Lest we abandon abandon the stage to the naysayers, the cynics and the can't-be-dones, it is in the Third World that wireless stands the best chance of replicating, at the least possible cost, the advantages of the wired world.
The ETSI BRAN Hiper x standards, still nascent, envision a societal solution where wireless provides telephony, entertainment, education, messaging, data transfer, business applications, and internet access.
What sort of device will be used for access in Third World countries is a function of price and availability: those factors are determined by the economics of production. It's not a question of the state of their impoverishment, it's a matter of driving the price down to the point where the technology is accessible to all - and nobody here can say with honesty that it cannot be done: not unless they've had their doubting heads stuck in the sand as the prices of chips, hard drives, and display technologies fall to fractions of their former levels.
There won't be the redundancy that many of us enjoy here, with a computer at work, a couple at home, a cell phone, and a pager - there will likely be one device for many, maybe two - say, a (laptop) computer and a data-capable cell phone.
Power will be supplied by small fuel cells, where portable power is needed.
Given these devices, and the use of software on ASPs, it should be possible to give third-world countries some of the benefits of our technological wealth.
There are people in every country who think the civilization ends at their border, and whose imagination goes no further than this quarter's profits. But there's a world out there, waiting - and you're not going to bring the study of history, or the World Cup, to an Amazon village with FTTH. |
