Ed Tech Talk

Today's Wi-Fi hotspots ... yesterday’s pay phone?

I can't believe I'm dating myself in this blog but I can remember when we all didn't have cell phones, except for Frank Cannon who in the '70s television show "Cannon" had one of the first car phones that I can remember. I remember having a wealth of dimes and quarters and stopping at either pay phones or phone booths located throughout my travels. If you were lucky, you could have found a pay phone that was the appropriate height to stay in your car, roll down the window and make your call. If you weren't so lucky, you had to park your car and enter a phone booth fully equipped with a phone book and with just enough room to fit in and make a call.

Nowadays, cell phone technology has taken off. Most people have cell phones and are making calls from everywhere. But the days of looking for the pay phone have morphed into another technology need, the Wi-Fi hot spot.

Wi-Fi is the technology to connect to the Internet wirelessly. All you need is a computing device, which could be a tablet PC, laptop computer or even a hand-held computing device like a PDA equipped with a wireless network interface card (NIC). A lot of cell phone providers have jumped on the wireless connectivity bandwagon with Blackberry and Treo units that allow users to connect to their e-mail server and even the Internet wirelessly. The problem with these connections through a cell phone provider is that the data transfer costs show up on your cell phone bill.

What's the difference between Wi-Fi and connecting via a cell phone service? The biggest difference is cost. Most Wi-Fi hot spots are free or less expensive than cell phone connection and are located throughout the country. Wi-Fi hot spots can be located through www.wi-fihotspotlist.com or the major Wi-Fi provider T-Mobile at http://hotspot.t-mobile.com, plus major retailers such as Borders and Starbucks are jumping on the Wi-Fi hot spot bandwagon.

What this wireless connectivity does allow is a resurgence of the old days of looking for a communication tool — much like the days of the pay phone. I recently visited a Starbucks where my wireless device was handy in checking my e-mail and I was not alone. I've actually begun making sure that I have some form of Wi-Fi nearby whenever I'm out. My wireless device has now replaced the quarters and dimes that I used to carry in my search for a pay phone.