With all the talk of
ever-increasing wireless data speeds, unimaginable-only-years-ago competition to the cellular carriers from WiFi and
upcoming WiMax, 3G is quickly becomine an obsolete moniker as bandwidth needs are *outstripping* (in theory, since
customer demand still has not solidified) even UMTS - the reason why the industry, for the most part, is passing that
over quickly for speeds akin to HSDPA. This is what we call a "disruptive" technology - WiFi and WiMax, that is. I
doubt the cellular companies had this kind of competitive landscape in mind back in 1999 when they were planning
"3G". All of a sudden, it's 2004 and WiFi is popping up at airports, hotels, coffee and sandwich shops, and
tens of millions of homes, all with much cheaper and faster data connections than any cellular data connection can
match. Even the old 802.11b can hit 12 Mbits/second. Well, it's now 2006. Hmm.So, not that the carriers have wised up and are actually rolling out HSDPA (Like Cingular Wireless in the U.S. and Rogers Wireless in Canada), what content do they plan to give us/let us use that will make use of all that new bandwidth? It's hard to believe music downloads, ringtones and games will be "compelling content", especially with all the copyright protections in place (making it all cumbersome). What else is there? Anyone? The key word is "compelling" and not "available". Make it compelling and people will come. Make it boring and lose your shirt.
