Carriers also envision hefty fees for allowing content companies onto the home deck, and hope to take a cut of every book, CD or plane ticket sold via the wireless Web. The phrase evokes one of the most drastic misplays in telephone industry history. The phone companies let users go online over their existing copper-wire networks but didn't create rival Internet services until well into the '90s. The oversight probably seemed inconsequential at the time. But the legacy is that phone companies now make very little for enabling the Internet, save the normal price of selling and installing equipment.
Today there is billions of dollars' worth of business conducted via telephone infrastructure.
The wireless world will be different, vow the carriers. They'll get a cut. That's the dream, anyway. To make it a reality, carriers are developing their own wireless portals. To get outside its gates and onto the Web itself, you have to type in a URL - a difficult proposition for a user with 10 fat fingers and a phone with 12 tiny keys.