Social Networking and the Battle for Free WiFi

You know you must be an addict to social networking, when you’ll stop at nothing to find a free WiFi hotspot.

Driving around aimlessly, popping into coffee shops, donut shops, fast food stops, even trucker stops. 

“Do you have any free WiFi?”

“Nope.”

Surprisingly, as our data needs constantly increase on the go, publicly available free wireless networks to plug into in a big city isn’t always easy.

I checked out several coffee, tea and fast food joints the other day, and most didn’t offer free WiFi. 

And then, once I did find a handful that did, their WiFi was SLOW – probably because so many people were on it at the same time.

All of this just to send a tweet, check my Google+ or see what’s trending on the nets?

Must be an addiction!

Though these sorts of things don’t really take up a lot of bandwidth, so using my phone’s 3G connection isn’t a worry.

 

What does take up more bandwidth, is watching streaming video, or participating in a video chat using Skype, a Google Hangout, or any of the other video chat services.

As I always say, content is king, and the king of content is video.

More of us prefer video chatting with each other, as opposed to just chatting on the phone. Why say it when you can show it?

And as more of us move towards digital media for our entertainment needs, we’ll be streaming live videos to our mobile devices more often.

Why wait to get home to catch up on your favorite shows, when you can do it on the road?

Just don’t watch and drive at the same time!

Clearly, the need for higher speed bandwidth is there – good thing for the new 4G or LTE services being offered by most major carriers.

Problem though, although these carriers are offering faster mobile data speeds, they aren’t increasing their bandwidth limitations by much.

So although you can stream movies with fewer dropped frames, you’ll still hit that data limit. Worse, as you can download faster, you’ll probably download more, and go over your data plan’s limit, meaning you’ll pay more in over use charges.

As our world continues to become more mobile, we need better data plans. Or more free WiFi hotspots. Or we need to admit our addictions, and move on.

Now, where can I find a WiFi hotspot?