Confusion All Around In The Wireless Space
from the whose-fault-is-that? dept
It looks like quite the bizarre study came out today concerning wireless technologies. The first finding is that most users don't know the difference between various wireless technologies, like 3G, GPRS and WiFi. The article seems to be suggesting that this is a bad thing -- but it's not clear why users should need to know the difference. They just want to be able to connect -- easily, cheaply and at a good speed. The next part of the study seems quite odd. It claims that more people access WiFi at public hotspots than at home. It would be interesting to see the actual data behind this (including how the question was actually phrased and how the people were selected for this survey), because this seems quite unlikely for a variety of reasons. It still seems like the majority of WiFi usage is within the home where people have set up access points to make it easier for home networking, rather than out and about. In fact, it seems like most users who don't have home WiFi barely seem to realize WiFi is available elsewhere.
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Really? In almost everything I've seen the opposite has been true. WiFi adoption in the US has been much greater than in Europe -- especially when talking about the hotspot market where the charges were ridiculously high.
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Mike, Mike, Mike.
Second, the survey never claimed that "more people access WiFi at public hotspots than at home". It stated that of those surveyed, "most users of Wi-Fi use it at public hotspots, with wireline broadband connections still the most popular connection at home".
Third, and most importantly, the survey was conducted by a developer of "converged mobile solutions for communications service providers" and guess what his conclusion was: "This converged 'wireless broadband' market is really ramping up". No bias in this survey, whatsoever.
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It is important to know the basics
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RE: Confusion All Around In The Wireless Space
Wireless connections today has freed us from the wires for sure, but as we lost the wires most lost their security along with it.
Their is an abundance of information out there on wireless connections, yet the general public is mostly to lazy to read up on it or stay configured and updated.
My office sits directly across from a Starbucks cafe... and I can assure you for sure... the coffee I drink is "Black"
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Confusion All Around In The Wireless Space article
3g is mainly used in cell phones and pdas, am i right?? the consumer group for these devices isn't as large as laptops yet. as the population has a need for smaller, faster, easier technology you will see this become more of a common service and tied into phone packages. this might be the case in London where the study was taken, but i don't see it yet here in the states.
GPRS is just a different form of 3g, and i think it is used a lot for music, like xm radio, right?? i personally would like to see this technology become really cheat and have good coverage world-wide. to be able to take your little xm walk man, with your ear buds walking around the mall or at work or at the park or wherever, and listen to any station that is broadcasted would be great. i personally would like to see these devices and services be priced around $60-90 and $25-75/month respectively. this probably won't come anytime soon, but it would be nice.
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I realize this is anecdotal evidence, but most people can't even tell difference between the size of their RAM and the size of their hard drives because the same measurement scale is used.
So why should they know about different wireless technologies?
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Why not stop talking sh*t to Mike while linking to your own crappy blog and just write your opinions over there where they won't bother everyone here?
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But just because I agree with him on that topic (and others) does not mean that I will not voice my opinion when I disagree with Mike. I always figured that an open discussion is better than a closed one-sided discussion. Besides, I was not aware that users are not allowed to post comments critical of the story ;)
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