frequency - Can wireless networks support the promise of the 'cloud'?

9th June 2011

Link reblogged from A Smarter Planet with 106 notes

Can wireless networks support the promise of the 'cloud'? | CNET News →

Google, Apple, and Amazon are pushing more and more of your entertainment, your data — heck, your life — into the cloud. But what’s it mean for the wireless network operators who are already struggling to keep up with heavy data demand?

Each of these companies recently announced new digital storage services for music. The idea is that people can put their music in the “cloud,” which is really a remote data center. The “cloud” becomes the central repository for all of your music, pictures, and other data. And you simply connect to it via any broadband connection available to access it.

There are plenty of benefits to this, of course. For one, it’s incredibly convenient, especially when you’re connecting wirelessly. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out during his keynote earlier this week where the iiCloud service was announced, he said that it will eliminate the headache of syncing each device.

But using these services will no doubt eat up a lot more bandwidth than just downloading a song one time to your computer or smartphone. Once music moves to the cloud, you could be downloading that same song every time you sync your device or even every time you listen to it. And once Apple or Google start offering video in the cloud, the problem may get even worse.

Can wireless networks, which are already buckling under the load of simple mobile browsing, handle it?

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Source: smarterplanet