Russell Skeptical On EvDO Rev A--So Am I

I've been a user of both Verizon and Sprint's EvDO services off and on since their roll out. While a local San Diego company Novatel makes lots of the cards that work with EvDO the problem isn't the cards Russell has his concerns and I have mine.

From day one Qualcomm has built a great wide area high speed technology. That's the good news. The bad news is they have been anti-WiFi, and now are Anti-WiMax, which is exactly why Sprint married up with Intel on WiMax. Qualcomm needs to stop being religious about only their technology and begin to embrace other wireless technologies and make it so their so called carrier partners don't make it hard for other Wireless technologies can co-exist. So while I'm a fan of EvDO and of Qualcomm's engineering prowess and marketing smarts, I'm concerned about their approach to date.

If Sprint, Verizon and others said to their customers sign up for one stop wireless access, built a piece of client software that allowed seamless roaming and hopping, didn't limit the upload and gave everyone more speed, then more EvDO cards would be sold, and more EvDO would be used because being connected is like "crack" and once your connected you always want to be connected.

Comments

[ageffner]

Andy,

I have to disagree with you on this one. I think EV-DO holds alot of promise (Rev A anyway).
Increased upload speeds and reduced latency means the first true viable (not idela, but viable) alternative to wire-based broadband. With products like Linskys' WRT54GEG-ST that allow you to plug in your broadband card and use your mobile broadband where DSL or 2 Way cable modem service is not available also helps to increase overall broadband coverage.

Regarding the piece about companies like Sprint & Verizon building a one-piece smart client to handle everything... Been there, done that. Sprint "used to" have a client for their "Extended Workplace" which offered a single client on your pc which handled home broadband, dialup, wireless via WiFI hotspots or broadband card, CMDA, GSM, etc. Best of all, Sprint didn't charge for it. It was based on Fiberlink's Extend 360 client. So what happened? Sprint did away with it because of pressure and other issues maintaining Fiberlink's modified client without getting paid to do the work. Now we're left with companies like Fiberlink & iPass that want to charge through the roof for a 1-stop shop do everything front end client. I think this area should be/could be a very lucrative space with few competitors to come in, especially given the various types of connection mediums available, and more along the way (i.e. Wimax down the pike). But... for now, I think EV-DO rev A is a step in the right direction, and Sprint's got it right by building out a meshed Wi-Max / EV-DO rev A/B network.