Subject: [NEXTEL-1] The E-Gang Five Wireless Innovators / The Wonderful World Of Wirelessness

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 22:43:56 -0400

The E-Gang  Five Wireless Innovators
08.18.03, 6:00 PM ET

In this fifth annual E-Gang survey, profiling unsung heroes of high-tech, we look
at five people helping foster the next phase of the wireless revolution. They're
toppling some of the biggest obstacles to a Wireless Everywhere world: the Babel
of standards, frustratingly short-lived batteries and antiquated federal
regulations that squander airspace and inhibit new uses.

And they are speeding new ideas to market: ways to chat with friends and
colleagues, as well as networks of dozens or even thousands of tiny sensors that
track tank deployments, forest fires and frozen pizzas.

The Wonderful World Of Wirelessness
Scott Woolley, 09.01.03

While much of tech reels, these five innovators are doing their part to usher in
the next revolution.

The birth announcement of the digital wireless era--issued circa 1995--was soon
lost in an overload of Internet mania. Its adolescence, beginning circa 2003, will
be impossible to ignore.

The digital era is utterly unlike the first century of wireless communication,
when gadgets were analog and technological progress glacial. In the next decade
each crank of Moore's Law--by which computing power doubles every 18 months--will
open fantastic new worlds that wireless engineers have barely begun to explore.

In this fifth annual E-Gang survey, profiling unsung heroes of high tech, FORBES
looks at five people helping foster the next phase of the wireless revolution.
They're toppling some of the biggest obstacles to a Wireless Everywhere world: the
Babel of standards; frustratingly short-lived batteries; and antiquated federal
regulations that squander airspace and inhibit new uses. And they are speeding new
ideas to market: ways to chat with friends and colleagues; networks of dozens or
even thousands of tiny sensors that track tank deployments, forest fires and
frozen pizzas.

Astounding advances have arrived ever since the analog innards of wireless gadgets
gave way to digital-signal processing chips. The first digital cell phones (rolled
out in the U.S. in 1995) increased a carrier's capacity roughly sixfold; today's
models have more than tripled that. Result: Today in the U.S. 150 million cell
users (up fivefold since 1995) talk an average of eight hours a month (up
fourfold) while paying a dime a minute (down by a factor of four). The first
version of Wi-Fi, finalized in 1999, sent data at 11 megabits a second; the latest
generation is five times as fast.

Perhaps most important, digital wireless is prying open the biggest bottleneck in
tech--that "last mile" between speed-of-light fiber-optic networks and the zippy
insides of your PC. Telephone and cable TV services still belong to monopoly
providers in most towns, but the airwaves are naturally conducive to competition.
The smoggy air of Mexico City now carries high-speed Internet access; so do the
crystalline skies above Mason City, Iowa.

Meanwhile, chipmakers now can integrate all the old analog components of a radio
with silicon, obliterating their cost and size. Intel says it will be able to
build wireless capability in every chip within five years, a plan it has dubbed
"Radio Free Intel." "We're witnessing the powerful integration of communications
and computing," says Patrick Gelsinger, Intel's chief technical officer. "[Wi-Fi]
is a small precursor of what's possible."

The 1980s were defined by the PC revolution, the 1990s by the fiber-optic and
Internet booms. Digital wireless technology will likely do the same for this
decade and, with luck, fuel a long-awaited rebound in high tech.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2003/0901/094.html.html