The Copper Wire

It has been in the news for quite some time, but it appears all systems are go for San Francisco to become the first city to have a Wi-Fi network cover the entire city. Google and Earthink have reached an agreement where Google will provide the free Wi-Fi service, generating revenue through advertising. EarthLink would handle the faster, paid service, which would cost about $20 a month.

The impact will have far reaching results. For one, it will provide competition to cable and traditional carriers that offer Internet access. This will also give rise to Wi-Fi enabled phones that theoretically will allow people to make free calls through services like Skype.

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Remember the suit-case telephone? It was a mobile phone that required the user to carry around a little nap-sack with all the wires and connectivity do-wigs. Invented by Dr. Martin Cooper, the Motorola DynaTAC was a colossal, cumbersome cell phone that was all the rage at just $3,000 bucks in the early 80s. I see pictures of that phone and I can’t imagine. I freak out when my battery dies yet; this nifty phone of the 80s only had a talk time of about 30 minutes!

The phones on the market today can do just about anything. The November issue of Law Technology News had a small write-about the Sharp SH 903i. This telephone boast an array of features including facial recognition software linked through the 3MP camera so you can lock the phone with your face and even more impressive, an ultrasonic mosquito repellant.

You can talk on the phone, lock the phone with your face and zap mosquitoes all at the same time! Not sure why or when you would need this feature but today’s cell phone has certainly surpassed the DynaTac’s luxuries and the evolution is only progressing.

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The name of the game when it comes to networking is speed. Increased bandwidth provides the ability to deliver more content and develop better applications. In the wireless world, bandwidth is still an issue. But make no mistake, many wireless carriers are moving full steam ahead to boost bandwidth to deliver more data. Just recently Sprint and Cingular announced the introduction of new high-speed data cards aimed at business users. There are also new phones hitting the market shortly that are aimed at the business user, all geared to getting information to the end-user faster.

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If you live in New York, odds are that while waiting on line at Starbucks you will see someone playing with their Blackberry. A quick search on Google Trends reveals that the term Blackberry is searched most in New York and popular in most major metropolitan cities in the United States. The Blackberry is another example of how mobile devices are being embedded into corporate culture and keeping us constantly connected.

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In a quintessential scene in the movie Wall Street, the infamous Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is calling his young protegee Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) from the beach out in the Hampton’s. The phone Gecko is holding is this the size of a brick. Looking back now we can laugh and poke fun at what the first “cell phones” looked like and how they were a luxury for the wealthy.

As we fast forward almost 20 years from when Gekko placed that call from his brick phone, we have seen the proliferation of wireless devices embedded into corporate culture. The increased dependence on wireless devices like the Blackberry, Palm Pilots, wireless laptops, and cell phones have given rise to the growing problem of managing employee uses of these devices. In addition keeping track of how many devices each employee has can be a sticky situation. Not surprisingly this has given rise to the need for corporations to create policies on the usage of devices and maintain inventories of wireless devices. In fact many companies are finding that without an accurate inventory, they are paying for employees cell phones long after they have left the company.

Posted by andrew at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)