There's lots you can do with the Internet from your desk, but think of the huge number of things you can do when you follow people around. According to the U.S. Telecom Association, there were nearly 37 million wireless Internet devices deployed worldwide in 1999. That number will more than quintuple, to 200 million, by 2003. Wireless location services, commerce, financial transactions, news, information, and streaming video all depend on having a flexible, reliable, high-speed backbone. In that respect, the wireless Web continues to lag behind the fixed Internet.
Web is a little misleading.
Hence, the race to build wireless services is first and foremost a race to see which providers can build out their networks to accommodate the mobile onslaught. In the meantime, other service providers are vying to make the most of the infrastructure. The problem with WAP, Hobbs believes, is that it has been poorly marketed. Nortel Networks already has deployed a 2.5G network to customers outside the United States and plans further rollouts in Europe this year, according to Mark Morell, Nortel's director of solutions marketing for wireless in the Americas. Sprint, the first carrier to introduce an all-digital network, has also been a leader in implementing 2.5G and 3G networks.