Do you remember Hal 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey? The artificial intelligence that interacts with the astronaut crew, decides to take over and is eventually shut down. It has been 43 years since 2001 Space Odyssey was released. If you were alive in 1969 think back to what you were doing and try to imagine this:
- Today there are more wireless devices than people in the United States
- Wireless customer connections are up 9% to 327.6 million or 103.9% of the United States population
- Revenue from data services rose 21.2% to hit $30.1 billion
- Phone networks carried 341.2 billion megabits of traffic in the first half of 2011
- By the end of 2010 there were an estimated 5.3 billion mobile phone subscribers around the world
- Machine to Machine (M2M) communications are expected to number 412 million globally by 2014
Wireless communications has rocked our world in a good way. We can access almost any bit of information anywhere and this capability allows communications between people and people, people and machines, and between machines. Access to data wherever and whenever you need it allows us to make better decisions and benefits the environment by the reduction of resources required for each task and fewer things needing to be discarded.
For those of you who would like to learn more about networking and wireless communications, here are some courses to get you started:
- Datacomunications Essentials sets the foundation on Networking. From Local Area Networks, to Wide Area Networks to Wireless Networks
- Wireless Wide Area Networks requires a background in networking equivalent to that found in the Datacommunications Essentials course
To read more about whats going on in the world of wireless communications and devices:
- The New York Times October 14, 2011 – More Wireless Devices Than People
- CTIA report – Wireless and the Environment Report