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Chapter 7 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology 307

Other complementary trends leading toward a future Web 3.0 include more
widespread use of cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) business
models, ubiquitous connectivity among mobile platforms and Internet access
devices, and the transformation of the Web from a network of separate siloed
applications and content into a more seamless and interoperable whole. These
more modest visions of the future Web 3.0 are more likely to be realized in the
near term.

7.4 THE WIRELESS REVOLUTION

Welcome to the wireless revolution! Cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and wire-
less-enabled personal computers have morphed into portable media and com-
puting platforms that let you perform many of the computing tasks you used to
do at your desk, and a whole lot more. We introduced smartphones in our dis-
cussions of the mobile digital platform in Chapters 1 and 5. Smartphones such
as the iPhone, Android phones, and BlackBerry combine the functionality of
a cell phone with that of a mobile laptop computer with Wi-Fi capability. This
makes it possible to combine music, video, Internet access, and telephone ser-
vice in one device. Smartphones are the fastest growing wireless devices with
respect to Internet access. A large part of the Internet is becoming a mobile,
access-anywhere, broadband service for the delivery of video, music, and Web
search.
CELLULAR SYSTEMS

In 2012, an estimated 1.5 billion cell phones will be sold worldwide. In the
United States, there are 358 million cell phone subscriptions, and 115 million
people have smartphones. About 120 million people access the Web using their
phone (eMarketer, 2012). In a few years, smartphones will be the predominant
source of searches, not the desktop PC. Digital cellular service uses several
competing standards. In Europe and much of the rest of the world outside the
United Sates, the standard is Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
GSM’s strength is its international roaming capability. There are GSM cell
phone systems in the United States, including T-Mobile and AT&T.
A competing standard in the United States is Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA), which is the system used by Verizon and Sprint. CDMA was
developed by the military during World War II. It transmits over several fre-
quencies, occupies the entire spectrum, and randomly assigns users to a range
of frequencies over time, making it more efficient than GSM.
Earlier generations of cellular systems were designed primarily for voice
and limited data transmission in the form of short text messages. Today
wireless carriers offer 3G and 4G networks. 3G networks, with transmission
speeds ranging from 144 Kbps for mobile users in, say, a car, to more than 2
Mbps for stationary users, offer fair transmission speeds for e-mail, browsing
the Web, and online shopping, but are too slow for videos. 4G networks, also
called Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, have much higher speeds: 100
megabits/second download, and 50 megabits upload speed. Equivalent to a
home Wi-Fi connection, LTE provides more than enough capacity for watch-
ing high definition video on your smartphone. A less well developed high
speed network standard is WiMax which uses Wi-Fi standards but with an
extended range of nearly 30 miles, enough to cover a metropolitan area, and
potentially entire small countries.

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