Mobile devices are among the most useful technologies of the decade, and the USA is running 7th, badly lagging Japan, Taiwan, and European countries.

Mobile, wireless, hand-held devices are the platform of the future for Personal Computing, Communicating, Financial and Entertainment applications - that is the all singing, all dancing digital device. 3G provides the bandwidth, security, and through-put required to support advanced hand-held applications.

As far as Network attachment is concerned, the price, size, and weight are 2-3x more favorable than a notebook or lap-top. This means more subscribers can afford it, carry it, and enjoy the convenience of a pocket sized device. Component density, power, and Operating Systems have reached a point where, all but the most CPU intensive applications present a real-time burden to the system.

3G brings real-time video communication to hand-held devices. The utility and versatility of this type of communications is hard to overstate. The simplicity of point-and-shoot operation as well as the rich communication that is a part of seeing another person, will have a huge and positive effect on commerce and our personal lives.

This means that all the hardware and software are available for 3G telephony. Only the USA lags the operating company implementation to open up our markets.

How do we close the competitive gap and implement 3G quickly?

For starters, we might ask the FCC to get out of the way and license broader bandwidths and stop making excuses.

The second is to encourage the phone companies to take advantage of the build-out in fiber-optic cabling they installed prior to the "tech wreck" and start implementing 3G.

IDC's article summarizes the situation as follows:

Despite being tied to a telecom industry that FCC Chairman Michael Powell recently described as “in utter crisis,” the worldwide handset market will rebound...According to new research from IDC, there is good reason for optimism as shipments are projected to increase from 391 million in 2002 to 606 million in 2006, a compound annual growth rate of 9.5%.

“A wireless revolution is waiting in the wings,” said Kevin Burden, program manager for Smart Handheld Devices at IDC. “When mass wireless adoption occurs, it will result in a paradigm shift comparable to that created by the World Wide Web. A true market explosion, however, is contingent on the timely deployment of next-generation networks and the availability of compelling content and applications."

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