Forgive us if we don't leap jubilantly into the air. We're still stinging from the WAP fiasco.
Whether you're a business person in transit, a commuter, a courier or a sales warrior on the road, you're supposed to benefit from having wireless Internet, everywhere. Ericsson has just this week released a document with some aggressive ideas about the future face of contiguous mobile Internet. The basic concept is that in the future there will be established wireless LAN access in public places such as cafes and airport departure lounges. At these locations, anyone with an Internet device would be able to sit down and immediately log on, using a universally recognised authentication system. Their own ISP would serve the data across the net and through the local wireless point, only adding to the one bill. According to Ericsson's vision, in an ideal world. This customer with a strong need to stay connected has immediate access to videoconferencing, email, application sharing, instant messaging, high speed access to their "mothership" intranet.
Then, downing their decaf latte and striding off towards the next urgent engagement, notebook under arm, hailing a taxi, they are still able to access 3G mobile Internet through their phone-style device which uses Bluetooth to seamlessly take over and supply the Internet access to your primary device when the Wi-Fi connection drops out of range. You then suffer through the ignominy of the moderate data speed of 3G -- still fast enough for some form of videoconferencing -- until you arrive at the next (undoubtedly Wi-Fi- wired) destination.
Ericsson won't personally be providing the access of course, only the tools to allow someone else to start investing megabucks in such a system. What Ericsson is selling at this stage is a rosy utopian ideal of a seamless business model that telecommunications corporations are supposed to buy into.
It's an appealing vision, but I can't help thinking that sales of wireless Internet phones aren't about to explode. With the recent mobile phone hardware subsidies being removed, consumers are faced with a guillotine effect of heinously expensive mobile phones at around $1300 for a high-end model -- and that's without a fully backlit, high definition colour display. The existing generation of mobile Internet using GPRS is termed "2.5G" -- not fast enough to transmit a live video stream, but certainly able to handle SMS messages with embedded pictures and sounds (dubbed "MMS" in Ericsson terminology). I don't even want to think about what a true "3G" device is going to cost us, when the time comes.
No doubt you'll not only be paying for the high definition display and the fancy whiz-bang wireless data tech, but also a digital camera chip, enhanced storage capabilites and no doubt one or two PDA style functions as well. And the access fees defined by the vendors, of course, are abominably high. Prepare your savings account for a beating it will never forget!
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