TALK OF THE BROADBAND ECONOMY

The weird, unwired world

All of the following stories are true.

KRAKOW, Poland — Mobile phones and e-mails helped more than 150,000 young people organize a march to honor the late Pope John Paul II last week through the streets of the city where the Poland-born pope was formerly a priest and cardinal, the news agency AFP reports.

Text messages spurred the masses to march to Blonia Esplanade — a large field on the edge of Krakow, where the pope celebrated mass in August 2002.

Incidentally, wireless technology has infiltrated the centuries-old system of selecting a new pope. Electors are not allowed mobile phones nor electronic bugging devices during the conclave, thanks to reforms to the process the pope set up in 1996.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Illegal cell phone usage is a problem among New Zealand prison inmates, the country's The Press newspaper reports. A woman recently complained of being sent suggestive messages and photographs by a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Christchurch Prison. Authorities also are trying to track down whether a mobile phone was used in a recent unsuccessful escape attempt.

National corrections authorities are calling for the installation of cell phone signal-jamming equipment to be installed near New Zealand jails, but some contend that such devices would interfere too much with mobile phone signals outside prison grounds.

LONDON — A Scottish man has been named the world's fastest text-messager after punching out a complicated message in record time, Reuters reports.

Craig Crosbie, 24, took 48 seconds to type out the 160-character message: “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”

He beat the previous Guinness World Records record holder by 19 seconds.

Crosbie told Reuters that he sends about 75 messages a day and says the key to fast texting is practice.

BASEL, Switzerland — Watchmakers at the Baselworld International Watch and Jewelry Fair are bemoaning a new threat to their business: cell phones.

“Youngsters don't have a watch anymore today. If they want to know the time, they look at their mobile,” Patrick Besnard, a representative for the French watchmaking industry at the fair, told news agency AFP.

In February, a coalition of French watchmakers and jewelers launched legal action against mobile carrier SFR's ad campaign depicting watches and a grandfather clock tossed in the trash.

Sales of Swiss plastic watches fell 25.1% during the first two months of the year, according to the Swiss watchmaking federation.