Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now people will just go to Starbucks for the overpriced foo-foo coffees.
Sure it's simple, but it's not cheap.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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...
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
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...
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
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.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
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.
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....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
Company claims rival technology is no good, causes cancer, and impregnates young women.
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...