« Carnival Valor Offers 100-Percent Wi-Fi Coverage | Main | Continental Airlines Tries Free »

December 13, 2004

Future of Cell Calls? Wi-Fi Networks

By Glenn Fleishman

One-third of cell calls are made from the home or in an office: This means that cell/Wi-Fi hybrid phones could offload a ton of minutes used on expensive cell networks to cheap Wi-Fi networks, possibly not even counting those minutes against a subscriber’s plan. This Wall Street Journal column notes the Stupid Network problem that David Isenberg has pioneered: namely that a stupid network with no intelligence trying to control its purpose, like the Internet, has much higher utility than a closed, smart network that restricts access like a cellular network.

And there’s a good quote from the always quotable smart guy Dana Blankenhorn: Whether it takes one year or five, when callers start relying less on their cellphones to make calls, it will shake up the industry. “Verizon thinks it can stop the future,” Mr. Blankenhorn says. “No. They can stop it in Pennsylvania, but they can’t stop the future.”

Posted by Glennf at December 13, 2004 3:07 PM

Categories: Cellular, Future

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.pl/2842

Comments

Posted by: Ryan at December 14, 2004 5:36 AM