calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
 ·Comcast Formerly ..
| reply to RayW
Re: I agree
A mix of questions presented here:
1. Will Wi-Fi survive? (IMHO, yes.)
2. Will Bluetooth "beat" Wi-Fi? (IMHO, no.)
3. Will commercial Wi-Fi pay off for its investors? (Who knows?)
The last is the hardest. Putting aside Forresters' preference for Bluetooth for the moment, Wi-Fi stands to become the ultimate commodity--every Tom, Dick, & Harry can put up a hot-spot, so consumer prices for access at any given point are likely to crash.
What survives in a commodity environment? Branding--if your brand is easy to use, easy to bill, widely available, represents reasonable quality, and IS FIRST IN THE MARKET, then your brand may well survive. But you will find your brand attacked niche by niche. If you price high enough to support nationwide roaming (Starbucks), you'll be undercut by the local coffee shop catering to locals who don't travel much. If you support the bandwidth for active gaming, you'll be undercut by the guy who only supports enough bandwidth to use e-mail and spout on DSLR. If you support paper billing, you'll be undercut by the gal who only supports on-line billing and credit-card payment.
I think the "pay-to-play" Wi-Fi folks will have a hard time sooner or later, but most new industries do go through periods of consolidation.
Then again, libraries used to be "paid membership" institutions -- until this Carnegie fellow got the idea that they should be free. Maybe Wi-Fi is destined to become a community service supported by government?
Calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| said by calvoiper  :
2. Will Bluetooth "beat" Wi-Fi? (IMHO, no.)
LOL. bluetooth was dead years ago while everyone involved with it was squabbling over standards, wifi came in and owned them.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth |
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Jon_Hanson
Mountain Dew Rules
Premium
join:2001-07-09
Gilbert, AZ
| Bluetooth and WiFi do not compete with each other!
Bluetooth and WiFi are not competing technologies. Bluetooth is meant to get rid of the tangle of wires needed for PC peripherials (cell phones, PDAs, etc.). It has a range of about 30 feet. WiFi has a range of up to 1,000 feet and is meant for network access. How can you compare the two? |
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