All I can say is: thanks for speaking up. If someone with your background doesn't, the ball will never get rolling. Ain't much use building bridges to the 19th century, is it?

And?

Do you expect me to believe that the businesses that you cite care one bit about the interests of their captive market here?

When I began to read your post, I thought, Get 'em Reed! Tell it like it is, Brother! Word!

As an early adopter way back (how far back? My first cell phone was mounted in the trunk of the car) I was so frustrated with the abject level of service provided by the major carriers, five years ago I threw my Sprint handset in the Potomac and swore off cell service. I only recently bought a Tracfone and keep it for emergencies.

I am privileged to get together with groups of international visitors every month and am embarrassed as a citizen when I hear from them about how ridiculously out of step our telecom policy is with the rest of the world. Locked phones, insanely expensive charges for the most meager of services, the inability to get "real" internet access for a reasonable price (what the FCC classes as "broadband" here, well, is as cooked a set of numbers as the Iraq casualty figures) when France, France mind you, is offering 100/50MB down and up for $40 a month! We rank so badly among the industrialized nations in communications access, that when people I talk to from South Korea look at the available phones in our market they look at me and say one word: JUNK!

So this is what we have to thank the F(eckless) C(ommunications) C(ommission) for. Their policy of "voluntary" adoptions of quality of service and value for money have dropped us down the ladder of nations in capability while charging for every photon passing through their gates. Now Comcast decides arbitrarily and without any specified limit to cancel internet service to customers that download too much! Bandwidth throttling of subscribers doesn't even give the option to pay more for increased service!!!

I realize you are in no position to criticize FCC policy or personnel. I don't expect you to find fault with the 700MHz policy publicly. I applaud your stand-up approach to open access and re-introducing the notion of "the public good" to the spectrum auction. But with every passing day, our government closes the door to good ideas like that and instead, opts for monopolistic, closed approaches that limit our collective abilities to join that world information network.

I wonder why that is? What is it that they don't want us to know?

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

The handheld device will become the essential technology for performing the mechanical job of interacting within and between societies.

Sure, for short, brief messages.

Do you think we're going to be reading TPMCafe blog posts on our phones?

Doesn't technological glee over a mobile device that fits in our pockets need to be tempered with the reality of tiny screen sizes? (And we're all not getting any younger, are we?)

Granted, the new iPhone's interface is a leap towards usability on a very small screen, but unless you think online deliberation and debate is going away, I doubt it. I don't think, for example, the political blogosphere is going to start posting away on their phones.

Maybe if it's tied to something else, maybe something wearable. Or a chip in our brains, so we can "see" the words like we'd see it on a newspaper or a screen. And we can type with our thoughts.

(See? Robots really are going to take us over and destroy the world.) 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

It wasn't so long ago that people scoffed at the notion we'd be reading newspapers on a computer, let alone over something called the internet.

Web enabled Handheld devices (which can include a phone, I guess, if you really need one) are more than a fad and maybe all they are cracked up to be, even thought i can't imagine myself ever using them the way they are being promoted.

Well, I did download Tetris on my cell phone which I do play from time to time.

A year ago when I bought my first truly web capable phone from Verizon, I doubted that I would ever use it to its full capability. Boy, was I wrong.

I now read the news, send brief text and email messages, watch video, download music, manage my checkbook, "google" info, etc..... all from my cell. I will probably never give up a full sized keyboard and screen for home and office use, but when I am out and about I find myself doing more than playing Tetris (although that's fun, too.)

But Reed is correct, the bigger issue is that the world outside our borders is about to profoundly change because of such access in places that probably have better cell reception than drinking water. I can see a 100 possibilities from such an information explosion, but what does it mean? Where will it go? And who gets to be the gatekeeper?

The cell phone gets my vote as the big productivity booster in the late 90s.

While there are technological limits to bandwidth, some functions would benefit from smarter processing, like images. The trick would be to never transfer the entire pile of pixel data (except by request).

As to size, soft rollup screens are being pursued and there is no inherent reason they won't be around soon---various approaches are being explored.

As to monopolies, when security issues are solved for wi-fi or other wireless connection, there can be competition since there is no physical conflict from multiple suppliers, and there is no "last-mile" cost. When there are mutiple connections available everywhere, it would be hard to shut down the system.

Text on blogs is a minuscule amount of overall internet usage.

And in countries where they have copious broadband they invent all sorts of applications, and complimentary technologies such as hi quality video cam phones, which are pretty ubiquitous elsewhere and have been for years.

One of my favorite examples is housewives group teleconferencing recipe and gossip clubs in S Korea, with HD quality video. And the products tailored to them, from software, advertising, social networking, information sites, etc.

That's the type of thing hard for Americans to even imagine, but has already gradually evolved there after having a surplus of bandwidth.

The reason European and Asian companies are dominating cellular is because they've developed the best standards and deployed their markets a lot faster, because they standardized technology, with the help of consortium and governmental regulation.

We totally blew it. For the first decade of our "market competition" we had incompatible standards and companies like Verizon attempting to maintain regional monopolies with proprietary technology. The networks sucked, were both redundant and full of holes simultaneously, expensive, and incompatible. The headsets for our smaller market sucked and were always technologically far behind European and Asian rivals. The American market grew much more slowly than Europe and Asia consequently.

So you couldn't travel with a phone easily, couldn't change carriers, couldn't get the best handsets, roaming charges were enormous, half your contacts probably didn't have a phone or weren't in reception anyways, and all that crappy service was expensive.

US cellular deployment will go in the history books as one of the great economic fumbles of a powerful and advanced nation.

As Bill Joy points out, and as known by European and Asian consortium leading the cellular market, cellular standards should be developed in tandem, not in parallel.

It is terribly important to standardize carrier protocols to provide market efficiencies, by allowing for licensing agreements and carrier competition on value added services. That is not possible if carriers have proprietary technology, which tends to reinforce regional monopoly tactics and stifle licensing agreements. It also multiplies the cost of infrastructure which is invariably passed onto consumers, which stifles market growth.

As Europe and Asia have shown, standards should be deployed and revised rapidly in tandem, while growing the overall market, and continually improving services. That far outpaces parallel standards with redundant infrastructure, which only improve and grow tediously.

That is the major reason why Europe and Asia now have cellular broadband many times faster than Americans, even in comparable population density areas, and why American 3G standards are derivative of the European GSM consortium standard.

American policy which is too ideological, short term Wall Street greed, and lacking long term pragmatism, is causing us to be leap-frogged in technologies we largely invented and should be leading.

Other examples are stem-cell research, automotive, and alternative fuels. There are plenty others.

Good post.
Spare a cheer for the brave guys (South Africans I think) who installed a mobile phone network in Sierra Leone while the civil war was still going on, and those (Turks, Kuwaitis and Egyptians?) who run them in Iraq. Also for the Grameen Bank, who make microloans to women in Bangladeshi villages to buy mobile phones to rent out to neighbours.

cscs asked if we would really be reading TPMcafe on our cell phones. I am doing so right now, as well as posting. I read many blogs each day on my phone. I use my laptop for writing anything much longer than this,but reading is easy, even on the current sorry US cell systems .

Travelling in Japan even 3yrs ago it was easy to see how far behind we are. Every 20something on the trains had more capability in their phones than I had even heard of over here, admittedly as a casual user, not an expert.

I see exactly what you're saying. We're going to bomb Iran because we've got cellphone envy. China appears to be consuming cell phones at a rate that might cause them to recycle the solder out of the old phones for use in paints for our children's toys, and we'll all soon be getting instant messages on our Iphones from Nigerians asking for financial "assistance". Insightful.

Mom always said I was special and I believed her.

Text on blogs is a minuscule amount of overall internet usage.

No doubt.

I was strictly addressing what goes on in places like TPMCafe and other blogs.

And I doubt see this moving to video -- not sure how many people are in the housewives group, but video doesn't generally scale to many people well (multi-party, that is.) And it's certainly not the same as writing.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Remember the naval exercise in August 2002 a war game called Millennium Challenge.

Below is from parts of article found here:
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,95496,00.html

Van Riper resolved to strike first and unconventionally using fast patrol boats and converted pleasure boats fitted with ship-to-ship missiles as well as first generation shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles. He packed small boats and small propeller aircraft with explosives for one mass wave of suicide attacks against the Blue fleet. Last, the general shut down all radio traffic and sent commands by motorcycle messengers, beyond the reach of the code-breakers.

When the figurative smoke cleared it was found that the Red Forces had sunk 16 Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier. Thousands of Marines and sailors were dead.

The referees stopped the game, which is normal when a victory is won so early. Van Riper assumed that the Blue Force would draw new, better plans and the free play war games would resume.

Instead he learned that the war game was now following a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory: He was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar so it could be destroyed and he was told his forces would not be allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore

Van Riper walked out and didn't come back. He was furious that the war game had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise meant to end in an overwhelming American victory.

Where's Al Gore when we need him? Oh, yeah.

What we need is someway to make the wireless web into a web, not a royal fiefdom of competing corporation. My goal would be to have any cell tower cooperate with all the others. The cell phone, the wireless device is king.

not sure how many people are in the housewives group, but video doesn't generally scale to many people well (multi-party, that is.

Actually they tend to meet in clubs, seeing video in split screen, or zoom. So yes, it is group participation.

I doubt see this moving to video

That's only because the option isn't presently easily available or widespread. However, meeting groups, for all sorts of hobbies and causes, are quite common. And as more people become comfortable with virtualization and the technology becomes available, so too will virtual meetings become commonplace.

Web enabled video conferencing is more of a hyper conversation. you can have text, read articles, check facts, etc. In addition to real time interaction. It can also be stored, and reviewed later or at convienence.

Another nice benefit of video meeting, as opposed to text blogging, is the authenticity of participants is much higher, communication is more intuitive, and there are virtually no trolls or stealthers.