WIRELESS WONDERLAND

With the biggest 30-day spending orgy known as the holiday season upon us, who will be the big winners come Jan. 1 — the wireless operators, or the landline companies that own some of them? Hardly seems to matter, does it? It's like having a cross-town classic in Chicago or New York City in October. Sure, there would be a lifetime of bragging rights for the winners, but wouldn't everyone in those towns be winners?

Likewise, isn't every copper loop that gives way to a radio link really an opportunity for an RBOC to cry poor while shoveling the equivalent of silver place settings into its wireless handbag? Ho-ho-ho. Isn't every Wi-Fi modem sold a potential packet stream on a carrier's backbone data network? Isn't every presence-enhanced cell phone that redirects a call an opportunity for stored voice mail, a landline connection or, at the very least, a revenue-generating call completion rather than a busy signal?

Aren't the vast majority of wireless calls that are made by people (other than cheating spouses, drug dealers and people trying to find each other at trade shows) made to wireline phones? Between wireless number portability, press-to-talk, camera phones and teenagers, mobile operators will be the more obvious winners during the holidays—after all, who gets a DSL modem or a local/long-distance bundle in their stocking? But the phone companies will do just fine, either by osmosis or by being the benefactor of increased chatter of all kinds.

Happy holidays. Let them spend, let them spend, let them spend.