House-hold modems... Are they the next "home phone"?

Personally, I stopped using a house-hold phone about ten years ago. I remember receiving a few strange looks at the time when I was asked for a home number and I said only had a cell phone. At the time though, cell phones were just becoming widely used for personal phones, but most still kept their house-hold phones rather than transferring their numbers. I remember talking to a few colleagues about seven years ago about how cool I thought it would be if we were completely wireless and didn't have to rely on a modem for internet accessibility--if some way, we could always just be in a wireless hotspot.

Wireless hotspots can be found in most coffee houses, airports, libraries and restaurants now. Some are free, and some still cost money to access, like those on airlines, but nonetheless, it is one step closer to a completely wireless environment. We can usually pick up a wireless network on our phones now in most places we visit. But what about our homes? Why do we have to have a physical modem in our homes still. Most cable companies make us pay a montly fee for them, just to have them in the house. Not only that, but they need to be plugged into an outlet, and unless you're using a router and have wireless capability, you will most likely have to setup your workspace close to the outlet. If you do have wireless on your lap top, you still need to be in the vacinity of your router so you get signal.

The good news is that that we are slowly evolving into a wireless hotspot. Last week Verizon announced that by the end of 2010, they were going to bring 4G to 39 cities in the U.S. That means that an estimated 110 million Americans will have wireless 4G coverage by years end. Verizon also hopes to extend the 4G coverage as far as the current 3G coverage by 2013, which will encompass most of the U.S. That's pretty awesome! They're not alone though. Other companies are working on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) 4G coverage as well, such as Sprint and AT&T. This is great news because a lot of new lap tops that will be coming out are said to be 4G compatible, which means that while using one of the above networks, we can finally be sans modem and router! What does this mean for our modems and routers though? Who cares!