Wednesday, October 1, 2008

3G Is So Yesterday

Despite the continued iPhone buzz and the fact that 3G is not yet available everywhere...get ready for 4G. It's already here from Sprint in Baltimore in the form of a wireless laptop card. It's safe to assume 4G will begin to appear in other cities in the not to distant future.

After the card purchase the monthly cost is around $30.

The wireless card is surely just the opening act and the precursor for 4G making its way into smaller Blackberry and iPhone type devices--and it won't take long.

What is it capable of? Everything. Even when in a moving vehicle. Only minimal imagination is needed to have a pretty good idea how, yet again, this can and will change everything. As always this represents a great multi-channel content rich opportunity for radio.

Laptop magazine did a full review and is linked below. But check out this tidbit:

Hulu

We tried watching a video on Hulu.com with both mobile broadband services. On Verizon EV-DO, which actually has a policy against using their service to watch video, it took 13 seconds before our video began playing and the video paused twice in the first minute to rebuffer. It would have continued to rebuffer if we kept watching. On XOHM, we saw a little jerkiness but the video started after just 9 seconds and never paused to rebuffer.

Not bad considering the how bandwidth hungry high quality video is!

Laptop Magazine reports on XOHM in Baltimore