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I THE WIRELESS INTERNET
A. The Next "Big Thing"?
Today, at least 90 million people subscribe to mobile telephone services in the United States, and this figure may be conservative.1 Moreover, mobile phones, or "handsets" as the actual telephones are called, are shrinking in size and cost while offering new and innovative services.2 Customers can use a handset not only to communicate by voice, but also to access phone mail, voice mail, stock prices, sports scores, and even restaurant reviews.3 However, as common and high-- tech as these wireless devices may appear today, in a few short years they will look positively antique. This may not be surprising given the emergence of "Internet Time" and three-month product lifespans, but what might surprise many Americans is that the United States will not lead the next generation of wireless technology. Instead, Europe and Japan, where mobile phones are even more common than in the United States, will be the first economies to unveil more advanced "broadband"4 wireless services.5 These countries will soon enjoy a host of new services, including fully Internet-ready handsets, streaming audio6 wireless headphones, and personal digital assistants with video and gaming capabilities.7 In the upcoming Age of Ubiquitous Computing, countries will look to broadband wireless systems to solve technological deficiencies while complementing existing cultural preferences.8 As a result, the next generation of wireless systems will be as diverse as the number of systems constructed.9
B. Topics for Consideration
The development of broadband mobile telephony could have an even greater impact on the global economy than the First Internet Revolution (1995-2000).10 The next generation of mobile telephony, the so-called "Third Generation" (or "3G"), will not only offer mobility and efficiency benefits to a technologically sophisticated country like the United States, but it also will give billions of people around the world their first direct access to the Internet.11 In the United States alone, the number of people who will access the Internet through a mobile device could grow from 7.4 million in 1999 to 61.5 million in 2003, an increase of 700%.12 Globally, the number of mobile subscribers could top one billion individuals during that same time frame, and the value of commerce conducted via mobile devices could exceed $13 billion annually.13 This means that,...