Samsung shows off future of wireless

Several conference participants mentioned the hunt for a "killer application" — a feature that people can't live without that draws users to a new technology.

But experts this time are arguing that simply getting online wirelessly at speeds far faster than now possible with most wired broadband connections will be enough to get people to open their wallets.

"The killer application is mobile Internet," said Siavash Alamouti, chief technology officer for the mobile wireless division of Intel Corp.

Meanwhile, another wireless technology called WiMax that is now emerging aims to set up wireless networks that may not be quite as fast as the promised fourth-generation, but still much speedier than today's average broadband connection.

South Korea has become the first country to offer limited WiMax service and plans to blanket the capital, Seoul, with the technology by early 2007, said Hong Won-pyo, an executive vice president at Korea Telecom.

U.S.-based Sprint Nextel Corp. has said it aims to launch WiMax networks in some American markets by late 2007, partnering with Samsung, Motorola Inc. and Intel.

Already, mobile phone companies are seeing the rapidly growing hunger of customers to do much more than just talk on their phones.

Cingular Wireless has 57.3 million subscribers in the United States, of which some 27 million — or nearly half — actively use data services, said Kristin Rinne, the company's chief technology officer.

"We are just at the beginning of a significant explosion," she said.

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