The WiFi world is grateful to Steve Jobs

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Thank you Steve Jobs. Thank you for the iPhone. Thank you for making laptops like the MacBook Air that only work with WiFi. Thank you because since we met and you told me how interested you were in WiFi us at Fon we keep getting calls from 3G operators who are selling your iPhone and find that it is a bandwidth hog. At a meeting with Steve Nicholson of The Cloud last Friday for example I heard that the iPhone consumes 30 times more data than the average mobile handset and is alerting operators on how important it is to off load traffic to WiFi networks. The iPhone is now the best selling mobile handset in USA. AT&T reacted quickly and bought Wayport for $275 million or 27 times EBITDA, not bad for a world experiencing a global financial crisis. My sources tell me that the iPhone was the main catalyst for the purchase. It is estimated that it costs 85% less to send traffic through WiFi than through 3G. And now Boingo just bought OptiFi. At Fon we are also noticing more and more iPhone traffic. We call it iFon traffic. And it´s great for Fon.

Posted on Internet & Technology | 8:56 pm | Trackbacks(1)

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Posted by fonero - November 11, 2008 12:20 am - #

so it seems very logical to sell FON to whom?). Can you tell us?

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Posted by Lucas - November 11, 2008 7:06 am - #

I would love to get your take on the FCC white space approval.

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Posted by Arthur - November 11, 2008 11:56 am - #

Hi Martin,

This is all great validation for WiFi; especially that Operators will need to offload data-intensive traffic from 3G cellular network to cheaper and faster WiFi networks.

I am curious what the source of this quote is?

“It is estimated that it costs 85% less to send traffic through WiFi than through 3G.”

Cheers, Arthur

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Posted by andy w - November 11, 2008 12:10 pm - #

Wow. I knew you didn’t like Steve, but this post is *really* sarcastic.

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Posted by jp - November 11, 2008 4:49 pm - #

I don’t believe this has anything to do with technology. Comparing WiFi and W-CDMA/HSPA is basically comparing 100m a marathon runners. Is Samuel Wanjiru better than Usain Bolt? Maybe we should ask Usain to run the marathon and see how far he gets?

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Posted by Martin Varsavsky - November 11, 2008 6:13 pm - #

@ andy w:

It is not sarcastic. Yes, I had a tough meeting with Steve Jobs and I found him very hard to deal with, but he is the most innovative CEO on the planet and I really mean it when I say that the WiFi world is greateful to him.

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Posted by andy w - November 11, 2008 6:23 pm - #

As someone working in the mobile content arena I have a different mindset, perhaps that is what put me off the “bandwidth hog” part of your comment.

Here in Argentina I know many people who own iPhones but do not activate the EDGE capabilities due to how expensive it is to purchase all that bandwidth at retail rates.

They all use WiFi with pleasure, of course…

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The WiFi world is grateful to Steve Jobs

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