VoIP Watch

Starbucks Needs T-Mobile Again

Over the last few months I've been watching as the WiFi speeds in the local Starbucks keep going from slow to slower. Today with one other person connected, the speeds were as slow as I have seen in my area in a very, very long time.

As someone who has been using the Starbucks Hotspots since they were first introduced I've now watched as they and many others in the hospitality business including hotels and restaurants have failed to keep up with the advancing levels of service delivery. 780k may have once been good but a 438ms ping time to a server less than 20 miles away, regardless of what the speed test shows points to the problem. AT&T, which provides the broadband to Startbucks network thinks I'm in San Jose. I'm not, I'm in Carmel Valley, San Diego about 380 miles south. So testing as I'm somewhere I'm not I get a slightly better result with a massively better ping time. But, in the era where WiFi offload is the carriers if I'm in a San Diego area Starbucks and I want to hit my local mail server, why should my data have to travel up and then down the coast. That's just silly network management. But the real issue is the size of the pipe. In the T-Mobile era you usually saw bandwidth up to 5 megs in these same locations. Now you're lucky if you have a DSL line in the Starbucks locations so no wonder they give it away now. 

I guess the old axiom is true. You do get what you pay for.

 

What Keeps Us Connected

Let's face it, some of us are gadget geeks. Some may call us other less flattering names, but in the end we all like to play with the latest and not always greatest devices, but when it comes to laying our cash on the line, some of us, do find a way to make use of what we buy. 

James Kendrick profiled pal Matt Miller. I've known both JK and MM for a long time and both share the same passion I have for devices. In reading the recap of what Matt has and uses we're pretty much on the same page for what we use, though possible differ on what and where, but that's due to the way the mobile networks are.

For me, the unlocked iPhone4S is first, the iPad second and now my GoogleNexus by Samsung 3rd. Here at home I have very little use for the Huawei Media pad which is running Honeycomb (Android 3.2) outside of the house as it lacks USA 3G frequencies, but it will be awesome in Europe starting in February, but not as useful as the Galaxy Tab which doubles as a phone (P-1000 model). My other Android Tablets are useful too and one of them, likely the Huawei IDEOS 7 is going to find its way into my London phone booth one of these days and be a real phone as well as a guest access to the Internet.

The one thing Matt and James ommitted was the MiFi, and with Tethering now more and more common I'm not surprised. Between WiFi and tablets my Mac Book Air only comes out to do real writing and serious surfing as the tablets, and decdicated apps are stepping into the void previously there between smartphones and laptops.

Beyond VoIP and WiFi the ability to actually have video calls on the tablets is driving my adoption of them, as well as for collaboration. Their mostly for business but like Matt I do tend to use them for multimedia as well as notetaking too. So while many think of these as phone replacements, my view is they are becoming entertainment replacement devices too. Now, it's not so much of what apps are there, as much as what they connect to. I use my iPhones, iPods and iPads to connect to my sound systems and TV monitors via Apple TVs and Airplay. That way I get my music over iTunes iCloud and Spotify. Video is sorta there with iTunes, and over time it will be more ubiquitous with other apps. 

The bottom line--Matt and James are not alone, as we're all virtual gear loving brothers of the road (umm Information Super Hiway)

Related articles

• Huawei MediaPad tipped by FCC for T-Mobile (slashgear.com)
• Why I Love Being A Global Nomad (andyabramson.blogs.com)