Hacker News Reader

Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

I hope whatever standard they come up with does not require a home WiFi network to operate. Mobile internet is already faster than your average home internet line and there is an increasing trend where people rely entirely on their mobile phones for network connectivity.

View on HN

> there is an increasing trend where people rely entirely on their mobile phones for network connectivity

There is? Is it any meaningful percentage of households?

I can't see how going hub less would work. You'd have to configure all the devices to connect to a hotspot on your phone and get your phone to reliably create a wifi network every time you get home. Dealing with multiple users would be a massive headache.

You could have a home wifi network which doesn't connect to the internet. Wifi routers are dirt cheap and don't need to be connected to the internet.

That said, the logistics of this would be super weird because smartphones are mostly designed to treat connected wifi as their internet source. Also, if your devices don't have at least an indirect internet connection you can't do anything remotely which is a pretty big functionality hole.

I think it is the other way around. If you want to have your connected devices in a reasonable safe setup, create a wifi network for them and you decide if and how they connect to the internet. This could be a mobile uplink, if you desire to, but I really wouldn't like each device on its own have an internet connection I cannot control.

Wow, just when I thought the average HN reader could not get any more out of touch with the general population....

Here's some data that backs up my point. Sorry if this doesn't match your anecdotes from your bubbles.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/smartphones-72percent-of-peo...

https://www.comscore.com/ita/Public-Relations/Blog/Number-of...

That's a bold statement. Anecdotally, I know of no one that relies entirely on mobile connectivity for their home.

While mobile internet may be becoming faster, it's still severely hindered by data caps and throttling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com