John Linton .....from next Thursday.......assuming you live in the USA......and its available over a 4G wireless network:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576202422274964148.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
If you had said 3 years ago (as I did and anyone else who had been involved with technology for more than five minutes) that this sort of offering would be available over a wireless network you would have received a chorus of "look how slow, unreliable and expensive wireless is today". The unwavering aspect of 'new' technology is that it just improves over time. In the case of GSM there aren't even any surprises - there is a published 'road map' of how the technology will improve and when the improvements are likely to become available to end users - and has been for almost 30 years.
I can have no idea what speeds will be available over the Verizon network but they will undoubtedly be much faster and available in more locations than they were three years ago. What is equally certain is that in three years time they will be faster than they are today and will be available in even more places and the price will be much cheaper than it is today.......Oh, and for those people who say "but spectrum is finite so wireless will never be able to cope with the growing demand" they should visit central London or New York or even Singapore to demonstrate to themselves how stupid they are to make such statements now or at any time in the past or future. Once upon a time, a long time ago in a technology far, far away similar people predicted the end of the ever faster chips used in all the world's computers because of the laws of physics applicable to Silicon - so a synthetic substance, gallium arsenide, was 'invented' and all the nay sayers just looked as stupid as nay sayers always do when they open their mouths about the limitations of technology.
What I found interesting is that the latest Verizon announcement represents the 'cross over' point (at least in the USA) where wireless broadband becomes cheaper for a very significant percentage of customers to use than ADSL broadband - and obviously far more functional than a service restricted to one physical location. With the addition of the phone calls at very low prices (plus the use of MoIP) the reason for any future user to install and pay for a telephone line disappears....and with it the use of ADSL. It is the point in time where ADSL will begin a rapid decline in terms of a residential data communications service. Maybe the ABS statistics due in a couple of weeks will begin to show this but I will take any bets that the ABS stats will clearly demonstrate this in April 2012.
It doesn't mean as much in Australia as we tend to lag the rest of the mobile world by around eighteen months to two years but it does reinforce the inexorable progress of wireless as a preferred data service as the technology continues to develop and the usage continues to grow driving down the cost of delivery and capacity provisioning. If you have an idle moment and a reasonable memory try drawing a rough graph of wireless speed and another one for price per gigabyte starting in July 2009 and 'ending' in March 2011. You may be surprised at the results.
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