Waiting for wireless everywhere

Michael Rogers Columnist • Profile • E-mail

I read e-mail about last week’s column, Wireless Everywhere, while attending the European Technology Roundtable in Athens. Appropriately, much of the talk here is about wireless devices — Europe being a few years ahead of the U.S. in such things. One of the cooler applications I saw today is a navigation program for smart phones, designed for use while walking in cities, that automatically orients the on-screen map in the direction you’re facing.

In the e-mail, for the most part, readers were ready and eager for wireless wonders to come, but a few had some doubts about exactly how it would happen:

Steve, Valrico, FL: The great hope for available frequency spectrum is to get users off of their individual frequencies and onto systems where space is shared among uses. Of course this is not favored by those whose monopoly is protected by the spectrum they have, like TV and radio stations, but it's coming.

Tablet Tomson Dallas, TX: I think the best first move is to get rid of the FCC. The future advancement of technology in the U.S. is at stake. Then reorganize and redistribute the bandwidth for current and future needs.

Well, the problem with that is that as soon as you got rid of the FCC you’d need to invent a new one.  Parsing out the airwaves is a tough job that never wins popularity contests. And then imagine for a moment that the most optimistic “smart radio” scenario were to come true: a world of transmitters that politely avoid stepping on each others’ wavelengths. You’d still need an enforcement agency to rein in those who misbehaved.

Anonymous, WI: All I can say is: "It must be nice." I live in a rural area in northern Wisconsin and my cell phone has no coverage for a mile to my house from the main road — and the main road has intermittent coverage. I still have only dial-up Internet; not because I choose it, but because DSL isn't available here.

I understand what you’re talking about: I recently spent a few days talking to the telephone cooperatives that provide service in rural South Dakota. The big carriers have pretty much ignored rural areas in terms of advanced services; I hope that the new wireless technologies will, over time, provide some better opportunities.

This whole issue of so-called “universal service” is an important piece of the upcoming telecommunications rewrite in Congress, and will be covered more here in months to come.

MORE FROM PRACTICAL FUTURIST

Practical Futurist Section Front

Will the Internet transform storytelling? What evolutionary psychology says about social networking At this radio network, the audience is the star Is the Internet dumbing us down? Who will fix my wired (and wireless) home? Will road warriors choose electrons over airplanes? Who will be the TV Guide of the Internet? Why is U.S. always last for new phones? Weighing the risks of biotechnology What will make the laptop obsolete? Practical Futurist Section Front   Add Practical Futurist headlines to your news reader: