From around 1.30pm yesterday my network provider O2 started having problems. I noticed it sometime around 3pm and thought it was just bad coverage. But it wasn’t. From mid afternoon until past my bedtime I had no signal at all on my phone.
The first thing I did when I got home and realised that I still had no signal was contact the people I knew was going to try to get hold of me that evening. Skype, WhatsApp, iMessage and Facetime makes it less of a problem not having a signal and it’s interesting to think about how more wide spread and accessible wifi is going to affect our contracts with network providers in the future, as well as how we make calls.
For the London Olympics wifi is being installed on major tube stations. It’s free during the summer but afterwards sadly not. But many places are taking a different approach where free wifi is being installed across cities, in cafes, shops, trains and airports. As free wifi becomes more common our dependency on 2G, 3G or 4G to get in contact with people, whilst in a city, decreases. A recent study released by the same network provider who lost my signal suggests that making calls is “the fifth most used “app” for smartphone users in terms of daily usage” (Huffington Post). As more actual making calls apps appear and are adopted by a broader user base, the need for the traditional phone “app” could decrease even more, meaning that we’ll need our network providers less.
Tomorrow – Day 195 | The start of something new
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/27147/3648039063
