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I kind of hope one day personal data plans render public wifi obsolete. Every time you connect to a new wifi network you just never know what awaits. It might b

I kind of hope one day personal data plans render public wifi obsolete. Every time you connect to a new wifi network you just never know what awaits. It might be a slow connection, it might be a shitty device that only kind of works, it might be a security nightmare… Wouldn't it be great if all our devices, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, had digital SIMs and we could just purchase a single data plan for all of them!

vladvasiliu 4y ago
I think we're getting there in some countries, at least for "mobile" needs (read: when outside the home / office). In France, I have a 40 GB mobile plan for €10. I know I'm likely below your average phone user, but the most I used out of this was about 4 GB when my home connection was dead, and I was working from home. If I'm not mistaken, an 80 GB plan is less than €20. To me, that's basically unlimited. I can get an extra SIM for €2 a month attached to the same plan. I never bothered because an internal WWAN card for my laptop is outrageously expensive, and since I don't need it often, I just share from my phone.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Even more relevant perhaps : how many of these plans allow you to piggyback on the closest router's guest connection (from the same ISP) as long as you are in Wifi range. (Some of these routers even work as mini cell towers !)
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    I think that's usually the case, but it's not transparent. You'll have to connect to a specific SSID and enter some credentials which aren't always your usual credentials and / or use some app. I've tried this once or twice a few years ago, but it was so slow that I went back to using my mobile plan.
- bigiain 4y ago
  I used to be involved in the captive portal at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne (previously Etihad Stadium). Usage is _very_ demographically aligned. At football games, we’d see connected device numbers somewhere around 10% of ticket sales. At a Justin Bieber show it was over 90%. I have always had more mobile data available than I need, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered using a venue’s wifi (that wasn’t for work/testing purposes) Back in the pre-Netflix days here I .au, I used to have a Raspberry Pi with a USB wifi dongle and a high gain antenna pointed at the local Mac Donalds - that’d monitor MAC addresses on their wifi waiting for one to stop transmitting, then it’d update its own MAC address to piggyback someone else’s T&C agreement, and run bit torrent until the connection ran out of its bandwidth quota, then it’d go back into monitor mode. I pirated the first couple of seasons of GoT ~500MB at a time that way…
- csydas 4y ago
  I get your point, and actual unlimited plans would be just fine in my opinion. I've done remote work weeks completely from a phone connection, and on average I'd use between 1.2 GiB to 4 GiB per day for just work items depending on what I needed to do. This is chats, calls, RDP, and basic web browsing. Chats likely eat up a good amount of this, but even on good mobile internet, it's not feasible to do such items over a thin-client exclusively. It'd be really nice if we could get to the stage where usage caps just weren't implemented.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
No, it wouldn't be great. I don't care much about carrying a unique, trackable subscriber module everywhere, tied to a centralized billing system. WiFi has the advantage of being decentralized, and anonymizable. Not to mention the option of being free of charge.
nly 4y ago
I don't. Public WiFi is provided by a variety of ISPs, and means you're not beholden to a couple of mobile networks. Monopolies are always bad.
- soylentcola 4y ago
  Where I live in the US, the number of mobile providers outnumbers the number of wired ISPs that provide broadband speeds (even ignoring MVNOs). I generally want to avoid replacing everything with mobile alternatives, but during a recent trip to the UK, I was pleased to find near-ubiquitous coverage via a basic SIM, purchased from a vending machine for £30 that gave me 100GB of data to use during the few weeks I was there. It was overkill, but I pay that much at home for 5GB data and I run into a lot more coverage issues. And at least in theory, it's more likely for competitors to put up their own cell towers than it is to run new fiber alongside existing fiber (even if there aren't prohibitive franchise agreements in place) so I would definitely appreciate better mobile options here as well. Normally I'd never replace a fiber (or even cable) ISP with a mobile hotspot, but for travel, it negated the need to use public wifi for the entire 3 weeks I was traveling.

vladvasiliu 4y ago

I think we're getting there in some countries, at least for "mobile" needs (read: when outside the home / office). In France, I have a 40 GB mobile plan for €10. I know I'm likely below your average phone user, but the most I used out of this was about 4 GB when my home connection was dead, and I was working from home. If I'm not mistaken, an 80 GB plan is less than €20. To me, that's basically unlimited. I can get an extra SIM for €2 a month attached to the same plan. I never bothered because an internal WWAN card for my laptop is outrageously expensive, and since I don't need it often, I just share from my phone.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
Even more relevant perhaps : how many of these plans allow you to piggyback on the closest router's guest connection (from the same ISP) as long as you are in Wifi range. (Some of these routers even work as mini cell towers !)
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I think that's usually the case, but it's not transparent. You'll have to connect to a specific SSID and enter some credentials which aren't always your usual credentials and / or use some app. I've tried this once or twice a few years ago, but it was so slow that I went back to using my mobile plan.
bigiain 4y ago
I used to be involved in the captive portal at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne (previously Etihad Stadium). Usage is _very_ demographically aligned. At football games, we’d see connected device numbers somewhere around 10% of ticket sales. At a Justin Bieber show it was over 90%. I have always had more mobile data available than I need, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered using a venue’s wifi (that wasn’t for work/testing purposes) Back in the pre-Netflix days here I .au, I used to have a Raspberry Pi with a USB wifi dongle and a high gain antenna pointed at the local Mac Donalds - that’d monitor MAC addresses on their wifi waiting for one to stop transmitting, then it’d update its own MAC address to piggyback someone else’s T&C agreement, and run bit torrent until the connection ran out of its bandwidth quota, then it’d go back into monitor mode. I pirated the first couple of seasons of GoT ~500MB at a time that way…
csydas 4y ago
I get your point, and actual unlimited plans would be just fine in my opinion. I've done remote work weeks completely from a phone connection, and on average I'd use between 1.2 GiB to 4 GiB per day for just work items depending on what I needed to do. This is chats, calls, RDP, and basic web browsing. Chats likely eat up a good amount of this, but even on good mobile internet, it's not feasible to do such items over a thin-client exclusively. It'd be really nice if we could get to the stage where usage caps just weren't implemented.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

No, it wouldn't be great. I don't care much about carrying a unique, trackable subscriber module everywhere, tied to a centralized billing system. WiFi has the advantage of being decentralized, and anonymizable. Not to mention the option of being free of charge.

nly 4y ago

I don't. Public WiFi is provided by a variety of ISPs, and means you're not beholden to a couple of mobile networks. Monopolies are always bad.

soylentcola 4y ago
Where I live in the US, the number of mobile providers outnumbers the number of wired ISPs that provide broadband speeds (even ignoring MVNOs). I generally want to avoid replacing everything with mobile alternatives, but during a recent trip to the UK, I was pleased to find near-ubiquitous coverage via a basic SIM, purchased from a vending machine for £30 that gave me 100GB of data to use during the few weeks I was there. It was overkill, but I pay that much at home for 5GB data and I run into a lot more coverage issues. And at least in theory, it's more likely for competitors to put up their own cell towers than it is to run new fiber alongside existing fiber (even if there aren't prohibitive franchise agreements in place) so I would definitely appreciate better mobile options here as well. Normally I'd never replace a fiber (or even cable) ISP with a mobile hotspot, but for travel, it negated the need to use public wifi for the entire 3 weeks I was traveling.