3G or WiFi

The latest from the blogosphere is that there has been a 700% increase in the uptake of 3G USB dongles in the UK and that WiFi might not exist in a few years. Some of this has been in part to the poor reliability, speed and availability of the existing WiFi networks. You might ask, what has this to do with education? Well over our holidays the school will be installing Bluesocket, which is a layer that sits above our wireless network and allows any WiFi device (read that phone, PSP etc.) to securely connect to our network. This is great for the school and I have had a proactive involvement in this since I got my p990i phone. Now I'm thinking that by the time WiFi enabled phones get into the hands of our students (these are traditionally high end smart phones), there maybe unlimited, fixed price data plans available in New Zealand. At that point I know from exeperience what would be the easiest for the children to use and it's not WiFi as it's difficult enough to get a laptop on it nevermind a phone. Multiply that task by 25 students and you can see it's a no brainer!