Why I choose 3G over Wi-Fi

Say what you will about the wireless phone companies, but in a crunch their managed 3G cellular networks get the job done when Wi-Fi connections fail.

I was in Chicago at a telecom trade show this week and had to cover a Federal Communications Commission's meeting via Webcast. Ironically, the meeting was focused on the FCC's proposal to draft new regulations to keep the Internet "open" and "free."

The video for the Webcast, which I was watching over an unprotected Wi-Fi connection, started out fine. But after only a few minutes, the picture began to break up, the buffering wheel on the media player churned wildly, and the audio stopped and started so often that I only could make sense of two or three words at a time. Sometimes the audio would start up where it had left off, but then quickly jump ahead to the live stream, cutting out entire sentences and paragraphs.

When I couldn't take it any longer, I shut down my computer, rebooted, and plugged in my Sprint 3G air card.

Almost immediately after launching the video, Chairman Julius Genachowski's face popped up on the screen clearly. But the best part was that I could hear everything he was saying. I didn't experience one hiccup, not one pause. There was no little circle turning round and round as the video buffered. It was working perfectly.

The problems I experienced were likely due to congestion on the unsecured Wi-Fi network. Even though I didn't see a lot of people connecting to the network, there was still likely a lot of traffic. Meanwhile, Sprint's 3G wireless network is more tightly managed, because the licensed spectrum is a limited resource that must be used efficiently. So even if there had been congestion, I might not have even noticed.

Sprint, which owns spectrum licenses, has more control of the traffic that is on its network than the trade show folks who put up the Wi-Fi network, which uses unlicensed spectrum. In theory, the Wi-Fi network should be at least three times faster than the cellular network. But when there is a lot of traffic on the Wi-Fi network, Web pages load slower and video gets warped and choppy.