Your Next Laptop Will Probably Come With a Contract and Data Plan
And you’ll buy it from a company like Verizon
We’re used to always-on connections with our phones, but with laptops, most of us are still tied down to Wi-Fi hotspots or smartphone tethering. While 4G laptops exist, many people who buy them never activate cell service. Verizon data plans start at $20 for a measly 2GB of data. Spending extra on a limited data plan when the network isn’t much faster than most widely available Wi-Fi is a hard sell.
But 5G promises faster download speeds over the air than most people get at home, and once it is ubiquitous, it could free the laptop from Wi-Fi. Why spend the effort to get on the Starbucks Wi-Fi that gets 10 or 20 Mbps when a 5G connection could get 1000 Mbps?
Computer makers like Lenovo, which last week unveiled the 5G laptop that will be the first sold in stores this spring, are betting that consumers will opt to keep their laptops connected to 5G all the time. That’s a big opportunity for Lenovo, but it’s an even bigger opportunity for cell phone carriers.
For carriers, which have to continually upgrade their networks to stay competitive, nothing is more valuable than a committed customer. This is why they have tried every trick in the book to keep customers on their network and…
