Telcos on the move
So, you know I hate my cable company, Time Warner. Hate isn’t the word, loathe perhaps and maybe just a little fear. So I’m looking for ways to rationalize why it makes any sense to switch to the telcos which are, for all intents and purposes, just as bad only I haven’t had as horrendous an experience yet. And that probably only because I don’t rely on them for my main internet connection. Still, as I read the internet they seem to actually be doing interesting things, which is far more than Time Warner is doing.
For example, take the XOHM rollout of Wi-Max by Sprint. They seem to be going big with this - expecting to spend up to $5 billion dollars over the next three years on infrastructure. That’s a lot of infrastructure dollars and Wi-Max if it lives up to even a reasonable portion of it’s expected bandwidth could really be a big deal. In more rural areas people are living off of EV-DO which gives reasonable speeds, but by no means enough to deal with all the high bandwidth requirements modern life wants to have - so this could really impact those underserved areas. In cities this could easily take the place of cable modems with the advantage of letting you roam around without needing to pay extra for hotspot access or finding an unencrypted wi-fi spot (which are becoming rarer and rarer!). I hope this is successful and Sprint is able to come to NYC soon, I’m looking forward to it.
Another thing the carriers are doing is an idea Scott thought of several years back, that is providing personal cell hotspots that plug into your wifi and provides your cellphone (and all your neighbors too, I guess) a hotspot in your apartment. Sprint’s got one (the Samsung Ubicell) and T-mobile’s touting their Hotspot@Home service. The Sprint box is pretty simple, you plug it in and it’s like you have a cell tower right next to you, it supports up to 3 handsets at the same time and you can set it to filter access so your deadbeat neighbors can ride on your party.
Hotspot@Home is a little more confusing to me. I think you need a special T-mobile supplied router as well as a phone that supports UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access). Then the phone basically uses the wi-fi access point when it is in range and seamlessly switches to cell when the wi-fi signal gets too weak. I think that actually any wireless router works, but somehow the T-mobile supplied one works better, for some definition of better.
At any rate, the wireless carriers seem to be doing stuff which is, generally speaking, better than not doing stuff which is what the cable companies are doing or not doing. Sigh.
