How MIT researchers and carriers are trying to fix the wireless data problem
I like to listen to Rdio, a streaming music service similar to Spotify, on my iPhone while I walk to the nearest subway station. It’s become part of my daily routine, and I count the service off as I would anything else. Pants? Check. Keys? Check. Rdio? Check. Unfortunately, there’s a point where my iPhone automatically switches from using WiFi to using Verizon’s 3G service, and that point may as well be the Nile river, so far as my iPhone is concerned.
At that point, songs tend to “hiccup” and pause for a moment. By itself this isn’t a deal-breaker – I’m not so impatient as to say that a second of disrupted playback will run my day – it is an annoyance. The switch is the problem: I’ve had apps stop downloading once I switch to cellular data from WiFi (for which I thank the Apple- and carrier-imposed 50MB limit on cellular downloads) and, whether I’m browsing the Web or trying to do something, that moment when my iPhone has to decide what network to run on is just-plain frustrating.