<I fail to see a business case for a carrier or for anyone else for that matter, other than campuses, hotels, airports, and residences. Perhaps some VoIP might dig into carrier revenues but that is a long way off in any real sense. Unlimited HDR/DO service is presently $80US a month through Verizon, but will undoubtedly be half as much when Sprint rolls out its network. Between the two and the bother of staying in a hot spot, WiFi is going to be hurt in a big way by DO, especially its hot-stuff version, Rel. A or whatever it's called. >
People will have WiFi anyway, for speed, in their office and at home. So the subscriber gadget cost is zero. Then there's the Skype option. Skype phones will have WiFi built in.
Then, people leave home, or the office, and are out in the concrete jungle. What will they use? There are LOTS of free hot spots.
For example, Tarken-san blog.livedoor.jp in his apartment building in Tokyo had three free connections when he moved in. So he could have just used any one of those. But of course you want your own, so you buy the gadget. The data is furiously fast and free, so who cares if somebody hooks up and uses your data pipe too?
So WiFi is pretty much a given.
Wide area networks on the other hand are distinctly NOT free. While they might get cheaper, right now they are in fact US$80 a month for 1xEV-DO [or thereabouts]. In NZ 1xEV-DO data is about US60c a megabyte and that's a long way from free [it's US$5 a megabyte for casual use - ouch!!]
WiFi of roamad.com design can be delivered to subscribers for US10c a megabyte in commercial networks. That's a LOT cheaper, not to mention faster, than the Telecom 1xEV-DO offering [buy their subscriber devices too, at great expense]. Vodafone's W-CDMA network when it fires up in mid-2005 won't be any cheaper and will be slower.
I don't believe you should hold funeral services yet for WiFi hot-zones, or even hot-cities. Hot-spots are breeding like bunnies.
I guess I'll have Skype on a Skype phone, running via free WiFi at home, and another device using 1xEV-DO for wide area network coverage with WiFi built in for when I'm in WiFi range [either free or hot-zone/hot-spot], to run in Skype/SkypeOut mode skype.com
Mqurice |
