Verizon's harshes on the Junxion box, Cingular gets snuggly

By Ryan Block


It's a little late now for Verizon to be harshing on the concept of the Junxion box (and its many variants), and unless they buy the patent rights to the whole concept and possibly even
Junxion (and
StompBox and
Telabria and
Top Global and the list goes on), they're not going to be able to prevent their users from sharing EV-DO over WiFi and the like—nor should they try. Is Verizon's DSL division going to tell us they don't want us sharing our broadband among many computers, too? Remember when broadband was first introduced and they used to try to... we all know how well that flew with consumers. Stranger still, however, Cingular apparently "evaluated and certified" the Junxion for use on their forthcoming HSDPA 3G data network, and is considering running with the thing. Well, we'll just leave you with this:

"The premise is one person buys an air card and one person uses the service, not an entire neighborhood," said
Jeffrey Nelson, executive director for corporate communications at Verizon Wireless. "Giving things away for free
doesn't work anymore. It never did."

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