A month ago Cisco unveiled a series of new phones that work in WiFi networks. While a normal WiFi signal can only travel several hundred feet, this idea is both future-thinking and part of reality today. What is really cool is the ability to use Voice-over-IP (VoIP) in conjunction with these (not just a fancy walkie-talkie). That translates to being able to bypass the phone-companies altogether.
Example: I bump into a publicly accessible hotspot near a college campus. I can then make a normal phone call using my WiFi enabled phone. No roaming charges, no long-distance charges, just whatever the phone cost me (between $200 and $500 currently).
This undated article (damn them) discusses the futures of both WiFi and 3G networks (it seems to be fairly recent). This analysis is important for not only Joe Enthusiast, but also IT managers who are looking at both solutions. 2.5G and 3G are more or less ubiquitous in 3 main markets: Asia (large cities in Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and some of the larger cities on the Mainland like Shanghai), Europe (at least Western europe) and North America (I have no idea what the state of cell phone technology is like in rural Mexico).
What I find funny is that in North America 3G is really a split standard, as the above article mentioned:
The major US carriers have split on technical standards (Sprint and Verizon are on CDMA 1XRT; AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile are on GSM/GPRS), locking customers into carrier-specific hardware.
CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, is a standard put together by the offshoot of the military-industrial complex in North America called Qualcomm and its primary market is North America (though they are winning contracts in various parts of China). GSM on the other hand, is an open-standard based international consortium that started out as Groupe Speciale Mobile and was a conglomerate of telecom administrations in Europe developed in the early ‘80s.
A quick anecdote, 2 months ago a congressman pushed for legislation that would have created a CDMA-based cell network in post-Saddam Iraq. Iraq was already using a GSM-based network so you can just imagine all the conspiracy and lobbyist theories that popped up afterwards (they didn’t end up switching).
Anyways, last year 3G went “live” for most markets and added various data services on top of the 2.5G specification that was very near and dear to everyone. But it is not an open-ended solution: it uses a licensed spectrum (why?), is expensive to deploy and has a very limited bandwidth (measured in Kbps). Conversely, utilizing WiFi does not require a license or a lobbying team or a large warchest to fight/buy off the FCC. It is inexpensive (competition is very fierce so prices are falling continuously) and has huge amounts of bandwidth (measured in Mbps).
3.5G, which calls for up to 14.4 Mbps, has been announced but don’t expect to see it anytime within the next 2-3 years. While everyone waits for that, 802.11 will become widely deployed (it can already be found in hospitals, airports, hotels, coffee shops, schools, many businesses and homes), more robust, cheaper, securer and just plain sexier. By the time 3.5G hits the consumer markets I would not be surprised if you could not get a new WiFi-based phone that can do everything 3.5G promises and more.
In fact, my enthusiastic post regarding LanLinkup applies here as well. What can eventually happen is “free” telecommunication, anywhere at anytime of the day (though, you might still need to use satellites if you’re in the middle of BFE). Voice-over-IP is the mover & shaker in that arena and it is no longer vaporware (it was another Bluetooth for awhile).
I mention all of this after trying to find a picture of the Cisco phones, fire their marketing team. Here is what their first generation of IP-based phones looked like — no wireless though. Anyone with any pictures, crayon drawn or otherwise?
