Curt Sampson wrote:
>On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, nick may wrote:
>
>
>
>>story about VOIP at the Economist. Mostly obvious, but I was interested
>>in the contention that it is the 3G operators who have most to fear
>>from it - not the telcos. Is this so?
>>
>>
>
>It really depends on whether something like WiMax works and takes off.
>If it does, and coverage is all it's cracked up to be, it would be a
>pretty big problem for the 3G operators. But I wouldn't be so sure that
>this will really happen; it wasn't so long ago that everybody said WiFi
>networks were going to kill the wireless carriers, and look where that
>went.
>
>
But isn't there a significant difference between WiFi and long-range
technologies like Wimax? WiFi is a wireless technology while Wimax and
3G are mobile technologies. The problem with Wimax as far as I know is
the power issue, which hasn't been solved yet for it to be a true mobile
technology...(this is however an issue with 3G as well?)
Don't mix Wi-Fi and 3G, they are different in many ways in the same
sense Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have very different areas of use.
But I think the economist article have spotted something interesting
though, what can really kill 3G is the birth of a range of different
data-services which compete with the services offered by the
3G-operators and their content providers. Remember that MMS for example
is not a technology, nor a service but a billing model....the same goes
for voice, text etc. The true price-model is pay-per-usage-of-capacity
but today they are charged for differently. The big question is how the
operators will face this competion?
/Gustaf
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>
>>Just out of interest is anyone using wifi-voip regularly through a PDA.
>>
>>
>
>That would seem a bit of a pain. I'd imagine anybody trying to replace a
>keitai would be using something like this:
>
> http://voipstore.pulver.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=35
>
>
>
>>Does it replace a keitai?
>>
>>
>
>I don't really see how it could, at this point. The coverage just isn't
>there, not to mention that there's no handover.
>
>cjs
>
>
Received on Mon Dec 6 07:41:18 2004