I have found the wifi + cell phone momentum quite interesting and covered two early patents leading the trend.
So I’m on a flight and a guy behind me, sitting next to someone worthy of being impressed, talks about what any guy would want to talk about to chat it up, his new cell phone that his company, Cingular, is launching.. Goes like this…
“Yeah, this baby isn’t available yet and it let’s you flip between your WiFi network and your cell network. Since cell towers need to penetrate buildings and doesn’t do so effectively, this system will let you access the WiFi network when you go into a building and the cell network when you’re not. We’ll also be selling routers, though this will work with your Linksys, but our engineers say ours work better with the phone. Its gonna launch in about 30 days for an additional 20 bucks a month as an added service.”
No, no screams of iPhone joy coming from that row, and without a good eye on it, the gear remains a mystery.