In 2007, putting WiFi and cellular in the same radio stack was a real challenge. The iPhone was one of the first phones to have both radios in it — a handful of other devices did too, but it was really rare. Heck, I remember it took years for BlackBerry to successfully ship a phone with both 3G and WiFi (as opposed to having to choose between WiFi and 2G or only a 3G connection).

The big selling point of the first Kindle was the idea that you could access the store to download stuff anywhere. WiFi wasn’t ubiquitous like it is now (and even now, it isn’t as ubiquitous as I think we all would have hoped), which made having a free 2G connection really nice, especially when outdoors in areas that the E Ink display really shined.

Amazon was targeting book readers who may not have been computer users, so they wouldn't necessarily have Wifi (or any Internet) at home. The cellular connection (which was free and not dependent on any data plan of the user) allowed the user to purchase and download books, and so paid Amazon for the very small amount of data used given that a typical book is only a couple of megabytes.

Home broadband connectivity was only about 2/3 of where it was today. The iPhone was just rolling out.

As much to the point, Amazon was also very much aiming for the use case of the business traveler who wanted to buy a book before hopping on the plane in an airport that probably didn't have WiFi and almost certainly didn't have free WiFi.

I won't say 2007 was the stone ages. But a lot of things we mostly just take for granted today didn't exist or were relatively nascent.

I don't think a Kindle would need broadband, though there probably weren't all that many dial-up connections plugged into wifi routers.

Right. You don't need the bandwidth. But while it's presumably possible, also presumably almost no home users had WiFi before they got broadband.

We didn't but we did have a LAN. That was probably a special case though.

You could also plug it in via USB if you needed to transfer data another way.

It kind of made sense at the time. I have a Kindle DX, and that came out in 2009. Wifi was less ubiquitous and more terrible, and the idea with the Kindle anyways is you could be anywhere and buy a book, and it would just work.

It did open up some very interesting homebrew applications too!

Also the early models with WiFi had the absolute worst radios and constantly tripped over themselves. When I worked for Centurylink in/around 2011 one of the most common issues with wifi was Kindle devices. Thankfully most customers could figure that if their 3-5 other devices were connected and working, the issue was their Kindle, and not the CPE.

WiFi was pretty terrible for quite a while after it came out in general. I remember, in the early to mid 2000s, the Intel Developers Forums had desks set up to try to help press and analysts get, often plug-in PCMCIA card, WiFi working. And it was almost certain to fall over during general sessions anyway--well some things mostly don't change.

But if you actually needed a working network connection in the press room, you plugged an Ethernet cable into your laptop.

It was actually wonderful. My girlfriend at the time, now wife, had a grandmother who was an avid reader but didn't own a computer or have internet. They were able to get her to switch to a Kindle because of the cellular delivery feature. She was able to figure out how to buy stuff directly from the device, but I always thought it was neat how they could buy Grandma books and have the auto delivered to her a device.

The cellular was included with the device. I'd have to stretch my mind back but WiFi wasn't as ubiquitous, as easy to use, or as cheap to implement as today.

Don't know why but this reminds me of one support ticket on those things. 'i can not download any books' 'uh sir according to our data you are 10 miles off the coast of florida?' 'oh yeah I am on my boat' 'do you see any cell towers?' 'no' 'they need those to work' 'ohhhhh'

We were surprised that it even had enough signal to figure out the GPS cords.

Even back then cell coverage was not as good as it is now. So many times it was 'go stand at the end of your driveway and try'.

>So many times it was 'go stand at the end of your driveway and try'.

Like my dad's house in Maine today :-)

In the early years of the iPhone in the US, there was--including on this site I imagine--much wailing and gnashing of teeth over AT&T's coverage.

Think with early kindle it was altel and sprint. Verizon buying altel fixed a lot of that issue. But there were still gaps.

...how were they calling you if they had no cell service?

Good question! We had the same one. They had a satellite phone.

edit: What I find interesting is that the things had location tracking built in and no one blinked an eye.

At the time it was pretty clever as WiFi wasn't as ubiquitous and the bandwidth used by them was so low.

I pre-ordered the first Kindle and knowing that I could order a book from my airplane seat for a flight before they closed the cabin door was a huge gratifier for me!

Though the article mentions that USB also still works. Complete non-story, except they are offering a great upgrade promo.