Are the US Cell Carriers trying to bury WiFi?

Posted by Chris Leckness on Mar 13, 2007

closeThis post was published 2 years 10 months 29 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.

Even living in an area that DOES NOT have 3G coverage, I could care less about WiFi personally. The EDGE connection I get here is good enough for most of my internet needs, but I do realize that some need and want WiFi. The fact that Cell Phone companies are not including WiFi in most of the newest devices to hit the market shows that they are worried about users not using their data services. There is an article in PC Magazine addressing this exact issue.  

“There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi. After all, it is a huge long-term threat to them. We’ve seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone–service companies are no dummies. The always-entertaining Pew Internet & American Life Project ran a survey, and the results show that 34 percent of Internet users have gone online with a Wi-Fi connection or one of those newly popular and overpriced cell-phone services. Two years ago, this number was 22 percent. Another factoid from the survey: 19 percent of all users have Wi-Fi in the home. This number was a mere 10 percent just one year ago. The last tidbit from the survey worth noting is that only 56 percent of the people who have PDAs that hook to the Internet have actually gone on the Net via their PDA. The same goes for the people who have cell phones with Internet capability; not much more than half have actually used it.”

Source: PC Magazine via Smartphone Thoughts

Chris Leckness (4409 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook


Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris has been a big time supporter/user of Windows Mobile since the Dell Axim days when it was Pocket PC 2002. Chris loves Zune, but also owns 3 iPhones too. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.

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