I was thinking about this as I watched the AT&T commercial that talks about “We cover 240 million people” or some number like that. That’s still 60 million or so people that they don’t cover and probably don’t plan too. The rural areas of the states I think will continue to struggle as in a capitalistic society there is not enough money in it for the companies to connect those that are rural. Until the US like other nations like South Korea make Internet access a utility instead of a privilege the rural communities will continue, I’m afraid, to suffer.

That being said, all these new mobile devices do connect via WiFi and I could see that being the way rural communities go to help people connect on their mobile devices? When everyone has one and everyone wants to use it, and expects to be able to connect I also thing that will put pressure on companies to get more people connected some how.

As you correctly (I think) pointed out the initial cost of ownership for web-enabled phones is sure to drop throughout the year. The problem for folks such as myself in rural areas is that the 3G infrastructure is not in place to support reliable web browsing. Furthermore, cell phone providers don’t seem terribly interested in improving the 3G experience for those of us rural areas. The cost of ownership for a 3G enabled phone is substantially higher than a standard voice plan (in my case it would be $2000 more annually).

Poor coverage combined with high costs of ownership makes a product like the iPod Touch or the Android powered tablets unveiled at CES a much better choice for people in my situation. The question then is do should schools provide highly mobile tablet devices (iPod Touch) or netbooks? Either way, without proper professional development schools will not leverage the devices for learning. How do we get schools to leverage mobile web access for enhanced learning experiences for our students?

Richard