What The Wireless Industry Can Learn From The Kindle’s ‘Whispernet’

imageThe reason why the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle gets the wireless industry excited is because of one thing — unlike most devices, the Kindle does not require a monthly or yearly wireless bill. Amazon calls it the Whispernet, but it is really just Sprint’s high-speed wireless network working in the background that allows a user to search and download content on the go. Users likely don’t even know how it works because the business arrangement is quietly handled between Amazon and Sprint (NYSE: S) and from what they can tell, the content magically appears.

The early successes of the Kindle gives the wireless industry hope that it is feasible for a new series of devices to have connectivity going forward and that the cost of the network usage will be included in the cost of the item. Ultimately, this is real vision behind 4G, like WiMax and LTE. But in the case of Amazon, it demonstrates that the company isn’t limited to only distributing books to the Kindle.

Downplayed in today’s announcement of the Kindle 2, was the news of Amazon’s new “Whispersync” technology, which promises to automatically sync the Kindle 2 to the original Kindle, and with “a range of mobile devices in the future.” On the first read, this sounds like Bluetooth, where data can travel wirelessly between two devices, but likely it’s just the Sprint network sending information down to both devices. It can even be intelligent enough to recall what page the reader left off on across multiple devices.

Last week, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) said it was bringing 1.5 million public domain books to mobile phones, like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1. Along with that a story in the New York Times, reported that Amazon was working on making titles available on a variety of mobile phones. Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon: “We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones…We are working on that now.”

Check out our coverage from earlier today on our sister site paidContent.org, which wrote about Stephen King’s e-book for the Kindle, and the news of the Kindle 2.

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