Isn’t is just so annoying when you try to connect to a hotspot only to find it slow, lossy and expensive — and sometimes not available at all? The GSM Association wants to ease the pain — and bolster use of HSPA 3G data networks while it’s at it, of course.
Wi-Fi might be the de facto embedded wireless technology for laptops, but there’s been a rapid uptick in the number of 3G data cards sold and used these days. The commercials say it all about the benefits of pervasiveness: AT&T Inc.’s clever ad about finding the Internet at the Fountain of Youth, Amelia Earhart’s crash site and Atlantis. Or consider that ad from a while back illustrating in painful and true detail the annoyance of trying to work at a café, surrounded by the chatter and the elbows and the potential for spilled mocha lattes.
To support continued adoption of 3G (and eventually LTE) for laptops, the GSMA announced Tuesday an initiative to create a service mark bearing the words "Mobile Broadband" to be attached to notebooks with embedded HSPA — and it plans to spend $1 billion on a media push to drive consumer awareness. Presumably the initiative will also work in getting more embedded HSPA out there, too.
Those involved include 3 Group, Asus, Dell, ECS, Ericsson, Gemalto, Lenovo, Microsoft, Orange, Qualcomm, Telefónica Europe, Telecom Italia, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Toshiba and Vodafone plc. Notably absent is semiconductor giant Intel, whose Centrino chip is largely responsible for getting Wi-Fi (and soon LTE rival WiMAX) into just about every laptop purchased today.
