While it hardly comes as much of a surprise, Ericsson Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl is now predicting nothing short of the demise of WiFi hotspots, and he's saying that they'll be replaced by -- you guessed it -- mobile broadband. Speaking at a conference in Stockholm, Bergendahl said that "hot spots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era," and that "in a few years, [HSPA] will be as common as Wi-Fi is today." Leading to that widespread use, he says, is ever-decreasing prices for mobile broadband subscriptions, and the fact that HSPA is being built into more and more laptops. Of course, if other companies have their way, WiFi hotspots could become a thing of the past simply because entire cities would effectively be one huge hotspot, although we'd gladly take both options.



[Image courtesy of IDG.no]