Ericsson says that Wi-Fi hotspots will eventually die out

If Ericsson's Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl is to be believed, Wi-Fi hotspots soon will be phased into irrelevance by the rising popularity of mobile broadband. The argument is that mobile broadband--or what is known as 3.5G services--is growing faster than mobile or fixed telephony. Its position is further bolstered by ever falling prices, as well as the increasing tendency of manufacturers to build High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) into laptops. 

However, the prediction does not appear to take reliability into account. If you have ever used HSPA, you know that something as mundane as the loading of web pages can intermittently ground to a halt. A refresh will usually resolve it, but you will do well to avoid multi-megabyte downloads when on HSPA. In addition, unlike mobile broadband, there are an increasing number of free Wi-Fi hotspots that are available.  Wi-Fi is probably here to stay for a while yet. 

For more on mobile broadband:
- check out this ComputerWorld article