I’m finally back home. 3 week tour of Asia, Australia and Indonesia is over. Jetlag is kicking in, which is why I type this, bleary eyed at just before 4am on Tuesday morning. During my trip I used countless wireless hotspots to not only keep up to date with a spot of blogging, but also to update my Flickr photos and Kyte area. It struck me though as I wondered through various hotels and hotspots that perhaps wireless hotspots will soon have had their day. Why do I say this? Well two reasons really.

Firstly there are a few things wrong with the wireless hotspot solution as it is today. My main gripe is the cost. Even in this country I find myself paying over the odds for a network connection. I currently have two subscriptions, which cover 100% of the places I want to visit in the UK, BT Openzone and  Boingo Wireless. Unfortunately though at the moment their subscription plans do not allow you to carry un-used wireless minutes over to the next month, which means that if I have a month where I’m going to be staying local I wouldn’t really need my monthly allocation. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to carry, even a portion of this, over to the next month. I gave both BT Openzone and Boingo a call on this matter, and it would seem they have no plans to introduce this.  So I end up paying by this for the minute which can work out quite expensive, especially if you are roaming away from the UK. If I were to buy an Apple iPhone I’d get access to the Cloud Wireless network hotspots in the UK, free of charge, but I find where I really need wireless access, in Airports, The Cloud is not available. Quite often when you go into a hotspot in the UK, and don’t have access to a subscription, you will be charged by the Hour, which quite often you don’t actually need. And just like a subscription based contract, quite often any un-used minutes from this hour are not usable at a later date.

My other reason for thinking that Wireless Hotspots will soon have had their day is upcoming new technology. I am of course talking about WiMax which at the moment can achieve speeds of around 10Mbps (it is hoped in the future to offer speeds up to 100Mbps). I hear the latest model of the Asus EEE PC will have WiMax, and I can see other consumer devices starting to offer alternative connectivity options in the not too distant future. I would also point to the fact that quite often when I’m stomping around I don’t have a full laptop with me, rather my n95 (perhaps soon to be an iPhone) At present I find 3G connectivity more than enough at present for the type of access I need while on the road, meaning access to a wireless hotspot is often not needed. This is especially true as I have an unlimited data plan, which means I have no issue with how much data I’m downloading over a 3G connection, which of course has it’s normal price plan based upon a per MB download.