Metro PCS offloading traffic onto wifi

One of the nation’s most innovative cell players has come up with a way to seamlessly route data traffic onto wifi (where available) and free up capacity to deliver blazing-fast connection speeds.

You hear so many pessimists with their dire warnings that our nation’s network can’t handle all the smart phone activity. Verizon and AT&T have both very publicly put data caps in place and will hit you with massive overcharges if you exceed your allotted data on a smart phone.

Now comes word from FierceWireless.com that Metro PCS is believed to be offloading up to 20% of its data traffic to wifi. It’s being done with built-in technology that makes it happen without a user “having to search, log in or instigate the connection.”

Wifi keeps spreading around the country, so I see this as very likely solution for cell phone companies to deal with network issues. It also proves all the whining of Verizon and AT&T is just monopoly talk. The marketplace comes up with solutions.

This is the ultimate example of why competition in the marketplace is so important. Did you know Metro PCS runs such a tight ship that it can produce a cell phone minute for as little as a  third of what the Big 4 do it for, according to what I read in Forbes?

When you competition, you have innovation. And the winner is the country and the customer.

Editor’s note: This segment originally aired in Sept. 2011.