by Calvin Robinson on March 29, 2010.

It’s getting to a point now, where we’re pretty much always connected. We’re always online in some form or another. Forgetting for a moment our conventional PCs/Macs, we have our Smartphones, Netbooks, eReaders and Tablet computers with us where ever we go. Pretty much everything is either WiFi or 3G capable now.

It seems to me that we’re right on the verge of a tipping point. We’ll soon have blanket coverage throughout the whole of the developed world. I think now, the most important question is which technology will become predominant. They can’t all survive, surely?

With 4G connections rivaling adsl and cable broadband speeds, and a lot of our devices being mobile – who needs a home Internet connection? It’s not only the mobile networks that are interested in this technology, in the United States private equity firms are planning to cover the whole country by 2015. The technology is certainly there.

On the other hand, with broadband connections becoming faster due to fiber optic roll-outs everywhere, mobile network speeds will soon be lagging far behind, again. Companies like Google are taking an interest in providing fiber to the home in entire cities. This is after they’ve already demonstrated their blanket wifi capabilities in San Fransisco. If there’s Free wifi everywhere, why would anyone need a mobile phone provider? We could all use VoIP technology straight from our Smartphones. Mobile apps like Skype and Truphone are already available, and most Smartphones also offer VoIP capabilities directly from the handset – not to mention VoIP codecs tend to be of better audio quality than regular GSM calls.

Of course, even Google doesn’t have the bankroll to provide entirely free wifi to the whole country, but with more and more wifi providers resulting to free access models – it’s only a matter of time until we’re totally covered.

So then again the question is raised, which technology will prevail?

Personally I don’t think the mobile network industry has a chance of surviving in the developed world for much longer than a decade, at least with the current business model. I think it’s quite obvious that once free Internet access is available everywhere, more and more people will discover that they don’t actually need to be paying extortionate monthly fees and be tied into 18+month contracts, simply to stay connected.