KILKENNY -- I live in a part of Ireland where my mobile phone signal sucks when rain falls. And to compound my frustrations, it rains a lot in Ireland. While visiting Motorola in Cork last week, I learned that help was at hand--Motowifi is close by. Motorola have Wi-Fi at the baseband of several of their phones already. This means the little phones can offer Wi-Fi connectivity with no added requirements. It's a growing capability. The percentage of mobile phones that are Wi-Fi enabled will grow from near 0 percent last year to 85 percent by 2007, predicts On World, a San Diego, CA-based wireless-market research firm. This could mean I will have one less device in my bag by 2010.
It could also mean you no longer need a computer to make a VoIP call. That's disruptive technology.
I need the capability because I live in a cellular black spot. The locals down the road have mobilised against the erection of a mobile phone mast, which means I get terrible coverage from my O2 connection on most days. If the switching software on-board the mobile phone is smart, it means being able to go cellular one minute, Wi-Fi the next. I would be able to make nearly all of my calls from one multi-mode phone, no matter where I was located. My calls would switch unnoticeably from a trusted Wi-Fi network to the mobile phone network to my home 802.11 system as smoothly as my phone now switches from tower to tower while I am underway in Ireland.
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Connie Lok -- "One Person, One Phone"
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