The New York Times’ Matt Richtel has this ahead-of-the-curve article about a new Internet phenomenon and of course San Francisco leads the way. The phenomenon: piggybacking on unencrypted Wi-Fi connections to make VoIP phone calls with Wi-Fi-enabled phones.
New phones are cropping up that support free phone calling using Skype or Vonage if the user is within reach of a useable Wi-Fi connection. As is the case with Wi-Fi piggybacking using laptops, the question arises: is it wrong to use somebody else’s Wi-Fi signal for your own communication needs?
Richtel walked around a San Francisco neighborhood (San Francisco is rife with unencrypted Wi-Fi signals) testing out how folks react to this kind of “borrowing” of wireless Internet connectivity. The verdict is mixed — some folks seem to think it’s OK as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own use of the Wi-Fi connection and others view this kind of use as free-loading.
The difference between piggybacking using a laptop and piggybacking using a phone is that it’s a lot more difficult to visually see when someone is using a phone to ride on your connection.
Because the Wi-Fi phone looks like a standard cellphone, it is much less conspicuous than a laptop on the street. The proliferation of Wi-Fi laptops and, in turn, hunters of free Internet access has already raised questions about whether borrowers of bandwidth are breaking any laws.
With phones connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots, is it even fair to use the moniker “cell phone” anymore, a label that applies to communication devices that depend on a series of interconnected “cells”? Business Week’s Cliff Edwards asks this question and comes up with no easy answers. Not only do new phones use wireless technologies that don’t fall into the “cell” category, but they also offer a range of functions — web browsing, music playing, video recording — that make the terms “cell phone” look old-fashioned.
Among the replacement terms are “multimedia computer,” “mobile information terminal” or just simply “mobile.” This issue of what to call these all-purpose gizmos plagues tech writers and bloggers. For the time being, I suggest simply “mobile devices” or “handheld devices.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:50 AM|Comments(0)
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