Ericsson Predicts Swift End For Wi-Fi Hotspots 286
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."
no more starbucks wireless (Score:3, Funny)
Re:no more starbucks wireless (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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
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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. Peopl
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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
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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.
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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.
Simple, right... (Score:5, Funny)
Badly written summary (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:Simple, right... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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I do agree that it's very expensive, but I don't think regulating it will fix anything. That
Simple yes, cheap no (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure it's simple, but it's not cheap.
Re:Simple yes, cheap no (Score:5, Informative)
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!
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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 go
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Enter google android. And we are going to make this cellphone company punks run like HELL for their money. The net has
Re:Simple yes, cheap no (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [devicescape.com] 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.
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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 t
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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 limi
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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 mo
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Available outside of Cali (Score:2)
-Rick
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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 phon
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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.
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And that meant I had to drag out my c
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Yep (Score:3, Insightful)
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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 th
I fail to see the correlation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, don't tell me, I can figure this one out...
Re:I fail to see the correlation. (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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Re:I fail to see the correlation. (Score:5, Informative)
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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
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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 [google.com], 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.
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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!
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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!"
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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. (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing how companies are unrealistic. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Actually, you forgot... (Score:2)
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.
Quite the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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 priv
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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.
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So you look for a reseller (either cable or dsl) that doesn't make the distinction ... they're around.
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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.
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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?
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...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 (Score:5, Informative)
people visiting town will come by and get their email and sometimes even spend money here.
They are in fantasy land (Score:3, Insightful)
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And pigs will fly out of my butt (Score:4, Funny)
Not for years. (Score:2)
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,
What is planet is this guy from? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is planet is this guy from? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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), o
Ten euros a day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmmm (Score:3, Informative)
Marketing Dude says his product is hot shit! (Score:2, Insightful)
Typical Marketing BS (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy is just predicting that he will get more important without any factual basis.
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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 connecti
they have always been irrelevant, (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
T-Mobile wifi phone, good wifi finder, ironic (Score:2, Informative)
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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
Only in that guy's microcosm (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Charge high fees to your (trapped) customers.
3. Profit!
Free (or cheap) Wifi has to be eliminated as part of step #1.
10 euros per day cuts into my crack allowance. (Score:2)
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.
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Ridiculously overpriced. (Score:2)
Premises (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Just 10 euros" (Score:5, Insightful)
* 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.
Self serving promotion in my opinion (Score:2)
I love these self serving news makers. Go fish, you, less than smart, cry-babies...
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he meant to say this (Score:3, Insightful)
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... (Score:2)
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.
I think his leg is getting wet..... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I call bullshit (Score:2)
This may work (Score:2)
My prediction: abusive dicks, as long as we allow our governments to allow them to get away with it.
Only 30x more expensive... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wmwifirouter.com] or JoikuSpot [joikuspot.com] softwares, depending on the type of phone they have.
Breaking news! (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
My current job is computery but not in IT support so no berry for me. I looked into th
This just in (Score:4, Funny)
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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 sanction
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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?