Upload Hotspots
In the near future public Wi-Fi zones could serve as “data oases” where people go to sync their data or upload to the cloud. ADSL isn’t going to cut it for the people that provide them.
I’ve been meaing to give my lovely little map a try, so I went to The Wellcome Collection for lunch and a spot of work. I took a few photos on the journey and used the free connection to upload them to Flickr. Even though I was one of only two people in the cafe using a laptop the upload speed was pitiful. It also pretty much killed my web connection while I was uploading - which means if anybody else tried to connect to the Wi-Fi their chance of doing anything remotely useful with it would have been zero.
Bandwidth hogging could be a new form of antisocial behaviour. If you were in the Wellcome Collection cafe at about 3pm on Saturday and couldn’t get an internet connection I’m sorry. It was me uploading photos.
At the moment most free Wi-Fi zones probably aren’t best equipped for uploading data at all. More often than not they’re running on ADSL lines which have slower upload speed than download speed. ADSL is designed for browsing the web. It’s all about sending requests (small amount of data) and then downloading the files needed to render the pages in your browser (larger amounts of data).
Over the last few weeks I’ve been taking to Oli about how Cloud computing and the use of personal informatics could mean people end up needing Wi-Fi zones to upload data and sync their devices with remote services as much as using them to access the internet. This could put places that provide free wi-fi under quite a bit of strain.
An Internet of Things is as much about upload as it is download.
I know you could use your mobile connection, but due to the exponential growth in the smartphone market there’s already far more data being sent over mobile networks than voice. Even today areas of London with a high smartphone density struggle under the strain and it’s only going to get worse as more and more mobile devices (and objects) get hooked up. I live near a football stadium and can’t use my phone at all when there’s a game on so unless the mobile operators up their game considerably and roll out 4G soon we could be dealing with serious connection problems in more densely populated areas (like the centre of the city).
You can probably imagine the mobile providers are freaking a bit about the sheer volume of traffic their networks are having to deal with. They could end up either limiting people’s connections or charging ridiculous amounts for data transfer. People will definitely prefer using free Wi-Fi so unless the government ruins that for everybody public wi-fi is probably going to become far more important to us all.
Then you’ve got the iPod Touch and iPad (non 3G) that are mobile devices with no data connection other than wi-fi. Public wi-fi is already important to the owners of these devices.
Locations that offer a wireless ADSL connection won’t be good enough. A couple of people syncing Dropbox accounts could completely ruin it for everyone in a place like that so in order to cater for people uploading (and it not be antisocial) there will need to be a shift to more expensive connections. They could let third party Wi-Fi providers like BT Openzone set up and charge people for a (hopefully) more robust service but the difference between free wi-fi and paid wi-fi could be the difference between a business being successful or not.
I’m not quite sure how to end this post. Hopefully 4G will be the answer to most of this problem but It’s not going to be free. I think the solution is cheaper leased lines that offer equal upload/download speed but I doubt that’s going to happen so maybe the real solution is for designers to be aware of this and to avoid bandwidth hogging on applications and objects that upload data.
Food for thought anyway.
