What is wireless?

There is lots of talk these days about personal wireless devices, but they aren't actually that new. They first came into use in WW II. That's when U.S. soldiers started to use something that became known as the walkie-talkie. As the saying goes, times have changed. Folks in the wireless world say if it all works out, devices as small as a credit card will be used in every corner of the world bringing the user voice, data, games and perhaps even video.

The most familiar technology is the cell phone. The next device that has infiltrated the workplace is the Palm Pilot and its digital descendents. This is a small computer that fits into the palm of your hand. The first version was a simply a sophisticated date book and scheduler, now they do much more. Somewhere in the middle are the latest generation of pagers, like the Blackberry from Canada's Research In Motion. It has a tiny keyboard that allows users to send and receive e-mail essentially in real time.

This is a rapidly changing world that is the home turf of people who love technology. They've come up with a number of acronyms that can leave most people very confused. Here's a brief guide to just some of the terminology.

POTS

This is a fancy way of saying devices like telephones. The POTS comes from Plain Old Telephone Service the "twisted pair copper wire" telephone that's been in use since Alexander Graham Bell.

1G

This is a quick way of saying the first generation. After the walkie-talkie, the first somewhat bulky portable phones - about the size of a brief case - were called cell phones in North America and mobile phones in Europe and Asia. Those phones used an analog signal which means the user's voice was turned directly into radio waves which were connected to a series of receiver cells. These are often little silver grey boxes that you see on the top of buildings.

The PDA

The PDA (personal digital assistant) was an advancement on the cell phone because it had so many new applications. Some manufacturers tried to shrink the personal computer, with tiny screens and keyboards, while others expanded the pocket calculator by adding small address books and memo pads. The "killer application" that changed everything was 3Com's Palm Pilot. The Palm used a stylus, along with a simple writing system or a virtual keyboard and it connected easily to either an IBM PC or a Macintosh.

2G The Next Generation

In the early 1990s, the world outside of North America moved ahead by creating digital mobile phones - 2G - or second generation phones. Digital phones, like computers, convert voice to data and usually provide better quality than analog lines. Europe and Asia agreed on a common standard, what's called GSM or Global System for Mobile Communications. GSM lets a digital phone work in any of 120 countries. In Europe it is now possible to have a mobile phone that will talk to a vending machine, charging the cost of a can of pop to a phone or credit card account. The current buzzword is WAP, which stands for Wireless Application Protocol. Nokia calls WAP "the gateway to a new world of mobile data." The wireless companies say that WAP will be an international standard for digital phones delivering voice, text data and Internet services to all handheld devices, mobile phones, pagers and personal digital assistants. With WAP you can read news and stock quotes, pay a bill or book a ticket from a mobile phone.

3G The Communicator

The third generation of wireless device, where the major applications - phone, PDA, pager, video game console - are merged into one device. The marketing people call them 3G devices, mobile communicators or mobile communication terminals. Wireless companies have stated that a 3G communicator will be a high-speed device, capable of transmitting and receiving data at up to two million bits per second, much faster than today's landline based 56k modems. That speed plus enhanced memory could create a communicator like its fictional Star Trek equivalent, with high quality video or CD quality audio as well as retrieval of large amounts of data.