Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Worse case scenario is that they will, on November 21, pull the plug on what I feel is the Kindle killer app, worldwide free web browsing. I cannot find any current claim about 3G web browsing in the Kindle keyboard 3G description at amazon.com.
I just came up with a paranoid, but more hopeful, idea:
Amazon is in a difficult situation when it comes time to renew cell phone company contracts around the world. By being able to threaten to pull out the web browser volume unless the price of the entire package is good, Amazon is in a better negotiating position. If this is correct, they may keep on calling the eInk browser experimental forever without ever actually pulling the plug.
Another thought: Does Amazon have any technical ability to switch between AT&T and TMobile? Probably not, but if they do, they may have worries about the threatened merger of the only two GSM providers in their largest market.
|
They mention free internet browsing on the Kindle Keyboard 3G page. "Experimental web browsing is free." However, the same section on the Kindle Touch 3G page, it says instead "Experimental web browsing is available via Wi-Fi." where most other sections are the same word for word.
I don't understand your second paragraph. No doubt the cell phone companies want to squeeze as much money out of Amazon as they could, and they could say something like "x% of your traffic comes from internet browsing, so we should charge extra for those since our data plan is usually $30 a month" and Amazon would have to respond by going "ok, let's remove the internet thing."
Either way, the removal of free 3G internet would be a huge loss for me, as that's how I do most of my mobile browsing (I don't have a data plan on the cell phone. I don't have $30 a month on top of the high prices I pay for internet at home and voice plan).