Word: 3g
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Pity the telcos. Or scorn them for their bad investments. Remember the billions they pumped into 3G, that supposedly transformative technology that would have us all downloading Matrix sequels over our wristwatches and holding videophone conversations with grandma? All that's beginning to look a little bit moot as another wireless technology, faster and much cheaper than 3G, gains popularity...
...Playing spoiler is a wireless Internet access system called Wi-Fi that is increasingly available in airports, restaurants, hotels, subway stations and other public places. Originally intended for use in private home and office networks, Wi-Fi (which stands for wireless fidelity) isn't as sophisticated as 3G cellular. The small, stand-alone Wi-Fi transmitters that pass information between computers and the Internet have a range of about 90 m; you can't roam far from a base station without losing the connection. But blazing speed?data zips along at 11 megabits per second, more than five times faster...
...continues to spread, Wi-Fi could capture up to one-third of the revenues mobile carriers had hoped to get from corporate 3G users, according to some industry analysts. Portable computer makers now sell many models with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities (the technology is also referred to as Wireless LAN, for local-area network, or as 802.11b). Setting up a network takes no license and no special skills. A simple base station costs as little...
...helped put hot spots in A&W Restaurants, shopping plazas and at the city's convention center. In Japan, NTT Communications has announced it intends to sprinkle Wi-Fi base stations around the country?a move that observers say could pickpocket revenue from sister company NTT DoCoMo's pioneering 3G network...
...DoCoMo technology is proving difficult. Carriers in other countries have been reluctant to spend heavily to upgrade their wireless data networks, fearing their countrymen do not have the same enthusiasm for photo-swapping, game-playing handsets as the Japanese. After spending billions of dollars getting government licenses to operate 3G systems, many debt-ridden carriers have put plans for network overhauls on the back burner. "The whole point of investing abroad was a speedy roll-out for 3G," says Yasumasa Goda, analyst for Merrill Lynch Japan Securities. "But clearly this is no longer realistic...