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Jul 14

FaceTime…. I wish I could….

Using FaceTime to talk to my children over wifi is amazing. But being able to connect over 3G in my car would be even better. There is no accessible wifi at my work (and even if it was accessible, having everyone in the office hear and/or potentially see my conversation is not desirable). I had thought a decent solution would be to drive to Starbucks and get on their new free wifi. Well, again… I had hoped to login in my car slightly outside Starbucks. Unfortunately at Starbucks they know how to position their wifi radius so that you pretty much have to be in the store. I could not get a strong enough signal to connect until I walked inside. There was no user/pass (or coffee) required and my iPhone had all three wifi bars lit up. I still didn’t really feel like having a video chat with my family so I decided to walk outside. Standing directly outside the door and a few steps away took my signal to two bars. I tried the FaceTime call. I got in about 20 seconds or so and then my video frame froze (although the audio seemed to continue streaming just fine). At that point I pretty much gave up on the idea of really being able to use FaceTime at Starbucks without attracting any more attention. I suppose if I got desperate enough I could buy a Mifi device, which will create my own portable wifi hotspot. But I’m not sure I’m desperate enough to pay another monthly fee just to be able to use FaceTime. It’s very frustrating having a phone that can do the full video chat, but not having any available Networks that can handle the bandwidth requirements. Hopefully AT&T will upgrade their cell tower infrastructure one day to the level where this can become a reality. And again, Apple has raised the bar for Cell Company Bandwidth…. Now only time will tell if they will ever be able to reach that bar.

Jul 14