Whilst you can already browse the internet at broadband speeds on your Smartphone (check this article out) with Bluetooth, you will soon be able to do the same with Wi-Fi.
Wi-fi tends to confuse most people. Basically, if you splash out 19 quid for broadband per month then you’ll soon get fed up of sitting in one particular room whenever you want to surf the internet. This is where Wi-fi comes in. First you get yourself a wireless router, then you plonk a wireless USB or PCMCIA card into your laptop or PC. That’s it! All done. Now you can wonder around your house or office and there’s no need for oodles of cabling and stuff.
That’s good – but what if you could have this on your Smartphone ? Well according to this InfoSyncWorld.com article you should soon be able to with the new SD-slot card from SyChip. Then you can browse the internet on your handset without running your GPRS bill up, and without cables or cradles.
That’s good enough.. isn’t it ? Well, no. The next rather leap will be to have your Smartphone use this wireless network to make calls. They call this VOIP – Voice Over IP. This is used quite a bit, and it’s just as it says – your voice is sent over the internet, instead of the telephone company. Result – you save money. This is how the “Save Money by switching to Cheapo Telecoms” companies do long distance and national calls for less. Your call goes to them, they plonk it through a magic box, that feeds it onto the internet, and over in Canada / Australia (whereever), another box spits it back into the local telephone company. The Cheapo Telecoms pay for a local call from your house to their hub, then they pay for another local call from the hub in Australia (where-ever) to the number you’re trying to reach. Mucho cheapo…!
So, you can see the power that an SD Wi-Fi Card could have – instead of using Orange / AT&T etc when you make a call in or near your house / work on your mobile phone, the Wi-fi card could take over and route the call over the internet. Mucho cheapo!
The possibilities are endless – and probably we’ll need a HELLUVA lot more wi-fi-enabled phones out there before things really start happening, but you could find that soon enough people could be pulling off the Motorway to park in the services and use the Wi-Fi network at the local Services to grab those large email attachments, make cheaper calls and use a whole load of other services.