Interesting backlash possibly beginning. It's hard to disagree with any of these points:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/1...sons-to-h.html

As mentioned elsewhere, I suspect that cellphone companies may have the rug pulled from under them with ubiquitous wifi and voip.

I guess the reason I hate them is because they think everything should have a price. But the sprit of the internet is free access to information. You can make money other ways, by blasting me with adverts while I'm freely accessing the information. But don't but a hurdle between me and the information. If you do, I'll use other means to get what I want.

Great Wired rant! I can't find much to disagree with.

This is why it makes me concerned of talk about adding a phone to the tablets. Hopefully gphone, openmoko will start a trend that gives control to the customer and less controlling networks!

Well, as they say, the fool and his money are easily parted. The cellphone companies do what they do because they know we're fool that gladly pay whatever they ask to. If we stop using their "services" they'll sure reconsider.
Me? I only have a company cellphone, and I almost never use it (in fact I turn it off as soon as I leave the office).

The telcos are fighting hard to prevent the wifi/voip paradigm shift. It remains to be seen how that battle will play out. Here in the US they have good friends in the right places... (FCC, etc)

They couldn't be more right about Verizon wanting to censor everything. Don't even get me started.

One of the cool things may well be that wifi "cells" grow-up organically -- a coffee shop here, a pub there, maybe a few apartments sharing their connections via FON...

I actually don't think anybody could deliberately build such an infrastructure. Like the Internet itself, it has to grow organically -- it will be a network constructed and utilised by the people who created it. Other deliberate corporate attempts to build similar systems, such as Rabbit here in the UK, have failed (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2175804.stm).

When I think about things like this, I realise even more how powerful the Internet tablet concept is.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the bluetooth-phone-as-modem feature is one of the most important. The review I just linked in the Apple vs Nokia thread indicates that the 3G network can be as fast as wifi. There's your ubiquitous mobile infrastructure, folks. We've been focused too much on wifi specifically to see it.

Hah! Just read that Wired rant a few minutes ago. Loved it.

And that's why you'll see many consumers bemoan the fact that the N800/N810 have no built-in cellular. (I currently do not bemoan it)