Manzione is holding an antenna array. The humble antenna, that pointy thing that always broke off the transistor radio, isn't so humble anymore.
Plans are ambitious.
More antennas wedged onto cell towers, and inside mobile phones. Movie clips streamed to handsets full of antennas that resemble grains of rice. From Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., to Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., engineers are perfecting antenna systems to improve clarity, reduce dropped calls and quadruple caller capacity. They had better hurry. In 2003, Americans will spend 372 billion minutes on wireless networks, more than doubling their 1999 gab time, according to the Strategis Group, a market research firm.