Newsgroups: sci.electronics Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Cellular Phones of the Future Message-ID: <1990Nov23.180330.26062@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1990Nov19.175339.14777@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Nov22.053204.3104@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Nov22.174929.23073@ariel.unm.edu> Date: Fri, 23 Nov 90 18:03:30 GMT In article <1990Nov22.174929.23073@ariel.unm.edu> ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan n5gax) writes: >>Remember how it was said that everyone would have Picturephones by now? >>Things don't get cheap without substantial demand *first*. > >Agreed and disagreed. The popularity of cellular phones, in spite of their >current price (it _is_ becoming a major electronics market), suggests that >cheaper Cphones will be even more widely popular -- the demand appears to >be there. I'm really not sure of this. Hereabouts, at least, much of the advertising for cellular phones seems to be pitched at people who have a professional requirement for them. I really question how much demand there will be from people in more ordinary jobs, who very seldom have much need to make a phone call without a fixed phone handy. >Picturephones are a lousy counterexample, on account of because 1) they aren't >that much of an improvement over audio-only, 2) they're too unreasonably ex- >pensive, even given significant development (though this _could_ change), >3) most people aren't interested in the frame-every-few-seconds that the cur- >rent technology supports and 4) the 'phone system can't handle the BW neces- >ary for a faster frame-transfer... The Picturephone I was referring to is not the frame-every-few-seconds one, but a specific (note the capitalization) live-video system that Bell tried to sell about twenty years ago, with complete lack of success. To my mind, pocketphones share many of the same characteristics: for most people they do not represent a significant added utility, they'd be costly and at times inconvenient, and the infrastructure (in this case, spectrum space) is not there to support a really universal pocketphone system. -- "I'm not sure it's possible | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology to explain how X works." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry