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3G killed the Bluetooth star |
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Molly Wood Senior editor Thursday, January 27, 2005 |
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Sprint disabled the Bluetooth functionality that lets you use the Treo 650 as a wireless modem with your Bluetooth-enabled laptop. Back in October, the company said it would uncripple the phone "sometime, when we feel like it." In the meantime, the Treo community came up with a hack that reenables the capability--although it's reportedly buggy, which is why Sprint said it disabled Bluetooth Dial-up Networking (DUN) in the first place. Either way, it's messy.
Next, I had high hopes for the GSM model coming soon to Cingular, but now Engadget reports that Cingular will disable the DUN functionality, as well. Apparently the company is not deterred by the class-action lawsuit against Verizon, who crippled the Motorola v710.
To be clear, Verizon's sin against the v710 was much worse than just disabling DUN. It nuked nearly every Bluetooth capability in that poor phone, leaving it unable to transfer files, photos, or ring tones, work as a wireless modem, or even interact with Bluetooth-enabled cars (that last was an accidental side effect, I'm told).
Preparing for the next generation
So, what's the deal? Sure, a big part of it is money. Ring tone sales alone are expected to hit $300 million this year, and carriers want you downloading those annoying little jingles from them at 99 cents a pop, not grabbing free ones and transferring them from your PC to your phone. Even bigger, Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular all have some form of photo-sharing or multimedia-messaging service that costs extra, and they want you to pay for it rather than transfer photos from your camera phone to your PC for free. But come on. We all know that's small-fry stuff.
Cingular--and probably Sprint--will stick to its guns in disabling DUN because they have other plans for cellular Internet access. Bluetooth may be the new P2P when it comes to file and music transfers, but these carriers plan to make the really big money from their high-speed 3G networks--the ones that currently exist, and the ones that are coming down the pipe. If you use your Sprint Treo 650 as a modem for your computer, you're using a lot of bandwidth for which you pay just $15 a month (that's the cost of Sprint's PCSVision data plan). But Sprint's not spending 1 billion balloons on expanding its high-speed data network, EVDO, to keep charging $15 a month.
Verizon currently charges about $80 a month for unlimited high-speed access, and that's just the tip of the up-sell iceberg. To use any 3G network, you'll need compatible--meaning new--handsets, and after that, you'll get to subscribe to extracost options, such as Verizon's $15 per month VCAST, which offers daily video clips, plus pay-as-you-go games and other video offerings. The modem part comes back around in the form of mobile PC Cards that let you use your cellular service for Internet access the way the carriers intended--for $80 bucks a month. It's a cash bonanza, and no little wireless upstart like Bluetooth is going to get in the way.
Sarcasm aside, even though crippling Bluetooth is pretty evil, I suspect we'll all give in to the high-speed network plans in the end. For one thing, the prices will come down. For another, the promise of broadband data speeds on a phone is hard to ignore. And better screens on devices means mobile video seems like a good idea, instead of choppy, blotchy, unreadable hell.
More importantly, we're now testing mobile PC Cards like this one from Sierra Wireless that offer legitimately fast access over cellular networks. You should have seen us at CES, scrambling for open Ethernet cables or hot spots, while our colleague Allen Fear worked calmly on his laptop, equipped with a 3G mobile PC Card, from nearly any location (including the van on the way to the airport). In the future, it won't be about the phones at all--it'll be all about the networks.
What does that mean for Bluetooth? Most likely, carriers won't keep crippling file-transfer features, so you'll be able to transfer photos, ring tones, and other files to and from your phone or PC. And I predict that Bluetooth will simply be reoriented as a car technology, giving Bluetooth-equipped handsets another whole outlet for connectivity. In sum, we'll win. It'll just take a while--and maybe a couple more carrier lawsuits, just on general principle.
So much for metaphor and whimsy. What else do you want to read about?
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