Clay Shirky thinks 3G is doomed by WiFi

yellum

http://www.shirky.com/writings/permanet.html

The reason the nearlynet strategy is so effective is that coverage over cost is often an exponential curve -- as the coverage you want rises, the cost rises far faster. It's easier to connect homes and offices than roads and streets, easier to connect cities than suburbs, suburbs than rural areas, and so forth. Thus permanet as a technological condition is tough to get to, since it involves biting off a whole problem at once. Permanet as a personal condition, however, is a different story. From the user's point of view, a kind of permanet exists when they can get to the internet whenever they like.


For many people in the laptop tribe, permanet is almost a reality now, with home and office wired, and any hotel or conference they attend Wifi- or ethernet-enabled, at speeds that far outstrip 3G. And since these are the people who reliably adopt new technology first, their ability to send a spreadsheet or receive a web page faster and at no incremental cost erodes the early use the 3G operators imagined building their data services on.

I agree with what he says about the early adopters already using wifi but the early adopters are also those guys with disposable income or companies with it and who always have numerous gadgets and technologys o the take up among them might be as good if the service meets or beats expectations.

Does 3G need a killer app to make it work ?

BigEejit

Does 3G need a killer app to make it work ?

I think the question should be Does 3G need killer hardware? , if 3G was built into laptops (or a 3G PCMCIA card) it would take off like wildfire (provided of course the costs were reasonable)

The Corinthian

It’s all the telcos/operators fault. Really.

The rapid adoption of WiFi, in particular the move towards broadband wireless connectivity over broad, non-LOS, areas has been largely a result of incumbent telcos being unwilling to open up to competition. As a result, a combination of market forces and national regulators (who see it as a means to force hoist competition into the market, bypassing the bottleneck of the local loop) have encouraged not only take up, but further development.

Add to this we have the 3G licences, which other than being ridiculously expensive also generally tied operators to a specific technology: UTMS. Needless to say, technology has moved on and viable alternatives are beginning to enter the market. Many of these alternatives require relatively low entry to market overheads too.

Finally, even with 3G, what are we likely to see anyway? Nothing much, is the answer.

Operators continue to control all applications and content on their networks and are loathed to give any kind of decent revenue share to content providers. Most content/services are not interoperable between networks, not because of security or technology, but exclusivity.

That’s what happened with WAP, what is happening with MMS and what is most likely to happen with 3G. But by then the operators will most probably be cut out of the picture.

Lawnkiller

though it might get on some ppl's t1ts, what has been said here is totally true.

does this mean the end of the operator ..or the beginning of governments tightening up on wireless networks to restore the operators' "markets"(on the orders of whom....?).

similar tactics were used by a number of years ago against local tv relaying groups. is it possible the same thing may happen again? or are we over all that?

who knows...

Capt'n Midnight

You do not need a license provided you stay within the power limits and don't sell it to the general public. You do need a license to transmit commercially - hence the clampdown on TV repeators and Pirate Radio.

www.irishwan.org are building a free & open network so you can connect to other users on the network 24/7 for FREE ... There are currently also free services eg: ftp / time / dns / local web sites and even email (but without attachments)
All 3G has going for it is greater coverage....

Note: Some of those users are also sharing internet access more or less at cost - ie. a % of their monthly BB cost vs. compared to per minute dialup cost to 3G..

Does anyone know what the cost of the 3G licenses work out per user ? - then add the cost of the harware and add a Teclo margin ....

By comparison have a look at http://www.vbnets.com/tutorials/startawisp.php for costs on rolling out a small network..

As one BT engineer said about WiFi from a Telco perspective - if you're not scared then you don't understand the technology.