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> do you primarily watch HD video over this wireless connection No, I'm just saying it's been possible ever since 3G rolled out, and tech has only gotten bette
by lucb1e 3y ago
> do you primarily watch HD video over this wireless connection
No, I'm just saying it's been possible ever since 3G rolled out, and tech has only gotten better since then. The person I responded to said that mobile data can't be used as a replacement for a landline, but in practice, 99% of us use the airwaves for this already. We call it Wi-Fi. A lot of mobile towers also first beam their traffic to another tower before your packets meet a fiber.
Of course (as a general rule), the sooner your signal gets to a fiber, the better it is for your connection speed and reliability, but mobile data (with good signal strength) is clearly fine for most purposes. I am waiting for the day where people realise this and mobile data scales up and gets too cheap to meter in the same way as today's landline connections don't charge per gigabyte (I'm ignoring the existence of Belgium here; pardon me, belgians!). For now, having a landline dug to your home and work plus paying for mobile connectivity is cheaper than going mobile-only and getting a practically unlimited data bundle. A lot of rooms are also sandwiched in a way that outside signals aren't as reliable as a local WiFi. I'd be surprised if the former is still the case in 15 years, and the latter in 25 (thinking of something like a femtocell here).