Saturday, January 27, 2007

mobile internet non-use

mobile internet non-use:Reported in Europe - and some commentary with some possible reasons. Ultimately mobile Internet has to be open (no walled gardens) and inexpensive. (Via tingilinde).

In the US, I use a fixed monthly fee EDGE/GPRS T-Mobile service to connect my laptop to the net over my Bluetooth phone. Quality varies from very usable to terrible depending on location and wireless congestion, but it is much more convenient than for-pay WiFi. Just over the last two weeks, I had two incidents (one with Sprint at SLC, the other with T-Mobile HotSpot at SFO) in which I tried to pay for airport WiFi service and the registration process failed somehow. In fact, I used to have a HotSpot account, but it stopped working for reasons that I still don't understand and I'm not willing to waste the time tracking down. The Balkanized state of WiFi provision is a joke.


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