As noted in one of my other posts today, I am in Los Angeles on business. Up until now, my way of connecting to the net would be to look for a WiFi connection and hope for the best.
Now, I have another way. A colleague passed on their Sprint 3G card to me. Voila! I can now connect to the Net even if Wifi is either not available or only available at cost. Already, I can see that this is very nice. Like most techies, I like to be able to connect to the net with a minimum of hassles.
As I sit here, I'm listening to a speaker from Nokia, who is talking about what he calls the transition to holistic mobility. Key message: we are in the early days of mobile connectivity, but there is much more to come.
This is good. Most of my internet use for business is pretty lightweight, consisting of sending / receiving emails and checking the web; this card is really doing the job.
For the most part, we are still not yet at the point where my mobile device also has a Wifi access in addition to 3G. Ideally, both my PC and mobile device (in my case, a Treo) would be able to access both the cell network and the IP network. We're not quite there, but there are some good signs. The Iphone has taken steps in this direction, but still does not allow users to run VoIP apps over Wifi, which is purely an artificial restriction. However, the iPhone web access works over both Wifi and GSM 3G. I can only hope that the bonds between the "dual mode" phones and the US network providers loosen, so that the user can choose which applications they want to run and do so without interference.