MiFi: Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Some day we'll tell our kids we paid 10¢/MB for a ubiquitous Internet connection and they'll commit suicide.
After discussion, we concluded that we'd ditch our land internet connection once we could get an all-you-can-eat data connection, such as the one mentioned in the article, for $50/person, and not have our data connectivity costs go up.
Looks like this will become a reality once the price drops by 50% (and this becomes integrated into an iPhone/android-based phone).
What if the Apple 'Media Tablet' that is supposed to launch with Verizon service had this same feature? It's got an internal 3G connection but it can also broadcast a Wifi hotspot with Bonjour!
That would be an amazing gadget.
I hope Google still has secret plans for entering the wireless space, or buying a company in the space.
Still - wireless "broadband" speeds are increasing faster than I can get in the home..
Very cool: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/watch_out_wifi_here_com...
But as implemented, in a lot of places there's extensive wi-fi connectivity and unused internet bandwidth but it's all private. How great would it be if every router gave 90% of the bandwidth to the owner and leaked 10%, with some sort of packet-tagger to say 'mobile origin'.
We nearly had public Wi-fi in San Francisco but one group of citizens wanted it publicly owned or nothing, and wouldn't tolerate a private service subsidized by ad frames or similar. Classic case of perfect as enemy of the good. Community peer wifi has been tried but I signed up 18 months ago and heard nothing since.
This already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON
And a very handy piece of software it is too! Murders the battery life on my N96, though, as if it wasn't pitiful enough. Still, a couple of spare batteries beat the MiFi hands down for price.
It was the only reason I jailbroken my iPhone a year back. Tried it, the phone was hot after half an hour and the drain incredible. I'd never jailbreak ever since.
I would carry around a cerealbox-sized modem if it meant unlimited broadband everywhere for a reasonable flat price.
Yes... it's entirely magical and meant to be a secret. Surely this thing defines a hostname like 'mifi' that you can type in instead of the IP.
Cool device, but four hour battery life is kinda slim. Wonder if you could dial down the power on the Wifi transmitter so it only worked within about 8 feet and extend the battery life a little.
You could also slap this on the back of an iphone with skype and poof, iPhone on the Verizon network, if you really dislike AT&T.
since when could you use satellite wifi on a plane?
As for the flight attendant thing, lots of people leave their dongles attached to their notebooks. Also, the author discusses using the MiFi while waiting on the runway for take-off.
Given all that, the plane use case does seem pretty weak, though.