Friday, June 6, 2003
The Wi-Fi vs. 3G "Battle" Continues
Posted by Janak Parekh in "NEWS" @ 06:00 AM
"Singapore operator MobileOne invested heavily in 802.11 last year, but this week it announced that it had abandoned its Wi-Fi experiment and decided to put its money behind 3G instead. Neil Montefiore, MobileOne's CEO, cited a couple of reasons. First, laptop and PDA users account for "only three or four per cent" of the market. Everyone else has phones. Second, and this bolsters the 'Rabbit' theory, people want blanket coverage."
This is a Register article, so take their opinions with a grain of salt, but I do agree that 802.11b isn't sufficient. I argue that you aren't ever going to have the same coverage levels as cellular carriers -- especially in surburbia -- and to date there hasn't been any standardized roaming scheme between different 802.11b networks (of which there are nearly infinitely many, as opposed to fewer, and larger, cellular carriers, who can set up roaming agreements much more easily). Anyway, I personally believe there's room for both, as they fill different niches.
This is a Register article, so take their opinions with a grain of salt, but I do agree that 802.11b isn't sufficient. I argue that you aren't ever going to have the same coverage levels as cellular carriers -- especially in surburbia -- and to date there hasn't been any standardized roaming scheme between different 802.11b networks (of which there are nearly infinitely many, as opposed to fewer, and larger, cellular carriers, who can set up roaming agreements much more easily). Anyway, I personally believe there's room for both, as they fill different niches.
