Interesting cover story in the August 31, 2006 issue of Network Computing about the wireless landscape (cellular, Wi-Fi, WiMAX).  Article is directed to IT chiefs making wireless networking decisions for the enterprise.  Dovetails well with our Connected World report.  Lots of good sidebars including choosing a wireless network, justifying wireless data, and impact assessment of mobile broadband data.  From the article:

What we’re now witnessing is nothing short of a
global wireless battle to achieve a dominant position as
we move from 3G services to 4G. Never mind that 4G is
still completely undefined … this is the opportunity
WiMAX proponents are reaching for, but they’ll be competing
with IEEE 802.20, evolved 3G systems, and the cellular
community’s own aggressive evolution path to nextgeneration
systems such as 3GPP LTE (Third Generation
Partnership Project Long Term Evolution).

In reality, it will be the end of the decade before any
entirely new wireless technologies could be widely available,
and which one will prevail is hard to predict. For
now, what IT managers need to know is that CDMA2000
and GSM/UMTS/HSDPA networks dominate in the wide
area. For an evolution time line of the major technologies,
see “Mobile Data Evolution,” at nwcreports.com.

Download the full issue here.  Article is on pages 12-19 of the file.

From the Connected World report:

Another sign of upheaval in the connectivity landscape is the presence of “switch backs.” Digital visionary Nicholas Negroponte predicted over a decade ago that wired services would become wireless, and wireless services would become wired – dubbed the Negroponte Switch. Now we see many “switch backs” in play. For example, VoIP (Voice over IP) brings phone calls from wired to wireless and now back to wired. Mobile TV brings TV from wireless to wired and now back to wireless. The Negroponte Switch could still be the end state, but currently we are seeing numerous switch backs, illustrating the very unsettled nature of the connectivity landscape. 

The FCC just auctioned off $13.9 billion of wireless spectrum, with T-Mobile, Verizon and Cingular the big winners (bidders).  However, new competition from regional carriers MetroPCS and Leap Wireless is expected, for they were large bidders as well.  So was a cable consortium owned by Comcast, Time Warner and Cox.  The quadruple threat of voice, data, video and mobile continues.  See the full story. 

This just in from UsingRFID.com:  A US company, Paraben, has created a special pouch for your RFID-rich passport.  The pouch blocks RF signals so that when the passport is not needed (which is most of the time), it can be safely stored without fear of data being skimmed from the RFID tag.  All this despite the many security features that go with the new RFID passports, which are expected to be issued to some 15 million citizens in 2007.  See full story.

Apple is one of many industry crossovers taking place lately (see Industry Crossovers chapter).  Yesterday the company announced its iTV, a device that enables you to display on your TV movies, TV shows and other video downloaded from the Internet.  This is a computer crossover into TV, playing off the company’s iPod/iTunes success and leveraging the Disney-Pixar merger (the first crop of downloadable movies are from Disney).  Watch as more players join in the downloadable movie phenomenon and consumer acceptance picks up, just as it did with downloadable songs.  Apple has been crossing over into personal entertainment for some time, and iTV puts Apple squarely in the living room, headquarters central for home entertainment.

See the Wall Street Journal on the iTV announcement (login required).

See commentary on the TNL.net blog, which speculates that, in the long term, Apple might be able to disaggregate programming content from TV channels, effectively enabling people to program their own channels and putting an end to traditional channels and to advertisting-based TV.