Does Your Camera Need a Mobile Broadband Connection

Once upon a time you could only connect to the internet with a computer and the most mobile broadband got was moving your PC to the other side of the office. Next came wifi which allowed you to connect anywhere within your own home or even at the local coffee house. These days most people have a mobile phones capable of internet browsing with them at all times so that they can tweet after every bowl movement.



Now that we have the technology to enable small, portable devices to connect at relatively high speeds we can think about what else could be online. The benefits of internet enabled ebook readers are obvious but do you need your fridge to be online? Despite the risks of the Chinese government hacking into your kitchen devices there could be benefits- it could let you know if the temperature changes or if you need to throw out that cheese that is going green.

The number of mobile broadband enabled devices is expected to increase by a factor of 55 by the year 2014. This is likely to cause issues as the mobile broadband infrastructure wasn't built for this amount of traffic. If the infrastructure can be improved we might find that there are a lot of applications for internet enabled devices.

One of the most obvious devices crying out for a broadband connection is the humble digital camera. At the moment cameras are one step behind mobile phones in the it isn't possible to upload your photo directly once you have taken it (although some can handle a wifi connection). The question is are consumers going to pay a monthly fee to have their camera connected to the internet? Will they be able to choose from different providers? Perhaps we will end up paying a monthly fee for all of our devices (hopefully on an unlimited tariff).