You may have gathered from the post on Friday that I was off to Cardiff to watch the rugby over the weekend. There were four of us in the car – two adults and two “young adults” and I was in the luxurious position of not having to drive.
You have to picture the scene. My pal Huw driving with me on the laptop in the front passenger seat and the two kids on iPad and iPhone in the back. The connectivity was ok by and large. I guess that means that when we went in and out of data coverage we put up with it because after all, we were driving along in a car at 70mph.
This must surely be something that one day in the not too distant future we will look back at in amazement – “believe it or not you used to get black spots with no coverage”. Our use of mobile technology is growing at such a rate that it demands nay shouts out for ubiquitous high speed data connectivity.
This may mean that we have to pay more for the service. As the models change to reflect usage growth we are already seeing upward pressure on data prices in both fixed and mobile worlds. At this stage of the game for me, and I may be a consumer lone voice in the wild wild mobile web here, it is more about coverage than cost. My kids may not agree of course but on the way down I needed connectivity for emails and other work stuff and on the way back I wanted to watch Wales beat Italy on iPlayer. I was fine for emails but not for the streaming.
There is one thing in particular that the mobile data and computing revolution will render obsolete and which relates to kids when travelling. The first person to guess what this is wins a prize. This is normally a mug but I may be able to find some other goodies and if so will offer the winner an alternative. Timico staff may enter this one.
As a footnote here in Cardiff we stayed with my sister who gets north of 30Megs out of her Timico FTTC. Aaahh. It was also interesting to see that the last thing we did after our evening mug of cocoa was that before going to bed we all made sure our gadgets were plugged in and charging ready for the next day 🙂
10 replies on “more mobility musings on the way to the match and this weeks mega mug prize competition”
Funnily enough we’re getting closer to the ‘connected car’ than you may think. Adrian’s (AAISP) son is already running around with a M3 BMW with a WiFi AP dishing out IPv6 addresses from a tunnelled 3G sim! I’d be surprised if some of the bigger manufacturers were not looking at embedding some form of 3G connectivity into their premium models already.
Is the answer the kids not asking “are we there yet?” as they can check for themselves and watch live from an app?
Eye spy?
Hi Tref,
Is it: Are we nearly there yet?
They’ll know already.
George
One thing that would go obsolete is the constant “Are we there yet?” question I keep getting asked by my son. Since I have bought him a Nintendo DS all I can hear is “YES, I win again …”
In car entertainment such as radio, mp3 or cd will still be used by the driver (me) of course …
Tis true what Carl says, Audi have a similar option on their cars.
Well GPS has already taken care of the age-old “Are we nearly there yet?”… Perhaps it’s “I’ll have to do my homework when we get back – I need access to Wikipedia for research and my connection keeps dropping” 😉
@carl – Audi are already on it: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4576-audi-unveil-a-car-with-built-in-lte-mobile-broadband.html
The end of “I’m bored…”?
The answer is of course “Are we nearly there yet”. The kids get so engrossed in what they are doing that it is never an issue. Also as some of you quite rightly point out they can check their location easily enough using their connectivity.
Because some of the comments were held for moderation as first time commenters and therefore others would not have known that the answers had been left I will give every one with the right answer a prize.
I will sort Stuart and Jav, who are Timico employees with something. George and Dan can have Timico Mugs – please mail me your address lads. If you bring them along next time we meet I’ll put something in the mug 🙂
In the interest of blog innovation if anyone can come up with any other witty comment then there is a mug in it for you (the judge’s (ie me) sense of humour decision is final)