the Wi-Fi coverage is very spotty, unless you buy a subscription for unlimited service (and even these services are usually available only in limited areas). The advantage of 3G-based mobile broadband is that it covers a huge area, nearly the whole country (there are still many problematic areas, though). So you can you use the connection nearly everywhere and you don't have to worry finding a Wi-Fi hotspot when you want to check you email etc.

And people who flippet out by the 10 euros/day remark: Go read the article again. The remark was in the context of international roaming, which is horrendously expensive in Europe. 10 euros/day for unlimited data roaming might not be too bad compared to the usual rates the carriers charge for this. When you're in your home country, these services can be quite cheap. Generally the prices start from about 10euros/month for 384kb/s unlimited access and go to 20euros/month for 1Mbit/s unlimited or 30euros/month for 2Mbit/s unlimited access. (These prices are from the price lists of major carriers in Finland: http://saunalahti.fi/gsm/mobiililaajakaista.php, http://www.elisa.fi/matkaviestinta/liittymat/hinnasto/, http://www.sonera.fi/Puhelin+ja+liittym%E4/Liikkuva+laajakaista). Somebody commented in this discussion that mobile broadband that covers the whole country for 40$/month will maybe happen in 20 years. Well, it is already reality in Finland.

Coincidentally, in todays edition of Helsingin Sanomat (the largest newspaper in Finland) there was an article about the rising popularity of "mobile broadband" (article in Finnish only): http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Langattomalla+laajakaistalla+valtava+kysynt/1135234701006. Although the article talks more about the marketing of the HSDPA modems for laptops, it also mentions that the carriers expect that during this year about 10% of their clients will have subscribed to mobile broadband services. So the shift from Wi-Fi hotspots (that are nearly non-existent in Finland) to mobile broadband accesss is already happening - at least in Finland. I would imagine the situation is nearly identical in other Nordic countries also, and maybe in other countries in Europe.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Dice Fivefold]

What you don't understand is that Johan lives in Sweden, here mobile broadband has really taken off lately. Our operators is offering very reasonable, almost flat rate, high speed mobile broadband deals. For 30 $/month you get about 5-10 GB traffic/month, at up to 7.2 mbit/s download speed and 0.4 mbit/s upload. Many here cut their old land-based broadband and just use mobile. It really makes no sense to hunt for silly hotspots, when i can use my regular broadband where ever i wish to go, with no extra charge. So from a Swedish perspective, what he says is rather obvious. It is just a matter of time until this applies to the US and the rest of the world as well.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[mabinogi]

You tell me where I can do A, and I won't do B.

The reality (in Australia), is that wireless hotspots are hard to find, and when you do find them, they can cost as much as $15-30 an hour

I pay $15 a month for HSDPA (real world throughput of 2Mb/500kbs), and I only have to use it once every couple of months for it to pay for itself compared with using a wireless hotspot.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Midnight Thunder]

The correlation is this: Ericsson are a dealer in mobile internet devices.

Maybe its time they covered their bases and bought a company like D-Link.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[MyOhMyOhMy]

Well, the "5, Insightful" raises the bar quite high, but I'll attempt to challenge the insightfullness :)

One should look beyond 3G and consider if Ericsson might have some vested interest in 4G technology, e.g. Wi-Max. Perhaps 3G is a weak competitor to Wi-Fi, but Wi-Max, once the kinks get worked out will pose a serious challenge. I really don't think I am alone in not liking to mess with the different SSID/WEP/WPA/WPA2 configurations every time I want to get online in a new place. I like the convenience of my EVDO connectivity that works wherever my wireless provider has coverage (Please, don't start bitching about coverage, even the worst wireless carriers have considerably wider footprint than the dinky Wi-Fi) . Based on the "Posted from a wifi hotspot" comment, it may be fair to deduce that the poster has not experienced the consistent convenience of EVDO. Yes, admittedly EVDO is slower than a G-Wi-Fi with a good broadband behind it, but that is why I hope the Wi-Max will marry the convenience of EVDO with performance of Wi-Fi.

I cannot disagree that quite often wireless carriers have pricing structures that feel like medieval torture chambers. That is an unfortunate trend in billing practices in today's world in general. The book "Gotcha Capitalism" (Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/38353y) discusses quite a few examples of despicable practices by many businesses. That is the dark side of capitalism today, but let's not forget that at some point even inside the most evil carrier, there are technically minded people who truly believe in the technology they provide to the customers, and people who believe that customers will buy the services because of their beneficial qualities, not because they got bamboozled by the marketing department.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[jhol13]

Wifi hotspots in Finland: http://hotspots.fi/. The whole (central) Oulu is free. There are some unregistered free access points too, and their number is not going down.

The Fon (and community efforts) are in for a kill.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[inflex]

Now that I'd love to see happen, especially for rural areas. Currently paying a fair bit for Skymesh 2-way satellite along with another $60/mth or so for NextG for on the road. It's a sad state of affairs, that's for sure.... at least the 2-way satellite is cheaper than NextG.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[that this is not und]

Think about it for a minute. The CIOs are just in charge of the file cabinets (21th century version). It's not like they're in Marketing, Purchasing, or even Engineering.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[mrbluze]

Now that I'd love to see happen, especially for rural areas. Currently paying a fair bit for Skymesh 2-way satellite along with another $60/mth or so for NextG for on the road. It's a sad state of affairs, that's for sure.... at least the 2-way satellite is cheaper than NextG. It's interesting to see what people are doing in the rural areas at the moment since ISDN is being wound down (or at least the prices hiked up by closing down the 'home ISDN' service). Internode, I heard, are installing Wimax around Adelaide for the same prices as ADSL, which, if they can keep that up, is fantastic. Worth buying into a company like that, I reckon.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Yvanhoe]

Ericson is not a service provider, it is a hardware manufacturer. It is not in its best interest to follow the more likely trend ?

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Anonymous Coward]

And have you tried using them how often? How complete is the coverage? How easy are they to use (even many free networks require some kind of login/password)?

The point of the mobile broadband is the extensive coverage (not only in dense urban areas but also in the suburbs, parks, etc.) and the ease of use (no need to try find a place with Wi-Fi coverage, no need for extra logins). No Wi-Fi, free or not, can compete with that. That's the reason why Wi-Fi won't matter in the future as the costs of mobile broadband go down and the speed goes up.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[Dobeln]

There is some improvement (Skype and Aftonbladet now have many free Café hotspots in Stockholm), but the presence of relatively cheap flatrate Turbo 3G everywhere for 30 bucks / month or so means that the incentive to build more is rather small - most laptop owners who need mobility already have that small 3G dongle attached to their computer. I care only because I use my iPod Touch to surf on at Cafés. ;)

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[jrumney]

Most US hotels I've been to have free WiFi in the lobby, but $10 per day in the rooms (provided by T-Mobile or similar).

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[jpbelang]

It should also be noticed that Ericsson are pretty much always behind the curve. This pretty much falls under the heading "Trying to change reality is easier that to change youself."

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[cropus]

I can see their point. Here in Finland the operators are advertising UMTS/HSDPA unlimited data for less than 10euros per month including USB modem. That has turned out to be pretty succesful here, no need to bother for the hotspots - just connect with 3G and it works everywhere.

Re:I fail to see the correlation.

[fintux]

No, it does not need any registration or password (there is a welcome page, though, if I recall correctly). It is quite reliable and fast. The biggest downside is that the coverage area is pretty limited (downtown, university, some other locations). But I think that it is very good for a tourist, for example.

The biggest problem with 3G is, in my opinion, the power usage. The cellphone needs to be pretty much in the charger all the time, and even then it barely holds the charge. Of course that probably depends much on the signal strength, but still seems like a problem on the go.

Amazing how companies are unrealistic.

[Lumpy]

As soon as I can get cellular wifi for free, then and ONLY THEN will wifi hotspots go away. Until then the entire article is nothing but uneducated posturing by a company that has zero clue as to how the public actually uses the internet.

Cellular modems are typically very slow unless you buy the high speed broadband type. And that's $50.00 a month for limited use. Even when I have my cellular modem with me I still use public wifi when it's available. It's faster, not capped with hidden transfer caps, and honestly smoother.

Granted my only experience is with Verizon's and AT&T's offering. but wifi hot spots are here to stay.

Re:Amazing how companies are unrealistic.

[Starteck81]

Amazing how companies are unrealistic.
Well he is the marketing director. Did you really expect anything realistic to come out of his mouth?

Re:Amazing how companies are unrealistic.

[soulfury]

Cellular modems are typically very slow unless you buy the high speed broadband type. And that's $50.00 a month for limited use. Here in the Philippines, one carrier charges P10/30min (aprox $0.24509/30min) for 3G connection, and they still manage to make a killing in profits. Amazing things happen with stiff competition. With the looks of it, one may come to a conclusion that wi-fi would become irrelevant once carriers start offering cheap unlimited 3G plans. Already, all major carriers here offer unlimited text and calls and not one of them is going bankrupt.

However, I don't think wi-fi will become obsolete just because of this. I foresee that hotspots will innovate their wi-fi service and add useful applications such as the ff:
- Web portal (free legal MP3s, movies)
- Social apps ("coffee_babe is sitting at table 8. wanna msg her right now?")

Re:Amazing how companies are unrealistic.

[arcade]

Here in the Philippines, one carrier charges P10/30min (aprox $0.24509/30min) for 3G connection, and they still manage to make a killing in profits. Yes, but you've got lower labour costs in the philippines. A regular monthy wage is between P8000 nad P20000 (aprox $200 - $500 ). This of courses pushes the cost of providing a service down quite a big - as the biggest expense for companies in other countries are labour costs.

Already, all major carriers here offer unlimited text and calls and not one of them is going bankrupt. Text messages take up 160bytes of data (+ headers). I'm not sure how big the headers are, but let's say it's wrapped into something that's wrapped into IP headers, and give it a max packet size of 256bytes. To provide them free of charge is to just set up a bigger (but still rather cheap) sms gateway (i.e a more powerfull server .. or maybe add in another one of'em). Calls are a tad more expensive - but I seem to remember that the philippines is a text-message-crazy country .. so you text more than you call. In other words, the provider doesn't need to scale the infrastructure to the extreme in any case.

3G on the other hand would put extreme strain on the infrastructure. It demands a lot of bandwidth. I'm not sure how much bandwidth a regular phone call uses, but I'd guess around 9600 - 14400bps. In addition, a regular phone call will just last for less than an hour. With 3G on the other hand, you will start transferring in the Mbps range - and people will use it for many, many hours every day. In other words, at least a 100X demand on the infrastructure, probably closer to 1000X.

I quite simply do not think they'll start offering it for free very soon.

Re:Amazing how companies are unrealistic.

[cropus]

It's also amazing how unrealistic you are. The situation in your country doen't have to be the situation elsewhere. www.saunalahti.fi offers here (including the modem): DataPaketti 384 max. 384 kbit/s 9,80 /month DataPaketti 512 max. 512 kbit/s 14,80 /month DataPaketti 1M max. 1 Mbit/s 19,80 /month DataPaketti 2M max. 2 Mbit/s 29,80 /month Beats public wifi, because you don't need to find one. Besides WCDMA/HSDPA is not the last step in this arena: IHSPA enhances it and eventually LTE stuff will probably lower the monthly fee into completely new level.

Damn

[sleeponthemic]

How am I going to stalk online without fear of repercussion?

Quite the opposite

[blhack]

Places that DON'T have free wifi are finding themselves with a very easy decision:
either get with the times, or lose business.

It is assumed that a coffee shop will have wifi, seeing it at a restaurant is becoming more and more commonplace, and seeing it at an airport is starting to be expected.

Does he mean non FREE wifi?

This is something that has always baffled me. A really fast cable connection costs about 50 bucks a month (at least thats what I pay for 8down 2up in Phoenix)....a wireless AP costs anywhere from $20-100 depending on how much bullshit you eat from the idiot working at best buy.
How can you not justify a $50 a month expense, and a $50 initial cost?

Re:Quite the opposite

[mabhatter654]

it's not a $50 cost by any means. BUT...

Most small businesses need the highspeed connection for credit cards, edi, etc... there's really nothing other than DSL (way too fast) or dial up (far too little) for them anyway. They're probably paying a minimum of $120 per month for what we get for $40 at home.... so they might as well offer it to clients. They're not running $50 routers... or shouldn't be. They should be running netopia or low-end cisco boxes ($200-$500) that split the connection to their private network and the public network at the incomming box to protect their register networks... PCI probably demands it.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

there isn't a -1 disagree modifier for a reason, -1 offtopic and -1 troll aren't valid substitutes. Duh, that's what the -1 Overrated moderation is for.

Re:Quite the opposite

[PCM2]

How can you not justify a $50 a month expense, and a $50 initial cost?

If I had to guess, I'd say it has to do with the telecom industry charging businesses more than consumers, especially if they're "reselling" the service (for free). I don't know for a fact that this is the case, but -- duh. If you were a telecom company, why would you not try to fleece businesses?

Re:Quite the opposite

[blhack]

it's not a $50 cost by any means. BUT...

Most small businesses need the highspeed connection for credit cards, edi, etc... there's really nothing other than DSL (way too fast) or dial up (far too little) for them anyway. They're probably paying a minimum of $120 per month for what we get for $40 at home.... so they might as well offer it to clients. They're not running $50 routers... or shouldn't be. They should be running netopia or low-end cisco boxes ($200-$500) that split the connection to their private network and the public network at the incomming box to protect their register networks... PCI probably demands it. So why can't they get a separate cable connection for 50 bucks a month, and run that on a 50 dollar best buy AP?
Running your credit card machines and your public wifi over the same link sounds like a bad idea.
I guess if you tried to over complicate things, you could get the price higher than $50 a month, but I don't see why you would do that.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Fishbulb]

I'd be willing to bet dd-wrt comes close. On $50 hardware.

Re:Quite the opposite

[JonWan]

I have free wifi in my videostore and to generate a little extra money I put a few RV spaces on the lot behind the store. I offer my RV customers free wifi and many of them are here because I have it and other places don't. I don't keep my store computer on line except when I use it and it's on a different network anyway. The outdoor access point is a commercial unit that cost me about $200. All I have available is 1.5Mb DSL, but it works out OK.
people visiting town will come by and get their email and sometimes even spend money here.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Breakfast Pants]

Every cable company in America that I know of has two tiers of internet service: consumer and business. And dusinesses aren't allowed to buy the consumer options.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Nursie]

I'd be really really really really really surprised and shocked if they were using any form of tech that went over the internet or even shared the first mile with it. They either use a phoneline (plenty fast for a coffee shop, if it's always on), ISDN or some other form of leased private line.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Klaus_1250]

...I'd say it has to do with the telecom industry charging businesses more than consumers, especially if they're "reselling" the service (for free). I don't know for a fact that this is the case...

It is, read the Terms of Service of your ISP. You're not allowed to resell the service and you probably aren't even allowed to share it for free. You are probably also not allowed to run any servers.

However, business do get something back (at least where I live). Better and faster support, SLA's, less overbooking on the line, managed modem/router, allowed to run servers, static IP, multiple IP's, better upload, etc.

Re:Quite the opposite

[tomhudson]

Every cable company in America that I know of has two tiers of internet service: consumer and business. And dusinesses (sic) aren't allowed to buy the consumer options

So you look for a reseller (either cable or dsl) that doesn't make the distinction ... they're around.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that these businesses also need support contracts to help them with the routers when they stop working. The DSL and Cable folks will just say, "disconnect the router. Does the internet work now? It does? Then go away - it is your router.".

Or does your barrista know how to deal with any problems in the $50 setup? Most won't know where the router even IS let alone that powering it down and back up will fix 95% of the problems. (I've owned at least 5 wireless routers over the years - several brands - and have yet to find one that doesn't need a good power reset once every few months because it just stops accepting connections. I think the longest I have gone is 6 months.) Anyway, the readers of SlashDot would just fix it themselves, but these real world folks probably have to get a support contract from some company.

Re:Quite the opposite

[tricorn]

Even the $50 cheap wireless routers can isolate the wireless connections from the wired ports, or you get a second cheap wireless router for your customers, plug your business wireless (or wired) router/firewall/NAT into one of the ports on that, and you're isolated.

Wake me up..

[Neko-kun]

...when this affects my GSM phones in the USA.

Seriously, only when something (in regards to cell phones) has been completed in the US can it really be considered standard.

But enough about that, let's get back to the people wanting a cell phone that only works as a phone :P

Re:Wake me up..

[vidarh]

Since when did the US matters at all when it comes to cellphones? The US has been lagging in cellphone penetration and rollouts of new services for years, and has long since been overtaken in terms of absolute number of phones too.

Re:Wake me up..

[alexborges]

Pffff....

Japan sets the bar when it comes to cellphones. Secondarily, Nokia's Europe, but primarily, next-gen mobility can be seen in japan (and they have mobile broadband fast like hell and have had it for enough years for it to be mainstream and CHEAP).

The US protects their phone companies like if they were the baby jesus or even (GASP) an airline and you (and myself, a third class non-us citizen), just sit down and enjoy our lunch, paying absurd comunications tarifs arbitrarily set by government sanctioned monoplies or oligopolies.

And there you have it. We will call you when phone companies cease to be oligopolic assholes, okay?

Now, i have NO idea why japan's Docomo, a really tough uber monopoly, can offer the absolute tip of network technology to all of japan, while mantaining their monopoly. No idea whatsoever.

Re:Wake me up..

[carpe.cervisiam]

The US is so far behind other countries when it comes to wireless service for one reason. Population density.

United States 3,537,441 square miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
pop 303 million
pop/sq mile 86 people

Europe 4,000,000 square miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
pop 728 million
pop/sq mile 182 people

Japan 145,869 square miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan
pop 125 million
pop/sq mile 857 people

It costs a great deal of money to construct a cell tower. The lower the population density in a particular area, the lower the potential revenue from that area. Look at it another way. The average cost to build a cell tower in the US is roughly 1 million dollars.http://www.steelintheair.com/Municipalities-Building-Your-Own-Cell-Tower.html DOCOMO can afford to have bleeding edge technology for their customers because the area they need to cover is immensely smaller per subscriber than the US carriers.

Re:Wake me up..

[Neko-kun]

That was exactly my point.

The US matters only because it's a market and you know, superpower status, hence why I said that let me know when this is available to me in the US. I mean, we all know Japan sets the bar for phone service and features and the whole of Europe for the portability of the actual phone and I would so love to have that here. But due to various reasons (e.g. Big Business, Gub'mint, population density) I can't.

And that makes me sad.

Re:Wake me up..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Japan sets the bar when it comes to cellphones."

Fantastic.

Except, this isn't about cell phones, it's about wi-fi and mobile broadband, neither of which require a cell phone.

Fuck off now.

I don't think so, at least not in Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

With the rates Bell Canada, Rogers, Fido and Telus charge per kb I believe Canucks like me will be using the "telephone box" for a while longer.

They are in fantasy land

[LM741N]

Uh, when exactly did mobile broadband become free? Will the shareholders of these companies allow them to give away internet connectivity. I think not. Right here I already have free municipal wifi so why would I want to pay for anything if I am just a casual surfer, which most people are? Of course the Bittorent, ftp, and other higher BW users are going to need something better than municipal wifi or hotspots. But its yet to be seen whether the cell phone carriers can deliver the goods cheaper than cable or DSL.

Re:They are in fantasy land

[CRCulver]

Of course the Bittorent, ftp, and other higher BW users are going to need something better than municipal wifi or hotspots.

I highly recommend your neighbour's flat.

And pigs will fly out of my butt

[iPaul]

Yes, you could pay out the nose for a 200k mobile broadband account (on a good day) or you could pop in to your local sandwich shop for free and use their broadband (which might be tied into a 5/2 Mbps cable modem). Hmmm...

Re:And pigs will fly out of my butt

[Troed]

"Insightful" - in the US? My $30/month mobile broadband is 7.2/1.4Mbit.

Re:And pigs will fly out of my butt

[zmollusc]

Cool, but what is it capped at? Here in the UK £15 per month (about $30) gets you 3 Gigabyte per month plus £15 per gigabyte if you go over your limit.

Re:And pigs will fly out of my butt

[Troed]

After 10Gb/mo they _might_ start to throttle you - but they won't charge extra and they won't cut the service.

Re:And pigs will fly out of my butt

[zmollusc]

Jiminey jillickers! That sounds a good deal. Contrast it with this:

Broadband Max (7GB)
£25.00 per month
Contract length 18 months
Data Allowance* 7 GB monthly
Out of Bundle charge (Per MB) £0.10

So 1GB over the 7GB limit will cost £100
or will it be £102.40 ?

Re:And pigs will fly out of my butt

[Farmer Crack-Ass]

Just to aggravate you even further, I have a 3Mb/768Kb DSL connection with absolutely no data limit whatsoever. I think I've nearly maxed out my upload bandwidth for about a month once, and there have been months when I've downloaded over 60GB.

Haven't received a single telephone call, letter, or e-mail. Haven't experienced the slightest degradation in service.

Sorry, old chum, but the British (and their Commonwealth friends) seem to get pooched when it comes to internet connectivity. It could be worse, though; you could live in Australia. Yikes!

Not for years.

[Toonol]

I have no doubt that someday, everyone will have full wireless internet access from nearly everywhere. But I suspect that is many years, maybe decades, off.

Partly that's due to infrastructure. This sort of thing seems to quickly spread to the densist 10% of population centers, then take years to roll out to the remaining 90% of the nation.

But I also have a strong sense of skepticism that they will make the service adequate. I expect that they will use the cell-phone model; it will be an expensive, locked-in, walled-garden type of experience.

What is planet is this guy from?

[VirginMary]

I'd like to ask this guy how much money he makes. I am quite happy with my salary and "simple 10 euros a day" seems like a total ripoff to me. If it were maybe 1 euro a day I think it might be fair.

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[jawtheshark]

If it were maybe 1 euro a day I think it might be fair.

Really? That's still 30€/month. Most people don't even pay that for their low-end to midrange home broadband connections! So, if you get something like this, it would *replace* your normal broadband connection. QoS of wireless isn't going to be as good as the good old copper that comes in your house.

If you want to have this on the move, then 10€ per MONTH might be reasonable to have such a feature.... This is not the thing you'll use as primary broadband connection, it's just "to get the fix while on the move".

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[NickFortune]

I'd like to ask this guy how much money he makes

Isn't it interesting just how far out of touch from reality he is? I mean, even after you allow for the self-serving corporate shill factor, he's still way, way off anything that sane people are going to want. That can be dangerous for a senior corporate officer, even in marketing. It may be his job to lie, but I suspect that the shareholders would like to think he knew roughly where the bounds of reality lay.

You know what I think he's doing? I think he's extrapolating from the ridiculous margin the carriers make on SMS messages, and using that to calculate bandwidth charges. He thinks "they pay these rates for SMS, so they pay for connectivity".

Of course, if too many people make that particular connection, it could end up having the opposite effect to the one he wants.

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[dgatwood]

I think a Euro a day sounds about right... a little on the high side, but by no means extreme. That's about $46/month U.S., which is close to what I pay for my iPhone connection with unlimited data and 450 minutes of voice in the U.S. I know that data rates in Europe are more expensive, so that wouldn't at all seem outrageous to pay that for the data portion of the connection, at least while on vacation. I'd probably think twice before paying that on an ongoing basis, though.

Ten Euros a day ($15.38), of course, is outright extortionate. I'd go without network access before I'd pay anywhere near that. That's $461 U.S. per month, or as much as it would cost to provide bottom tier high speed cable or DSL service to 30 locations. Thus, I'd have a choice: pay their fees for cell-based networking or blanket the entire downtown area of the city with Wi-Fi hot spots. Either way, I'd pay about the same amount of money, but with one of those schemes, I would be providing a benefit to tens of thousands of other people, too. There's not enough crack in the world for ten Euros a day to make sense except maybe for a very brief vacation, and even then, it borders on obscene....

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[carpe.cervisiam]

To put this in perspective, the guy being quoted in TFA was talking about international roaming rates. If you take your iPhone to Europe and use the EDGE connection you will be paying $0.0195/kb, that is $19.97 per MB used.

That $15.86/day is looking a little better isn't it.

For what it's worth I agree that the 10 euros a day is way too high. If you go to Europe, it will probably be a good idea to disable the EDGE connection for the duration as the iPhone will check the email automatically.

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[rajanala83]

some peoplw have only 10euro to spend per day :-( so it would be mobile internet or food for me . easy choice.

Re:What is planet is this guy from?

[dgatwood]

That $15.86/day is looking a little better isn't it.

No, it isn't. That's about like somebody being jailed for speaking out against the government and somebody saying, "At least you're not in [insert totalitarian country here]. They would have executed you. Being in jail for speaking doesn't seem so bad, does it?" The mere fact that things can be worse does not in any way make horrible seem less horrible....

I'm bringing my unlocked Sony Ericsson and I'll be getting a local SIM when I go to Europe this summer. International roaming is obscene, whether you're talking about data or voice....

Wishful thinking!

[EWAdams]

Why the flying purple fuck should I pay my carrier's outrageous rates ($20 per megabyte if I'm in the United States with my European phone) when I can get Wi-Fi for nothing from my kindly hotel, coffee shop, airport, etc.? Particularly as municipal Wi-Fi IS going to happen, maybe not with 802.11g, but with Wimax or something else.

Re:Wishful thinking!

[ja]

When you thought you payed for the hotel it was actually the Wi-Fi. The bed is free (or included in the price ...)

Ten euros a day?

[ahfoo]

Doesn't that kind of bloated figure screw up his own argument that wifi is irrelevant? Was that a typo? In the long run when the price is right --and that price will have to be a lot lower than ten bucks a day-- it's quite obvious that wifi will be overtaken by other wireless technologies with wider range. But it's also obvious that there are going to be dozens of standards for different regions of the world for probably another decade or so. On an international scale, telecoms, much like electrical utilities, don't like cooperation because they make money by charging to overcome incompatibilities. Quite to the contrary, there are many cases where telecoms make their money by staying as inefficient as they can possibly justify.

Re:Ten euros a day?

[lancejjj]

Yeah, I also found the "10 euros a day" statement a little - um, weird. So weird that I figure that it must be a mistake.

Neither individuals or corporations will be willing to pay $5600+ per year for wireless internet connectivity. So the 10 euros per day statement must be for either something else, or just a misquote, or he's seriously confused.

Re:Ten euros a day?

[mabinogi]

If you're spending a whole year in another country, then wouldn't you just get a local plan and not bother with roaming?

Re:Ten euros a day?

[ichigo 2.0]

and that price will have to be a lot lower than ten bucks a day

What's worse, ten euros is actually over 15 bucks.

Hmmmm

[jawtheshark]

Hmmmm.... 10€/day versus 0€/day.... It's probably just me, but I'm going for the 0€/day option. Come on, even if you're abroad and get 2h of "free internet" at starbucks with a coffee for 2.5€, you have more than enough to stay in touch. Heck, my city has been "hotspotted". For the moment it's 100% free....

Marketing Dude says his product is hot shit!

[pieisgood]

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER MARKETING OFFICER MARKETING /. I always held you in such a kind light, now I don't know what to think.

Typical Marketing BS

[gweihir]

Hot-spots are low-latency, cheap to set up and maintain and there are actually quite a number you can use for free. The access device is also cheap and typically computer-integrated, even in low-end laptops. The mobile phone network, in contrast, has high-latency, is expensive to operate, typically expensive to customers and the access device can easily be more expensive than a lower-end laptop.

This guy is just predicting that he will get more important without any factual basis.

Re:Typical Marketing BS

[dgatwood]

Agreed. I would actually go the other way and say that if they want to remain viable, they need to be working with carriers to provide VoIP roaming onto and off of Wi-Fi hot spots. As more cities get broader hot spot coverage, we're going to see more and more people carrying around cell phones that only use the cell network as a backup for when they are out of range of any hot spots. The cellular networks' pay-per-minute rates are out of touch with reality, and in an era of progressively cheaper connectivity, the cell services are sure to be marginalized soon enough. Many cell phone vendors will be marginalized along with them if they don't keep up.

they have always been irrelevant,

[siddesu]

especially in the form that is available now in most places. the problem with hotspots is their accidental availability -- you can never be sure that you will end near one when you need it, so rebuilding your "mobile internet experience" around them is pretty stupid. that being said, even when you know you can't rely on them, they can be a nice surprise. that's how i am treating the occasional hotspot -- as a convenience, sometime nice, and (very rarely) helpful in emergencies. that is as much i can say about hotspots.

now, the issue of mobile connectivity is a different matter altogether. there is only one huge reason we still can't have reasonable mobile connectivity. it is because the mobile carriers are hellbent on not letting their networks 'decay' into something similar to the open internet, where they'll have to make money from network connectivity, and probably lose out on all their stupid "markup" services that are pushed onto the mobile users -- ridiculous "ringtone" downloads, ridiculous "official sites" and what not. once mobile connectivity becomes ubiquituous, all those "business models" will go, and most likely on day zero.

until the governments (or, eventually, the invisible hand) turn the mobile services oligopolies into something more competitive, changes will be coming at the usual glacial speed.

Re:they have always been irrelevant,

[Ian-K]

Amen!

Very well said!

Asinine Predictions

[Galactic Dominator]

Why do people feel the need to make asinine predictions such as this? It seems like every month or two some business/marketing type must open their collective ignorant mouths in order to hype up some need I didn't know I had, or to tell me some piece of technology is antiquated and I should replace it. There was an article here a while ago about the LAN dying. There are many other examples, high-def optical media war for one.

Are journalists really hurting so much for stories that any off-the-wall remark coming from a wealthy/corporate source is immediately eligible for publication? If it's really so inevitable, then why not position your company to be in the prime role of servicing the need, instead of informing all of your competitors what the future holds.

Only in that guy's microcosm

[themushroom]

Most notebook computers come with WiFi built in, and the hotspots are free or low cost plus operate in places where other forms of connection may not be readily available (except apparently to the hotspots' hub). Not the case with cellular data service, where one needs a modem and a data plan, plus the service will not work everywhere (despite what certain TV ads broadcasting currently say), plus costs $50 a month for service. Free/ish and 'there' verses home broadband cost and extra equipment? Hmm.

Additionally, those coffeehouses (and ferries, and restaurants, and so forth) stand to either do good by doing well -- wouldn't you frequent a business where you can get online free? -- or make enough coin to cover the service and then some. Cellular modeming only profits the telephone company. So WiFi is only a dying breed (wishful thinking) in the cellular providers' eyes, same as vinyl records and cassettes went away only because the industry said they were passe, not the consumers.

Telco Business Plan

[jayveekay]

1. Get the government to grant you a monopoly on providing communications service.
2. Charge high fees to your (trapped) customers.
3. Profit!

Free (or cheap) Wifi has to be eliminated as part of step #1.

Re:Telco Business Plan

[e-Flex]

Guess were Ericsson is making most of it's money :)

Re:Telco Business Plan

[sapphire wyvern]

Well, it's sure not on a telco monopoly!

Ericsson isn't a telco, and has far from a monopoly on mobile telecomms gear.

Re:Telco Business Plan

[Duncan Blackthorne]

I don't believe that Step #1 is any more enforceable than prohibition was, or the maximum speed laws are, or pickpocketing laws are for that matter. They'd have to criminalize everyone who has wifi at home and doesn't secure it, and that's a LOT of people and likely always will be. Then there's always people who don't agree with the law and will do it anyway, and fight it out in court with the media watching. (shakes head) It's just not going to happen.

10 euros per day cuts into my crack allowance.

[timmarhy]

10 euros a day equats to about 16 - 18 AUD per day.

that's fucking expensive no matter how you look at it. now i'm sure in telecom land that figure sounds nice, but hell will freeze over before anyone other then the really stupid or rich will pay that.

Re:10 euros per day cuts into my crack allowance.

[PPH]

The way the US dollar is going, that's going to be our GDP pretty soon.

Ridiculously overpriced.

[A beautiful mind]

It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad.

It can be as simple as paying zero euros above the (already overpriced) phone charges when abroad. The same or very similar network is used to work on this principle and in a lot of cases not even based on usage. I'm sending this message using that network.

Premises

[EelBait]

"Carriers will need to work together." Yeah, like that is going to happen. It took an act of Congress in the US to get our phone numbers portable. Do people really think that this sort of cooperation just magically happens?

Re:Premises

[marcello_dl]

Carriers working together would also mean two thirds of cellphone antennas becoming unnecessary. That would be welcome no matter the health risk, those things are ugly.

Re:Premises

[Count Sessine]

It took an act of Congress in the US to get our phone numbers portable.

What did you think it would take? That's the ONLY thing that would ever have made numbers portable, in the US and anywhere else. Are you surprised?

I love the US, but you Americans are, bless your hearts, a bit naive. You pursue 'free' markets as an ideal without understanding that free markets as an abstract concept are self-defeating (no contract law? no central authority guaranteeing money supply?) and as an ideal, on it's own, a free market only helps the very rich who own things. What you should really be looking for is a competitive market, and when those involve shared resources like radio spectrum or huge and unrecoverable investments like duplicating the US cable system in rural areas, a creating a competitive market and creating a free market aren't the same things.

The next step is to ask what minimum regulation can achieve a competitive market? With cellular, I think ownership limits on spectrum and strong consumer protection laws like outlawing 3 year contracts would be the most sensible thing to do.

Re:Premises

[tompaulco]

Each carrier does not maintain their own individual towers. They lease space from each other on each other's towers.

Re:Premises

[The End Of Days]

Do you lie in wait for an opportunity, no matter how tenuous, to go on this rant?

Re:Premises

[Count Sessine]

No - it's just that this is exactly why cell phones in the US suck. You've handed a government monopoly on radio spectrum to a few big companies, and then they play you like a fiddle whenever regulation is discussed. This market couldn't exist without a bit of regulation guaranteeing their exclusive access to the spectrum, but when people here discuss telecom regulation that would protect consumers or help new competitors, the established telecoms go on about how the free market shouldn't be hindered with regulation. They want only the minimum regulation that lets them rake you, and nothing else.

"Just 10 euros"

[Sta7ic]

A quick check says that 10 euros is US$15. Let's look at some interesting metrics.

* My 10 meg cable is $50/month or so
* My rent is $645/month
* My car payment is $420/month
* Dinner and a good beer at the pub is about $15-20
* This service would cost $450/month

So, "internet freedom" would cost 2/3rds of a month of rent, as much as eating dinner out almost every day, nine times what my statically located service is (where I spend most of my time), and would give me little benefit compared to making a car payment.

I think "just 10 euros" are much better spent on practical things.

Re:"Just 10 euros"

[AnotherDaveB]

The 10 euros figure was a suggested 'roaming' charge, roaming between networks, typically this is an international travel issue only.

Vodaphone offer a standard package of 15-30GBP-ish per month.

Self serving promotion in my opinion

[nomad63]

Let's seeeee... what kind of business Sony-Ericson was in ? Hmmm... I think they are in cell phone manufacturing. So, if this demise of wi-fi, despite how unlikely, happens to take place, are they going to be benefiting from the windfall ? I'm not an economist but I think so. Who is releasing this article again ? Sony Ericsson ? Yeah, rrright.

I love these self serving news makers. Go fish, you, less than smart, cry-babies...

Interesting

[iamacat]

Mobile carriers are going to provide the same 100Mbps performance as 802.11n, at 50 times the range, with many more expected users on one cell, reasonable send speed and good battery life? I find this new technology fascinating. Perhaps I should subscribe to their newsletter.

I predict a slow and painful end

[stratjakt]

for these 10 cent per text message assholes.

I think he meant to say this

[leehwtsohg]

When mobile internet is cheap enough so that all locals who want wireless internet access will have a wireless mobile plan,
then we (providers) will be able to leach off 10 euros a day from tourists, since coffee shops will not have wireless internet then -
keeping it only for the tourists doesn't make sense.

as if.

Related to this...

[Mish]

I'll be travelling to the U.S. for a month in September.
I'll be in Nevada (Las Vegas specifically) then later Florida (Jacksonville).

I'll be taking a laptop with me and I'm wonder what my options are for mobile broadband/wifi with in the U.S.

Suggestions appreciated.

Re:Related to this...

[mpascal]

Get Verizon Wireless broadband then return it in 14 days. Then... Get Sprint Wireless broadband then return it in 14 days. Us natives have to sign up for 2 year contracts. Maybe someone will rent you theirs.

Re:Related to this...

[markus]

Most cheap [hm]otels in the US offer free WiFi these days.
Strangely enough, though, the expensive hotels tend to still charge an access fee. Just call ahead before making a reservation, and ask whether the hotel has free WiFi.

I think his leg is getting wet.....

[postbigbang]

He can take his ten euros, his hardware sales, his subscriptions, and self-fornicate with them.

What an abnormally stupid thing for even a marketing guy to say. It seems to thread together the common hubris among carriers, telcos, and their equipment providers. Quick-- somebody tell them about the lipfart problem before it's too late. I actually like Sony Ericsson phones (they last longer) over Moto, LG, and the iGroan.

Actually, you forgot...

[StCredZero]

For one thing, cellular providers could add data packages for low cost, or as parts of service bundles. If they did this, then there are many who would just pay an extra $20 so they could drop the $45 a month for the cable broadband.

Sprint doesn't have transfer caps, as far as I can tell. I have service with them through Millenicom. DSL is smoother, as you said.

Re:Actually, you forgot...

[espiesp]

Well, in THEORY, the existing Rev.A EVDO should be just about as good as the broadband of a few years ago. The problem is, Rev.A coverage is limited, not very supported by hardware yet, and, even when you get it... In most cases... Is not really that fast as all.

If high speed wireless was what they claimed it to be, except the coverage of that claimed performance was universal, then yes, this could be true.

I do in fact use cell internet at home exclusively, in a 1X area, with abysmal speed and reliablilty. Thank GOD I'm on the road 95% of my life.

Not slow and not expensive

[jonnyj]

Mobile internet access is actually very attractive in the UK. For example, for £15 ($30) per month one provider offers a 3GB monthly allowance (plenty for most non-geeks) and speeds of up to 2.8MB/s. I have friends who've dropped traditional broadband in favour of the greater flexibility offered by mobile services.

For that kind of cost, why would anyone bother with free hotspots and the associated security concerns? The only problem is that most providers require you to use Windows.

Re:Not slow and not expensive

[voidvektor]

Its the same in Sweden (were Ericsson is from). Here you can get 3G broadband (speeds up to 7.2 Mbits) for only around 200kr/month (around 33$) and no download limit.

Yep

[StarKruzr]

This is absurd. "Swift end," my ass. When mobile broadband is $40/mo all over the country, get back to me. I expect that'll be in about 20 years.

Re:Yep

[wvmarle]

Currently I am paying HK$488, or about USD 62 per month on mobile broadband, for laptop use. That is on a 3G (CDMS/HSPCA) network. Works quite OK but the network is not very well covering.

And if you are happy with GPRS, then you can get unlimited mobile Internet for as little as $128 per month (USD 16,40).

International roaming is also worked on; HK carriers offer unlimited China data roaming for about USD 120 per month.

And of course WiFi hotspots remain cheaper, just like phone booths are/were cheaper than a mobile phone, but those work only in certain spots. Not on the train or the bus, for example.

This is a US centric site, I know, so people please remember that the USA is about 10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to mobile communication. If not more. Ericsson is a European company and their ideas are more for the European and Asian markets than for the USA market.

Re:Yep

[Jim McCoy]

> This is a US centric site, I know, so people please remember that the USA is about 10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to mobile communication. If not more. Ericsson is a European company and their ideas are more for the European and Asian markets than for the USA market.

Here in the "backwards" US I can get unlimited EVDO rev A (comparable or better speeds than your HSPCA service and better latency) in more than 150 cities, with an automatic downgrade to 1xRTT (much better than GPRS) in markets without EVDO service. For this I will pay $60 for unlimited bandwidth on a wireless card for my laptop. If I were to use a Bluetooth DUN tether through my phone I could get this service for even less; the only downside to this is that the carrier is Sprint and since my company pays for my "backward" iPhone it is not worth the bother for me to carry a second phone just for data service.

Of course, since most of the places I work are blanketed by multiple available wifi hotspots it is frequently not even worth the bother of carrying the card around.

Re:Yep

[Znork]

When mobile broadband is $40/mo all over the country, get back to me.

Don't forget to qualify that with you being the only one using it. If you think wifi degrades rapidly as congestion grows, imagine the capacity for mobile broadband to be bogged down.

Re:Yep

[mcrbids]

When mobile broadband is $40/mo all over the country, get back to me. I expect that'll be in about 20 years.

I get broadband (~ 1 Mb) wireless service in most cities (over ~ 30,000 population) with my laptop in the car on the freeway using my Verizon data card. I get speeds comparable to a 128 Kbps modem most other places, and when I'm really out in the sticks, it's more like 50Kbps. I think my company is paying $59/month for this. (might be $69/month) It has no bandwidth limit that I know of.

Oh, and it works fine with Linux, though you have to activate the card on a Windows system. (I'm using Fedora Core 8, no problems, running a pppd script in a terminal window) I guess $60/month isn't $40, but it's not that far off.
And the utility of a hotspot only comes into play in areas where I can't get the broadband access, which is, increasingly, rare.

Re:Yep

[StarKruzr]

If I were to use a Bluetooth DUN tether through my phone I could get this service for even less

As far as I know, you can't do this without violating Sprint's TOS. Not that I *agree* with them, but it does expose you to potentially huge fees if they "catch" you.

T-Mobile wifi phone, good wifi finder, ironic

[lars_magnusson]

Got one of those T-Mobile phones that does the VOIP deal when near a wi-fi network. As a side benefit he phone is great to have as a wi-fi finder, don't have to breakout the laptop just to check, and I find I wind up checking for wi-fi spots all over the place because of the nerd tendency to fidget. Tells me if the wi-fi spot is locked and signal strength, and if I want to connect the cell phone to the wi-fi network I'll do that too, usually at my favorite bar. In this case my cell phone makes is easier to find free wi-fi, fine with me.

Re:T-Mobile wifi phone, good wifi finder, ironic

[siddesu]

This is a nice workaround when you're allowed to have it -- and it illustrates my point. Not only is the technology needed for cheap and convenient mobile access available, there is even more than one way to do it. And still, there are virtually no providers that have reasonably and _understandably_ priced mobile plans (voice + data), adequate coverage and open devices.

Instead, we have phones packed with shit we don't need. I have integrated walkman that allows me to buy any music the phone company believes is "good" in lossy format at inflated price. I can even copy it to other devices, if I buy some software from them. And my integrated "PC browser" shows me adverts from the carrier.

(AU in Japan. Avoid them like teh plague. contract expires soon ;))

I call bullshit

[gelfling]

WTF are we taking advert space out now on /.?

This may work

[rastoboy29]

This will only work, however, if the telco's decide to start being reasonable, decent business people, instead of instead of abusive dicks.

My prediction: abusive dicks, as long as we allow our governments to allow them to get away with it.

What ! free beats monopoly ???

[speedlaw]

OK, so we should all get rid of the ability to use free wifi everywhere, and subscribe to an expensive system. From the same people who charge more for text than speech. Who want to lock you into a proprietary system. uh-huh Next bong hit, please.

Here in Honolulu there is TOO MUCH free WiFi

[Babu 'God' Hoover]

I have to keep a notebook lined with foil to use as a corner reflector in order to narrow the antennas field of view. Hell, this AM in the apartment I scanned close to 70 signals. 5 of these were free. This is from inside my apartment!

Only 30x more expensive...

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

What, 10 euros a day?

Let's see, I pay 10 euros a month for unlimited (tethering allowed, no hidden bandwidth cap) 3G access on my phone here in Europe. Ok, it's only full UMTS, not full HSPA, but it gets the job done when I'm not on a 8-24 mbit line at home or work. That's 30 times cheaper than 10 euro's a day. What a strange 'simple' figure is that anyway, who spends 10 euros a day on mobile internet?

As for the wifi hotspots, well to be honest I havent encountered many of them and I do live in a big city, but I haven't really searched for them either. I know the university and two or three of my favourite bars have them (never see people with laptops in there, but I imagine it's nice for others who have wifi enabled phones but don't have a data plan). Unsecured access points are everywhere.

Roaming are awful though, especially here in Europe. You go somewhere near the border, you get the same provider but from a different country and suddenly you have to get a second mortgage to google. Glad the EU is looking into it.

That being said, if you are waiting around somewhere and you need internet where your data plan isn't 'valid' (or you don't have one), you can make a wifi hotspot anywhere if you can find somebody with a phone and a data plan with WMWifiRouter or JoikuSpot softwares, depending on the type of phone they have.

Nice try...

[Anonymous Coward]

My first name is Andrew, idiot.

Available outside of Cali

[RingDev]

My local DSL provider also has the free wifi at any of their hubs deal. I don't remember which carrier it was, probably AT&T though. And that is being offered in a small town in south central Wisconsin, 20+ miles to anything that could be considered a "city". We also have 3 places in town that offer wifi while you wait. I'm not sure of their requirements though, or if there is any charge with them, as I rarely ever bust out my axiom these days.

-Rick

Re:COST IS NOT THE REAL ISSUE OF CONCERN

[colinrichardday]

It would be VERY interesting if some of these hotspots offered a 'wired' solution also.
Wouldn't take much more in the way of hardware to implement, and the peace of mind is worth it.


If you don't mind having your favorite coffee shop littered with cat5 cable. Also, would the hotspot or the customer bring the cable?

Breaking news!

[noewun]

Cel phone CEO predicts competing technology "a thing of the past"! Promises free mobile internet access and hovercraft for all!

In tomorrow's breaking news, Steve Ballmer says OS X and Linux are doomed, Linus disses any operating system he did not write, and Steve Jobs says OS X is the best OS in the world!

Planet Earth to Ericsson -- Fuck Off

[jollyreaper]

At my last job, I had a blackberry with an unlimited data plan. It was nice, I could go anywhere and access most things with the berry itself and if I needed a full laptop for internet, I could just plug that bad boy in and use it as a modem. It was maybe twice as fast as dial-up, not shabby when the only alternative is nothing. The broadband wireless cards were even faster but IT didn't get those, only the sales reps did.

My current job is computery but not in IT support so no berry for me. I looked into the prices and just about shit myself. TOO MUCH FUCKING MONEY, ASSHOLES. I hear AT&T is set to up the price of a text message to 20 cents. Fuck you, assholes. I'm not paying $40 for wireless internet on top of $40 for broadband at home or $80 for mobile voice and data together. If I go out to the coffee shop, I'm going to enjoy my wifi along with my coffee and fuck you if you think it should be otherwise. Bundle wifi and home broadband for $50 and then we can talk, otherwise, see refrain.

Re:Planet Earth to Ericsson -- Fuck Off

[freedom_india]

Bundle wifi and home broadband for $50 AT&T Response: Nope. Are you crazy? We are a monopoly and not only we own the hard lines, we also own the airwaves.
So our reply would be: Show the middle finger to customer. Jack up the prices under various headings on your bill such that a $35 bill appears to be a $55 payable including all other charges.
If you don't want to be our customer, fine. Send out smoke signals to your partner and friends. Lets see how long you keep doing that.

On the other hand

[davmoo]

While I agree with many of the posts that state this is realistically not going to happen anywhere near as fast as this guy thinks, at the same time its obvious that many of you making replies have never been in situations where your job depends on net access and DAMMIT I NEED IT NOW!!! And that's precisely why I carry a Verizon Wireless card for my laptop and don't (often) bitch about the price. Major metro areas of the US may have free wi-fi on every corner. But just as many places don't. Its not always as simple as "go to another shop down the road with free wi-fi"...the nearest shop with free wi-fi may be a hundred miles away. My time is valuable too...we don't all have time enough to drive around with a Pringles can sticking out the window while looking for Joe Bob Chickenrancher with an open wireless port. Slow net access and net access with a fee always beats the hell out of no net access what so ever.

Re:On the other hand

[argent]

I think you're missing the point.

The referenced article isn't announcing that there really is a market for mobile broadband ... that's obvious: I signed up for Omnisky when that was the only option, and have found wifi less useful when travelling ... it's making the prediction that cellphones will replace hotspots. The fact that there's a market for mobile broadband doesn't mean that there's no market for wifi hotspots. That's like arguing that broadcast TV will put cable out of business, or vice versa...

Or he spends too much time in European airports...

[absurdist]

I recently had an eight hour layover in Frankfurt. I went to the lounge, thought I'd get online a little while and play. T-Mobile signs everywhere saying it was a hotspot, cool. Until I logged on and saw the rates.

Eight Euros. PER HOUR.

This is what these guys are exposed to. And they can charge it off to their expense accounts. (So could I, but I refuse to.) They really don't have a clue how the rest of us live when they call these rates "reasonable."

This just in

[tvon]

Company claims rival technology is no good, causes cancer, and impregnates young women.

End of free sex

[xs650]

This just in, high priced prostitute predicts end of free sex*

*Yes, I'm aware sex is never really free.

Badly written summary

[jfengel]

The summary misses the vastly more reasonable figure of 20 euros per month, already available and expected to come down.

The ten euros a day figure is for international roaming, the most expensive kind of access.

The article IS dumb, but it's not as dumb as the summary makes it sound.

Re:Badly written summary

[Da_Biz]

The summary misses the vastly more reasonable figure of 20 euros per month, already available and expected to come down.

I live in the US and pay Sprint about $60/month for unlimited, nationwide access to their EVDO network. I use a Novatel Wireless S720 PC Card (EVDO Rev. A) card and reliably get about 750-1250 kbit connections (sometimes, it's as good as 2-3 mbit/sec). Except for the monthly price, Sprint's abysmal customer service, and my questions about mechanical reliability of both the PC Card connector (lots of insertion/removal) and my specific card's design, I wouldn't want to give it up. Overall, the service is useful.

However, I still look for Wi-Fi spots for two main reasons:
1) If I don't have my power adapter with me, my laptop's runtime on batteries is shortened around 30-50% with the use of the EVDO card. If I suddenly get a ton of last minute work to do, I won't even bother firing up the Sprint card without the power adapter.

2) Sometimes, it's hard to beat a fast WiFi connection. I generally don't need more bandwidth than the Sprint card provides on average, but several hotspots I go to have ponied up the extra money to support a solid Internet connection (4-7 mbit down).

Until these are addressed, I think talk about WiFi's death is a bit premature...

Not until it's comparable to cable

[maillemaker]

Until wireless broadband is comparable in speed and price so that I can turn off my cable internet and sign up for wireless internet, I'll never sign up for wireless internet.

I'm not going to be nickeled and dimed any more by getting roped into endless revenue streams.

One more...

[Belial6]

One more to add: * Cost of service over the alternative of putting the $450 into an investment with a modest/safe 6% return for 20 years is $207,918.40

Makes sense....

[martijnd]

10 Euro a day makes sense for business travelers. Sure the locals know where the wireless hotspots are. But if you are on on business trip abroad you don't get access to any locally offered monthly discount packages. You just want to make sure you have access in a taxi, during a lunch meeting or sitting in the hotel lobby. Convenience matters more than spending an hour locating a rundown Internet cafe.

This is aimed at the GSM global roaming crowd who need to access the Internet wherever they are and it competes against the rates set by the business class hotels.

It is also aimed at GSM operators worldwide (think Asia) who won't mind cashing in an extra 10 Euro from each business visitor on their network. A lot of them already have the network capability in place. What is missing is making it easy for "rich" foreign roamers to add to their bottom line. Hence Ericson dreaming up "global Internet roaming" ; which is just a way to charge for roaming Internet users.

Expect free wireless Internet to disappear from airports worldwide quickly as the local telecoms finally figure out how to make money from it.

6%

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, what is this safe 6% investment you speak of? I have some money here burning a hole in my pocket.

Wishful thinking

[Duncan Blackthorne]

Sounds to me like what they're really saying is that they want you to use your phone for internet because it makes them all sorts of money. It's just too damned expensive, I actually disabled it completely on my phone just in case I'm tempted.

Re:Wishful thinking

[argent]

Me too. And even with it disabled the damn phone keeps asking me to turn it on. Right, like I'm going to bother to go online at their inflated prices on their crippled web browser on a phone where they have disabled the USB port so I can't used it as a modem.

One kind of hot spot may become less common

[gujo-odori]

The kind of hotspot that may become less common is the kind he's talking about - the for-pay kind you find at Starbucks. Free hotspots aren't going anywhere anytime soon, nor is wireless broadband going to replace home access, unless it works the same way wired broadband does: I can stick a cheapo broadband router on the line and run as many PCs as I want behind it. My current cable connection is 10 megabits down (and I can really do it, or as close to it as TCP will let you get) and 768 kbits up. I don't know anybody with a wireless broadband plan like that.

More present than that

[SuperKendall]

the problem with hotspots is their accidental availability -- you can never be sure that you will end near one when you need it,

I disagree with this.

If I am staying in hotels, even in very remote areas I can be almost certain to find some kind of WiFi access point.

If I travel to an airport, I know I can find a WiFi access point.

Perhaps two or three years ago what you say might be true, but there are a lot of situations where I really can count on some form of WiFi being around.

It's going to take a long time for even 3G deployment to catch up to everywhere I can get WiFi now on the road...

Carriers need to work together

[remmelt]

That is the most bullshittest bullshitting bullshit. I mean, apart from the other bullshit, pointed out in abundance above.

The entire roaming issue, at least in Europe, is a scam. Carriers do not need to work together at all. He makes it sound like there are all these small carriers that are separate from all the other small carriers and when abroad, you're marooned. There are no more small carriers. All the little fish have been eaten by the big fish. It's either Vodafone, Orange or T-mobile. If I'm on Vodafone, I can use their network in pretty much all of Europe, or at least in the countries I'm likely to visit. Still, they charge a ton, because some imaginary line was crossed. There is no difference in the network, there is no difference in carrier, there is no difference in service or speed or whatever. Just in the bill at the end of the month.

The EC looked into this, but it's not better. See for example: http://www.physorg.com/news12195.html

Roaming in the USA, Europe and elsewhere.

[Neuticle]

Yes, you can generally use the same cell phone coast to coast in the USA, without paying any extra charges whatsoever, as long as you are close enough to a tower. While we did manage to screw up GSM frequencies AND have an idiotic system of bundling phones with yearly contracts (thus higher rates to subsidize new phones every 2 years, whether you need one or not), we did get roaming right.

However, it was not always this way. Back in the dark-ages of cellphones, you were assigned a "home" area, and were billed at higher rates when you left it, even if still within the same state. Usually this was due to many small-scale tower networks owned by separate companies that the main cell company had to contract with for increased coverage.

With all the small nations in Europe, I can't imagine a system like that existing country to country. Is that how it is, move from France to Spain and BAM! roaming charges? It must be hell.

When I was living in Tanzania, I could take my pre-paid Celtel account all across East Africa with the same rates, and buy minutes in whatever local currency. Voda did the same thing there. Could Vodofone not do the same for all their service in Europe?

Wishful thinking

[Chrisq]

Company that sells expensive mobile phone equipment says that this will kill off free competition.....

Like phone booths? And where are they now?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

It starts with providers offering unlimited data for phones. At the right price, users will pay to watch youtube videos and unlimited email. Then, when the mobile pc option becomes affordable, hey why not, it would be convenient. And if we pay for it, we are going to use it, so no more WiFi even when its available - just like the guy in the phone booth on his cell.

And WiFi isn't free. Someone pays for it. There is a better chance that your WiFi spots will survive if you pay for it, but if its free, you can expect it to terminate once mobile data users start to ignore its presense.

Roaming in Europe vs. roaming in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know much about roaming in the US but I'm guessing it's actually possible to use the same service in NYC and LA, in Europe that's impossible.

I think that you have it backwards. The roaming problems are much bigger in the US compared to Europe, despite the fact that Europe consists of many different countries and many independent operators, while the US is one big country with just a few global operators.

Roaming for mobile broadband (UMTS/HSPA) may not be perfect in Europe (especially for pre-paid users), but at least roaming for voice calls works perfectly everywhere and roaming for "slow" data calls (GPRS) also works everywhere. Compare this with the frustrating situation in the US, in which you are not sure that you will be able to make voice calls if you go to another city or state, and where you are sure that your Verizon EV-DO phone will not work if you roam into an area that is only covered by Sprint Nextel or AT&T or Alltel or others.

Roaming fees are annoying in Europe and the EU is putting pressure on operators to drop them, but this is still better than having no service if you are in the US and you roam into an area that is not covered by your operator and may not even use the same cellular technology (EVDO vs WCDMA).

Keep dreaming folks...

[Ian-K]

Haven't posted on /. for a long while, but this one called for it... (ok, it's a bit flamebait, but nevertheless)

Telecoms companies dream... ...a lot. ...a f*** of a lot.

They keep dreaming of wide-grinned customers going over to their tills and blindly giving them all their money because they
a) keep downloading through their mobiles the latest mp3s / ringtones / videos from <some popular bimbo teenager artist> and then flock around to rejoice on them
b) keep searching for holidays to the Bahamas / Tenerife that they book through their services
c) keep talking on their phones 24/7 like there's nothing else on the planet to do
and generally because "we" keep using their lifestyle-oriented apps/services that were designed with carriers' profits in mind, rather than the end user's needs.

As long as they keep their heads up their a***s and keep on this profit model, people are going to be looking for alternative ways to do their job. Apple took a nab on that, but from the wrong angle methinks (make Jobs our emperor rather than the carriers).

You want to make profits from mobile internet? Fine... lower the cost to < 0.1 euros per megabyte (or less) and let people surf on. Don't keep it at 1 or 2 eur/MB and wait while rubbing your hands with a big smirk... We're not THAT stupid (yet).

I speak as a software developer working on J2ME and WM applications that try to overcome the said restrictions... :/

Wrong again look at their stock

[mattr]

They obviously don't know what they are talking about, just look at how their stock chart
looks like a waterfall. I'd even say that coming from them means it probably will be a big money maker.

By the way I am comparing wifi hotspots. I signed up in Tokyo for Mopera/Mzone which is only $8/month (half price) since I have a FOMA phone. In Kentucky Fried Chicken and lots of other places you get 11 Mbps and it is awesome.

But my new Buffalo Skype phone (the nice black one) doesn't work on it because Mzone wants an additional login through a web browser, which sucks. Of course the phone will work near any open signal (though it must be strong) so I have hopes for it.

I would pay more if there were more hotspots, either free and strong or for a small amount and strong. And they shouldn't require the extra login. I even think it would be good business for the shop to beam some signal outside it. And Sony Ericsson could even build wifi enabled phones.

300 Euros per month!

[slashbart]

I know some people that rent an apartment in Amsterdam for that. It's nothing fancy, but paying that kind of money for wireless internet, ridiculous.

Dark Spots

[Doc Ruby]

These cellphones can't even get continuous reception everywhere in urban USA, and they're telling me that hotspots will go extinct with their "total broadband coverage"?

They've been holding their phones too close to their heads for too long.

Sure they do

[Zolodoco]

But they might want to rethink that opinion when people start dropping all their extra mobile services to afford food and gas.

In other news...

[Comboman]

In other news, Sirus/XM predicts swift end for terrestrial radio. Why would people use a free/advertiser-supported service when they can pay a large monthly fee for a marginally better service?

Money and Empowerment

[ratboy666]

Ericsson, eh?

I run a wifi hotspot (free). A lot of other people do. My idea is to "mesh the Americas". I don't use anywhere close to my available bandwidth, and I don't mind sharing. In return, I like others to share.

Does Ericsson make money from this? Of course not. 10 Euros a day is a LOT of money for bandwidth. But, for me, its not just the money. I feel good by supplying this service.

Am I going to stop providing wifi? Not unless it is declared illegal. I am not rich enough to provide cell service in the city... although I had considered purchasing an old analog cell tower and becoming the phone company for a cottage area -- the cottagers around a small lake. The plan was to become a co-op phone company offering internet and analog cell service to 50(ish) people. The "stopper" was trying to provide adequate tech support (just not possible, at any price point).

I hear this at work every day

[kildurin]

and it doesn't make it any more real. (I work at a major telecom equipement vendor.) This is a marketing guy trying to make carrier's feel good about charging for something that everyone gets now for free. If they can just figure out a way to get a piece of every free technology they'd do it. This is just the same BS different day. WiFi will be replaced when the next FREE thing comes along. Not before. T-Mobile still is trying to get UMA off the ground. Wifi is not in danger no matter how many Telecom marketing guru's think it is.

Experiences, here

[Thumper_SVX]

OK, I can sort of see his point, given his perspective. Doesn't change the fact that he's wrong.

I have unlimited data on my Windows Mobile device through AT&T. St. Louis has an excellent 3G network, and yes I tether my Mac and my Vista laptop both through the device. You know what? It's not bad... but it's NOTHING compared to a wireless access point at a coffee house, hotel or whatever.

I work on the road occasionally, and if I have a choice I'll go to a coffee shop and work from there if I need Internet access... and I'll use the WiFi. The reasons for this are numerous;

1. Battery life. My phone has a limited battery life which will last a good two days with normal use, but drops to only a few hours if I'm using the data connection with my laptop. Yes, I can do it through Bluetooth but because of the battery issues I have to physically tether the phone to my laptop to keep it charged. Then when I do that, boy does my phone get HOT! Until battery technology in cellphones improves, I can't see this working too well.

2. Latency. If you want a good Internet connection, then you need to get latency lower. That's not really realistic because of the way cellular networks work. The latency's not as bad as, say a satellite connection... but you sure as hell get less latency on a WiFi access point (which is usually attached to a cable Intenet connection or DSL). Hell, I've been in a coffee shop full of people on laptops surfing the web, and despite the occasional slowdown from somebody visiting Windowsupdate, the connection is better than what I get through my cellphone. That's also something that a technical support guy can fix with QoS in the router...

3. Reliability. WiFi is short range, but over its short range it's pretty damned robust. 3G isn't. Particularly if you happen to be sitting near enough to multiple towers, there are often times when you're bouncing between towers. Every time that happens, your DNS times out because your connection dropped and restored (even though you were unaware of it unless you know what you're looking for). There are several of these "Bermuda Triangle" spots near me, and I avoid them because it's irritating. Thankfully, there's coffee shops with WiFi nearby.

4. Cost. Why should I pay for my data connection at all, when I can sit at a coffee shop, get the coffee I was already going to be drinking for a few cents (maybe around a dollar), and sit there and use their WiFi for an hour or so. Why should I be limited? Yes, I'm really paying for my Internet connection too, but to the coffee shop itself it's a loss-leader. A coffee shop that has free WiFi is usually more popular than one without... and people who sit long enough will buy something. Sometimes several somethings.

A good friend of mine owns a coffee shop, and he admits there are a few people who come in, buy the cheapest cup of coffee they can and sit there all day... but even them he doesn't mind. Simply put, if there are people in a coffee shop, people going past are more likely to see people in there and decide to visit. An empty coffee shop tends to remain empty. His Cable Internet connection costs him, what, $20-$30 a month, plus the electricity required to run the WAP and the cable modem. He spends more in a month on paper napkins; to him it's just an additional cost to doing business. Compared to the cost of running the store itself, it's miniscule. Besides, the majority of people who come in and sit all day tend to buy stuff all day. Coffee, soda... hell they even buy lunch which is where he makes pretty decent money. Those who buy a single small coffee and sit all day are in the minority... and he knows who they are since they tend to be "repeat offenders"

Now don't get my wrong; my tethered Internet connection is invaluable to me and I use it several times a week. However, if I have a choice and I know a place with a WAP is nearby, I'd rather use that. I pay for my data connection with my phone, but only because I use it so much. If the cost were zero or near zero, th

[free] Hotspots already work great..

[CranberryKing]

Hotspot infrastructure is already in place. Why would it 'go away'? Will everyone in the world take down their hotspots because some wireless carriers have an alternative technology? There will be 'some' demand for the cellular service, but no one is going to go out of their way to pay for what's already there.

Not the point

[StarKruzr]

I don't call 128kbps or 50kbps "mobile broadband." This means that your $60/mo service is only "good" in cities.

Really what my point was is that we are not going to get to the point where we can forget about wireless access points, which enable local-area connections right now in the range of 130Mbps with 802.11n, for many, many years.

i've found things going the other direction

[sdedeo]

The only airport I've been able to get free wifi in has been Tucson; everywhere else (and I travel quite a bit) charges around $10. Certainly the major airports (Newark, La Guardia, O'Hare, SFO, e.g., and also the European ones like CDG). Meanwhile, unsecured personal hotspots are drying up -- three years ago they were everywhere, now it's rare to turn on your laptop and get an unsecured signal even with a list of ten to choose from. The only place that's not true in my experience are places like the Lower East Side of New York, where folks are sufficiently both technically savvy and generous to disable what must be now-automatic passwording. I think it's mostly that service providers are pushing secured routers; awareness of liability for an unsecured network is pretty low.

In San Francisco, free wifi in the Mission is still standard. I think that's partly due to the massive abundance of cafés and it's true they need to draw you in. But a lot of coffeeshops in the rest of the country I've found have either never jumped on the wifi wagon, or have gone to a pay-for-access model. This latter decision makes quite a bit of sense depending on your business model: if you're primarily serving coffee, you want to move people in and out quickly, and giving internet access tends to lead to people "camping out". Unless you market higher-end things like sandwiches and so forth, you have a situation in which a guy is paying $2/4 hours to rent 10 sq feet in a seriously expensive part of town at the peak of business -- doesn't make economic sense. Especially since, these days, a café needs to be nearly full for most of the day just to survive; that guy drawn in by free wireless will sit for four hours, holding a seat and meaning you won't get four one-hour customers.

This is very often true in cafés in college towns, where students don't actually have to be "in the office". Another way to "throttle back" tables is to hide the power outlets, so at least there's a one or two hour limit; even in San Francisco, it's rare to find a place that offers both free wireless and free power. Yes, a place like Panera will give you free wireless, but they're not particularly nice places to sit and work (I found them echoy and noise-filled.)

I'm not sure where wireless is going. I think you will find increasingly that liability issues, coupled with the business-sense above, will mean that hotspots will increasingly become pay-for-access. It's possible you can finesse things, having free wireless at "unpopular" times, or having free-but-time-limited access (this latter one is harder, because it requires some software and café owners don't really know how to maintain it -- but you can't pay support with $0!)