Killing Wi-Fi
p2pnet.net news:- Are the cellular service companies trying to kill Wi-Fi? John Dvorak thinks they are.
It’s a “huge long-term threat to them,” he says in PC Magazine. “We’ve seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone-service companies are no dummies.”
He quotes the recent Pew survey, saying it notes only 56% of the people with Net-capable PDAs have actually used them to go online, and the same goes for people who have cell phones with Internet capability; “not much more than half have actually used it,” he says.
“A good portion of the public with cell phones that can access the Net cannot grasp the concept in their brain, since going on the Net usually means sitting at a keyboard, looking at a big screen, and typing stuff. What’s more, a good portion of the public has been told that their phone can go on the Internet, and they think they are on the Internet when making calls. These folks would likely answer yes to a query about the Internet even if their phone had no Internet access whatsoever.”
Even worse, “there just aren’t that many people out there who have any idea what they are doing,” says PC Magazine. “All you have to do is sit at the airport when two people begin to discuss the Internet. Someone will have an EV-DO card and call it Wi-Fi and say how neat it will be when San Francisco goes all Wi-Fi and he can use the card for free access instead of having to pay Sprint when he boots to the network. ‘Won’t that be great!?’
“Of course, this has been made all the more confusing since the introduction of those newer EDGE and EV-DO network cards that people are using at an exorbitant price to get an e-mail connection with their laptop.”
Also See:
PC Magazine – The Killing of Wi-Fi, February 26, 2007
Pew survey – A 3rd of US surfers plug into Wi-Fi, February 26, 2007
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March 5th, 2007 at 10:19 am
My cell phone as Wi-Fi and Im on Telus and they dont advertise the phone as having wifi capabilities. I found it by going through the settings on the phone and the sales man goes oh yeah it has that. Like he was relunctant to tell me that. Which is lame cause that is what sold me on the phone. 4 months since I got the phone Telus still dont tell anyone it has wifi, and I asked another salesman about that and he said Telus doesnt want people to know it has that.
But as expensive is it is to surf the net on a cell carriers plan I dont blame them. 10$ a MB is a bit high. Thats only a few web pages.