Five Networking Pet Peeves
July 07, 2007
Now that you can e-mail anyone, anytime, anywhere, run significant applications from within an ordinary Web browser, and run your life from your laptop, it's worth taking a step back to think about some of the more frustrating networking problems that remain unsolved. Here are the top five things that get me steamed:
Why can't American cell phones work as well as the rest of the world's?
For those of you who travel overseas, you probably already know this: The United States has the worst cell phone service on the planet. Can you hear me now?
Not only that, but we pay a lot more for our cell calls, and we've blown several opportunities to become more competitive, more standardized, and more in-line with the rest of the world.
Yes, at least some U.S.-based cellular networks make use of the same GSM standard as the Europeans. But our phones run on different frequencies, which means that you have to have dual (or tri-mode, or quad-mode) band radios in your phone.
