Two articles on wireless growth recently published were both disappointing. First was this one in the economist. It had some decent information, particularly regarding advances in antenna systems, but generally seemed like the sort of article that caused the over-hype of advanced wireless data services (which has been given the snappy acronym 3G) and preceded the trough of dissolution that we've been in for close to two years. I've never been the huge Economist fan some of my friends are, so I was not expecting much. Anyway, they have the euro angle and tend to discount legitimate engineering breakthroughs at the expense of flashy techno-glitz. I expected a bit more from MIT's Technology Review article on wireless. But it was quite similar. These stories have been the same for over a year now - DoCoMo does wireless data right and the U.S. does not...Japan and Europe are smart and doing "3G" to provide higher data services....but who really needs highspeed wireless....i-mode is 9600...etc., etc. Never much logic, or even synthesis with actual historical data. I saw Bill Joy give a speech on wireless a couple of years ago. Along with praising Guns, Germs and Steel (one of my favorites), he took the opportunity to lambast the U.S. for not having a unified wireless technology like Europe. Huh? This coming from the company that is leading the effort to dismantle Microsoft (not that there's anything wrong with that) because of their monopoly position. When a U.S. company comes up with a technology that's 10X as good as GSM, so good that the Euros pick it for their version of 3G, we are supposed to....abandon what was created and use that instead? And now, with FOMA failures...I just don't get it. I realized a long time ago that most witty IT types and internet gurus don't really understand radios. Ham operators do. Wireless technicians and some executives do, and, some savvy IT folks do too. The hardware/data network culture is inseparable to the internet/web culture. The ying/yang. Many are both. The telecom culture - particularly the carrier culture - is intensely hierarchical and "command and control". I was a speaker on a recent NTIA sponsored Spectrum Summit in Washington. One of the questions asked was "how can we set up spectrum management so that more and greater command and control will be possible?" . On the bright side, the same person asked us if the FCC/NTIA should work to free up more spectrum for unlicensed low power use. That was a "yes" from everybody.