Why Does Verizon Want You to Turn Off WiFi on Your Phone?

I had a strange visit to the Verizon Wireless store today to upgrade my wife's phone. I purchased her the Android Motorola Droid Pro and an "all you can eat" data plan for $30 per month. While in the Verizon store the salesperson encouraged us to turn WiFi off on our smartphone for some strange reason and had no reason to justify the request.

I think Verizon feels threatened by public Wifi and wants to make sure that smartphone users are discouraged from using WiFI. LTE does compete with Wifi and in many cases is much faster. Not only that but Verizon doesn't even have any phones that run on 4G LTE yet.

At the end of the tutorial, the salesperson asked if we wanted to purchase a MiFi device and create a mobile hot spot. Verizon is obviously training their salespeople that public WiFi is bad and their MiFi hot spots are the way to go.

I also received some strange looks when I said that I have the fastest 4G phone the G2 and it runs on HSPA+ which is 4G. I have been using an Android phone for almost 3 years and I highly recommend using WiFI whenever possible. WiFi connections can be 3 to 10X faster than Verizon's current CDMA and even new LTE network which is not available on any smartphones. Try going to Europe or outside the US and only use WiFi for VoIP Skype or Google Voice calls. Its free and can save you a lot of money.

T-Mobile 4G HSPA+ Femtocell or Mobile Hotspot?

Is T-Mobile testing a 4G femtocell or mobile hotspot combination device that will connect to your home broadband line and route your voice and data traffic over this line?  We might not have the right terminology for the device but it sounds a lot like a femtocell.  Apparently, the device offers Wifi as well and we presume this will offload data from the network. This is designed to fill coverage gaps and/or relieve the macro network or outdoor network.  A T-Mobile femtocell would be a major breakthrough for the company if they do roll this out to its customer base.  T-Mobile has the reputation of having less than stellar coverage in many rural areas throughout the US and this would certainly help many of these customers fill in those gaps for their home or office.

Discovering this device has sparked our curiosity because T-Mobile has always maintained their stance that they don't believe in femtocells and will stick with a Wifi strategy.  The Bandluxe device is priced at $249 which similar to Verizon who sells their femtocell for $250, AT&T sells their MicroCell for about the same and each comes with a monthly data subscription.  We think it would be quite disruptive for T-Mobile to subsidize the costs of these devices made by BandRich and also offer them without a data subscription.  The device is called HSPA+ WLAN Pocket Router.  We would appreciate any clarification about the type of device, data subscription, and its functionality or launch date. Will this device work on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network today?

Wi-Fi Direct Location Based Social Networks

Smartphone Acting As A WiFi Hotspot

W-Fi Direct devices allow mobile mobiles to act like a Wi-Fi access router for Wi-Fi enabled machines. This is going to make it easy for groups of people in proximity to share files between laptops, phones or push a video from a handset to another Wi-Fi device. It could potentially be used for home entertainment networking, bars, sporting events, social gatherings, restaurants, conferences or multi-player gaming.  Wi-Fi Direct devices can now connect in a new way that makes it more simple and convenient than ever to do things like print, share music, videos and pictures on the home network.  This will undoubtedly open up brand new industries that feed off of location based social networks like Four Square, Gowalla, Facebook Places, Groupon.

It remains to be seen how manufacturers and carriers will allow consumers to use Wi-Fi Direct. The standard could be limited by manufacturers and wireless carriers, who may be wary of allowing the feature to flourish without their control. Carriers, for example, could prevent a phone from acting like a Wi-Fi hotspot, something they already do with some Android devices. Let’s hope that major players like Apple and Google let Wi-Fi Direct reach its full potential.  This will also probably be the beginning of the end for MiFi devices.

Sharing Music on iPhone Using WiFi Direct

The Wi-Fi Alliance said 82 million Wi-Fi-enabled portable consumer electronics devices and 216 million Wi-Fi handsets will ship this year with 26 percent annual growth projected through 2014.  Meanwhile Wi-Fi hotspots are growing at a rate of 40% per year to over 80,000 and that is 5X faster than cell phone towers.