Perhaps the following should be nothing special for me having used double digit megabits per second connections over 3G many times before. But still, today, I was using a 3G connection for the first time to stream a full length movie over to my Intel Atom based netbook running Ubuntu Linux, Firefox and Flash for the video playback. I was doing this as I was abroad and wanted to relax in the evening a bit so I decided that I wanted to watch one of my favorite TV shows while in the hotel room. This required the use of a VPN tunnel to a server back home as the streaming was limited to national IP addresses.
The reason why I haven't used 3G networks for streaming in the past is probably that while I am at home, I have no reason for using a 3G network as I have DSL and Wi-Fi i at home. And when traveling, the amount of data I can transfer over a 3G network for a reasonable price doesn't allow streaming full movies, even though being possible from a technical point of view. But if you get 7 Gigabytes for 20 pounds, there's little left to hold you back.
UMTS has definetely got to the point that can be defined proper broadband ... Now the issue is how carriers can monetize such a broad band ... The required capacity will demand significant investments becoming the ROI an hot topic... Any thoughts about it?
Posted by: Filippo | November 10, 2011 at 09:05 PM