CDN Strategy Blog

Many years ago I had a bet that I could IRC from the beach in France. I placed my Palm and my Ericsson phone so the infra-red eyes could see each other. I dialed my ISP. 9600 Baud. I launched the IRC client and logged into my favorite channel. It was slow but fun. Until I got my phone bill…

So much has changed. Smart phones. 3G internet. Much better coverage. Great apps and services. Today I use an iPhone. These are my favorite vacation apps:

Maps. Although the car has a nice on-road and off-road GPS built in, Maps is more up to date and helps navigating to specific sites.

Hotels. The interface is afwul, but in one click you can find a list of nearby hotels. Awesome. We’ve been able to find decent, available hotels in 10 minutes distance even in top season where all hotels seem full. No stress! Too bad the maps feature does not work.

Weather. We had no specific location in mind when we left. The idea was to tour through Europe. Under one condition: sun.

Speedometer. I got used to having a Head Up Display. Speedometer to the rescue. Nice little aid to prevent tickets, we just passed a cop with a lasergun.

Keeper. I tend to forget the pin codes of credit cards. Keeper lets me store them in a secure way.

HeyWAY. Ping locations to friends. Get location pings back. Cool app!

WordPress. Blog in the car, blog on the beach..

Now I do need an app that updates my phone bill charge…

*IF* the operators would be able to offer a decent connection, I am okay with paying a reasonable fee for using their network.

But International mobile traffic costs a whopping €2.50 per MB on a flakey, not-really broadband service. Streams don’t play well, although their marketing makes you believe otherwise.

Compare that consumer grade price to €0,03 to €0,25 per GB one pays for guaranteed professional CDN traffic… An incredible factor 10000 to 100000 less!

Watching the 8 o’ clock news stream on my iPhone would cost me: 250kbps * 20 minutes = 40MB * €2,50 = €100 per day = €3000 per month…

If the mobile operators want broadband services to fly, they really need to do something about their absurd rates… And fix those networks!

Back in a few weeks.