Moconews posed an interesting question this morning: will wifi go the way of the public phone booth? Their premise was that public wifi (i.e., at conferences, or busy coffee shops) is often slow and hard to use, while mobile broadband is more reliable. Further, mobile broadband is spreading like wildfire and becoming more ubiquitous. As that happens, is wifi in danger of becoming no longer useful?
There's no question that wifi is great for certain things. For a home network, it can't be beat. But for larger scale deployments, such as at conference, it can be slow and maddening to use. While I love the coffee shop atmosphere, most days I generally work from home because I can't take the slow speeds on coffee shop wifi for more than an hour.
There's also a problem of congestion. In densely populated areas, as more and more people set up home networks, throughput is dropping as the airwaves get cluttered. David Heinemeier Hansson posted today about noise on his urban wifi connection, and judging from the comments his post received, it's a common problem. The solution? Perhaps mobile broadband.
Moconews pointed to Ericsson’s marketing chief Johan Bergendahl, who said mobile broadband will supplant wifi hotspots as the preferred method of on-the-go web access. "Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era," he said. Moconews also pointed to a report that mobile broadband uptake is on the rise, and another report that city-wide wifi deployments are also growing -- perhaps indicating that wifi isn't ready to go away yet.
But let's just suppose that mobile broadband does become the dominant method of connecting to the Internet. Let's pretend that high cost, limited service territories, and speed barriers are overcome. What would the result be?
Perhaps the most interesting result would be that cellular voice networks would be forced to give way to VoIP, and services like Skype or JAJAH might be well positioned for a mobile broadband dominated world. With fast, reliable, and ubiquitous mobile broadband access, cellular voice plans would be irrelevant given cheaper VoIP options. We've already seen some voice-over-IP services target mobile users, such as JAJAH's iPhone optimized version.
That would be mean less costs for consumers -- no more free public wifi (presumably), but a slimmer cell phone bill and a single broadband connection that could cover mobile phone, web access, and landline telephone. Throw in a VoIP television service like Joost (which is starting to test live streaming this month) or Livestation, and the future might be one connection that covers all of your media and communication needs.
That simple future is a ways off, though. Mobile broadband isn't cheap, it isn't as fast as wired broadband, and it doesn't have the coverage necessary to be a truly reliable alternative to wifi hotspots (let alone voice networks). But is that future coming? Probably. HSPA+, which may arrive late this year, will offer speeds of up to 42 Mbps down and 11 Mbps up, which is significantly faster than my 20/2 Mbps cable line, and astronomically faster than the iPhone's current EDGE network (which is around 240 kbps down).
There are a lot of barriers to overcome -- not least of which, how to handle billing consumers when roaming on other networks and how to make the various competing standards play nice (or get networks to conform to a single standard). But once those issues are solved, fast, cheap, ubiquitous mobile broadband may be on the horizon.
When do you think mobile broadband will be fast enough, cheap enough, and ubiquitous enough to supplant wifi? Will that ever happen? If it does, what other side effects will we see? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
译文:
当WiFi离开人们的生活
Moco新闻今早刊登了一则有趣的问题：WiFi会不会走上像电话亭一样的道路？当然前提是公共的WiFi（例如：会议厅中，或是拥挤的咖啡厅里）速度非常缓慢且难以使用，与此同时无线宽带的使用却非常可靠。此外，无线宽带的传播速度有如野火般惊人，然后变得普及。当这些都发生的时候，WiFi是不是就处在竞争劣势而不再有用处呢？
毫无疑问，在某些方面WiFi做得非常好。例如在一个家庭局域网中的使用就无人能敌。但当需要大范围部署设施的时候，例如在会议厅里，使用WiFi会速度缓慢到令人抓狂的地步。虽然我很向往咖啡厅的气氛，但当我坐在那里办公时根本无法忍受奇慢的速度一小时以上。
另一个存在的问题就是网路阻塞。在人口密集地区，当越来越多的家庭增设了局域网，网路的数据传输量会像电视广播被干扰般骤减。David Heinemeier Hansson今天在网上刊登了关于他的市内WiFi连接被干扰的消息，从众多网友的回应上来看这是很普遍的一个问题。那到底有什么样的解决方法呢？答案很可能就是无限宽带了。
Moco新闻指出爱立信市场总监曾经说过无线宽带将会替代WiFi成为人们喜爱的实时登陆互联网的方法。“服务热区，例如星巴克也将会成为无线宽带网络时代中的电话厅，”他说。Moco新闻还指出一条报道说无线宽带正在崛起，但同时另一则报道指出在城市大范围内部署的WiFi数量也在不断攀升中--这也就是说WiFi不会那么快地消失。
但如果我们假设无线宽带成为连接互联网的主导方式。撇开它的高成本，有限使用区域以及客服了速度的限制来考虑的话，那结果又会是怎样的呢？
也许最有趣的结果会是VoIP将会成为蜂窝式语音网络的主宰，服务提供商例如Skype或者JAJAH会是无线宽带世界比较好的选择。由于拥有快速、可靠以及普遍的无线网络接入点，蜂窝式语音计划将会不定时地给予用户优惠的VoIP选择。我们已经看到了这些服务商针对无限用户提供了此类服务，例如JAJAH的iPhone最优版。
这就意味着消费者将会花很少的钱--虽然没有了免费公共WiFi，但却减少了移动话费开支并且得到了一条拥有移动通话、上网以及固话通话的宽带连接。人们通过VoIP还可以获得电视服务例如Joost（这个月即将测试实时传输流）或者Livestation，在不久的将来，这条宽带连接将提供所有人们能接触到的媒体和通讯服务需求。
尽管这离现实还有很大的一段距离。无线宽带成本很高，而且速度还不及有线宽带，目前还没拥有足够的覆盖面积来达到跟WiFi服务区一样的水平并取代它（除去语音网络不说）。那么那样的时代还会来临吗？很有肯能。明年HSPA+将会发行，它将提供42Mbps的下传以及11Mbps的上传速度，这很明显地比我现在的20/2Mbps数字线路速度要快得多，并且大大超过了iPhone的EDGE网络所提供的只有240kbps的下船速度。
无线宽带还有很多困难要克服--特别要提出的是：怎样处理消费者漫游到其他网络、如何让不同的竞争协议标准都运行的很好（或者让大家统一执行一个标准）。如果这些问题解决的话，快速、便宜、普及的无线宽带时代就会来临。
你认为到什么时候无线宽带才能够取代WiFi呢？这会发生吗？如果成为事实，我们又将会看到怎样的副总用伴随着产生？请在下方填写你的评论。