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Wonder Why The Wireless Industry Fails To Live Up To Expectations?
from the trade-press? dept
We've already talked about problems with reporters completely buying into misleading statements from companies in the wireless industry -- from those who claim that WiMax exists and is deployed (when it doesn't, and it isn't) to those who report the "up to" speeds as if they're the average speeds. In many cases, it happens because reporters simply take a press release, re-arrange the words a bit and suddenly have an article. We understand that reporters can get lazy, and that some can make mistakes (hey, we do it too), but sometimes you have to wonder if reporters (or their editors) even bother to read what they write at all. We already know that fact checkers are a thing of the past, but you'd still expect reporters to at least try to get the story straight -- especially in specialist trade publications where people are looking on them to be experts.
That's why it's disappointing to read an article in "Wi-FiPlanet" about Lenovo's new deal to put HSDPA in its laptops -- where the story gets so many things wrong. It starts right at the top with the title: "New ThinkPads Extend Wi-Fi." The HSDPA network has nothing to do with Wi-Fi. It's a totally separate network. Next, the article claims that Cingular's HSDPA "BroadBandConnect represents a huge increase over Wi-Fi connection speeds." It certainly represents a huge increase over Cingular's GPRS and EDGE speeds, but not Wi-Fi speeds. Then comes the spin from Lenovo: "We'll be the only ones out there with integrated wireless WAN." It's an interesting quote, but it's mostly wrong -- and a reporter for a wireless trade publication should recognize that. Over the past half a year, we've had stories about Dell, HP and Sony all planning similar laptops with embedded 3G wireless -- meaning that it's not a differentiator for Lenovo at all. It would seem like this is the type of thing that a reporter should at least ask about, rather than simply printing it as fact. Lenovo could respond that they got their laptops out first (by a small margin), but that's not what the story implies. All in all, this is quite disappointing -- because one of the biggest problems facing the wireless industry today is all of the overhype that comes with each story -- and much of that comes from reporters who simply parrot the misleading statements from companies. If we actually had reporters who looked critically at what was being fed to them, maybe everyone's expectations wouldn't keep getting set at impossible levels.
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wireless expectations
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Agreed
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Advertising does cost dollars usually...
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What concerns me more about wireless isn't hype. It's how its popularity outpaces its security concerns. TKIP has been standardized for over a year and a half and even the most experienced IT personnel I come across haven't heard of it.
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Re: Agreed
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