Hong Kong
Hong Kong keeps pushing the wireless services envelope. The wireless world is watching. More than a century ago, Britain bullied China into granting it a 99-year lease of a huge area north of Hong Kong that became known as the New Territories. British control of the area came to an end with the return of Hong Kongto China in 1997, but the concept of pushing into new territories lives on in Hong Kong’s wireless services.Hong Kong—with one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world, 84 percent—is moving rapidly into multimedia messaging services (MMS) and high-speed wireless LAN. This is a wireless laboratory worth watching.
China
China has the potential to become a 3G development powerhouse. But will it happen? And if so, when? The biggest hit among China-made movies in 2003 was one called Cell Phone, about a love triangle involving a successful middle-aged TV talk show host, his wife and his lover. Cell Phone did very well at the box office — and it sparked heated discussions nationwide about miscommunications and mistrust generated by mobile communications.
Canada
Bob Brown does work assignments for his accounting course just about anywhere or anytime — on a bus, in the school cafeteria, between classes, or while waiting to be picked up for hockey practice. He uses his Compaq iPAQ PDA to complete a number of Flash interactive accounting exercises — making journal entries, creating financial statements, logging sales transactions — and to send questions and comments to his instructor and other students. No down time for Brown. He’s a guy on the go.
Australia
Australia rapidly adopted mobile communications and is now venturing into third generation (3G) technologies. It is the hope of many Australians, especially businesspeople, that the mobile Internet will link them more closely to the rest of the world and make them an integral part of the global marketplace.