Living in 2025: Future of wireless communications

Though I’m not so vain as to claim it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for, perhaps to a little bit fanfare I’d like to announce that the focal piece of the interactive feature on the future of wireless communications is now complete. You can see it on the I-feature page on TelephonyOnline.

Though the feature certainly isn’t short — there always are space limitations when dealing with a print piece, as well as the verbiage tolerance of readers — there is a lot that wasn’t included. I essentially tried to discuss two broad themes: the evolution of wireless in our daily lives and how the network must similarly evolve. As you might expect, the feature doesn’t just stick to what we’d traditional call wireless services and networks. In fact, one of the basic premises of the piece is that the wireline and broadband worlds will seamlessly meld with the wireless one to the point we don’t really have a notion of “wireless” anymore. The feature delves into concepts of the “Semantic Web” and its wireless extension, the “Invisible Internet.” It deals with the notion of a “social grass” that intuitively links disparate personalized information across databases and devices. And just as wireless services become an integral part of the Internet, the wireless network comes to resemble Internet itself.

The feature was intended to be culmination of the I-feature series, but I’m now inclined to view it as a midpoint rather than a finale. I conducted dozens of interviews that never made it into the main feature. They covered technologies and concepts that there just wasn’t room for in the print story, and I just didn’t have time to write them up as separate I-feature stories. I also heard several contrary opinions to some of the ideas I put forward in the main feature. I’d like to air those new topics and conflicting views, so I’ve decided to keep the I-feature going, at least for a few more weeks. There’s been a lot of interest in the online pieces we’ve posted so far. I see no reason to stop them.

You’ll have to give me a week for a breather, though. I’m at CTIA Wireless this week, and as you’d expect, it’s dominating my time. (Be sure to check out our CTIA live blog.) Once I get back, I’ll start filing I-feature pieces and keep them coming until I run out of material — or you lose interest. Until then, I encourage you to read the feature and, as always, tell me what you think. …

Wireless 2025: A look at wireless in the year 2025

E-mail me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.