Ericsson’s Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl proclaims downfall of WiFi
By Will Park on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 1:08 PM PST In Announcements, Services, Technologies
Does anyone even use public telephones anymore? I don’t even use fixed landlines anymore. With the pace of development in the wireless landscape, it makes sense that wireless broadband solutions could sound the death knoll for WiFi hotspots.
And, to make that notion all the more plausible, Ericsson’s Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl proclaimed during his keynote at European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm that wireless broadband solutions like HSPA will ensure WiFi hotspots the same fate as public phones.
“Hot spots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era.”
“In Austria, they are saying that mobile broadband will pass fixed broadband this year. It’s already growing faster, and in Sweden, the most popular phone is a USB modem.”
“In a few years, [HSPA] will be as common as Wi-Fi is today.”
But, before wireless broadband can become as and more commonly used as WiFi hotspots, the wireless industry will have to work out issues with coverage, availability, and price. The issues are even more prevalent in countries with lesser-developed wireless infrastructures.
There’s no doubt that commercial and public WiFi hotspots at Starbucks and from services like Boingo will die at the feet of 3G and 4G networks. Still, private WiFi networks in the home and office will probably live on for a bit longer. Wireless broadband will someday give WiFi a run for its throughput-money, but until LTE or WiMAX can deliver similar data-rates to 802.11n or even 802.11g, I’m going to be keeping my wired broadband subscription and WiFi router on hand.
[Via: ComputerWorld]
Why the roll eyes!? He’s only stating the inevitable. I barely use Wifi on my phone just HSDPA, its quick, ins available everywhere – wifi is only really practical at home.
At first, I though this article would be ridiculous with the phrase “downfall of WiFi” in the title. After I read it though, I can’t help but agree with the article, totally. It’s quite surprising, really.
I hope that I will live untill the day the whole planet has access to broadband internet for public use. That’d be frigging awesome.
…wifi spots won’t die until carriers charge reasonable rates as well as drop the restrictions (proxy garbage) on what their networks can do.
I can’t wait for the day that mobile broadband is fast, unlimited and energy efficient enough to have on all the time.
As for phone boxes, no I don’t use a landline at all myself, but there’s a couple of phone boxes I see around the city I live in that always seem to be getting used. In the poorer areas of the city. I guess people just pop to them whenever they haven’t got any credit left on their phones but they have got a 20 pence coin.