Ben's Talk3G Blog

I hate WiFi.

Teeny tiny little hotspots that all too often suffer from overcomplicated access restrictions, jitter, or downright abysmal WAPs holding it all together.

Yet even in the summer of 2011, WiFi connections still rule the mobile connectivity waves. Every handset, for example, favours WiFi over a 3G connection; a crushing but brutally honest testimony to the failure of UMTS/WCDMA to deliver high speed mobility at 2100MHz.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in some cases, 3G is outperforming wired connections, and therefore the WiFi piggybacking upon them. But this is the exception rather than the norm, which is why, I assume, I see so many RTs from ThreeUK when people make such claims. 'Newsworthyness', after all, is based upon likeliness - something unlikely, like 3G outperforming wired broadband, is more newsworthy than something likely... say a Labour government running up a massive deficit and bankrupting the country. We all just accept it and move on. Tada.

However it is not my frustration with 3G that has brought about the existence of this post. No no. It is, as it happens, almost the exact opposite; the impressive nature of WiFi when it works well!

For the first time in... well, ever, my house has an optimally functioning WiFi network. 4 WAPs distributed evenly around the house, wired into the LAN. Each has the same SSID, plus a unique SSID that allows appliances to be tethered to appropriate locations. Roaming between WAPs is as good as seamless... and by that I mean I observe a little jitter and then packet loss on ping during a handover, but nothing significant enough to kill a VPN connection for example. That's more than I can say for some 3G handovers!

The result is that I have WiFi everywhere. I don't yet have any backhaul worth mentioning (I'll resist the temptation to splurge a deluge of abuse BTs way), but wow, what a difference decent connectivity makes. It'll be even better once iOS 5 is out and everything's sync'ing wirelessly.

The end of my musings is this. Pervasive, accessible WiFi would be incredible. The number of places I've been with, say, five SSIDs floating around, all of the signals encrypted, none of the keys available... it defies belief. For the most part all the infrastructure is there, but there's no seamless way to access it all. Not BT, not The Cloud, not the mobile operators best efforts have created anything like a meaningful covering of easily usable WiFi. Worse, laws relating to the accessing of networks via WiFi, and actions then undertaken, make offering it in the first place hostile territory.

Yes, WiFi is still the king of mobile data. But the doors to the castle are closed.