promises its developers made. Frankly, it has been a poorly positioned solution-a "technology in search of a problem to solve." Originally positioned as the facilitator of the wireless Internet, customers have come to realize that the wireless Internet today is largely Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Access Technologies Chapter 6 a dream. It is doomed to fail as long as it continues to be a deadly com- bination of immature, not-yet-ready-for-the-market technology, poorly established expectations, slow and spotty connections, useless device screens, and largely nonexistent content. Comparing the experiences of surfing the Web via a computer and surfing it with a cell phone is a laughable exercise-there is no comparison. Even in Japan, where uptake of innovative services is always extremely high, the rollout of 3G services has, to a point, stalled. Reasons include service availability in urban areas (spotty at best), the physical dimensions of the handsets (they're heavy), the price of the handsets (three times that of the one it replaced), the cost of service (the average monthly invoice in Japan for subscribers climbed dramatically), and very short battery life. As a clerk in an electronics store in Tokyo told me, "You don't need 3G to send e-mails, download data, or even watch movie clips. You can do all that with the other services SO there is no reason to use 3G." Key to the success of broadband, obviously, is spectrum availability. The spectrum battles that are underway between broadcasters and tele- com players create enormous problems that cannot be overcome without a shift in regulatory policy. Television has always been sacred territory in the United States and Canada, and has always enjoyed the rights of first refusal for newly available spectra. As a result, TV broadcasters have amassed huge bunkers of bandwidth. Th