mer information from many different sources. As a result, project's programmers will not focus on creating a differentiating customer experience but simply will focus on getting the basics right. "To begin con- structing those support functions, mobile telecom companies should reorgan- ize their information systems into reusable building blocks, or components," notes the McKinsey study. "Assembling and reassembling them into the basic elements of a mobile product then becomes a lot less time-consuming and costly." There are multiple benefits to a component-oriented IT architecture, notes the McKinsey study. An architecture with reusable components would permit a team developing a mobile product to scroll through a company's database of services and to pick what it needed straight off the shelf or to tweak exist- ing elements of the service. The team would then be free to concentrate on developing the product's features. "This approach, we believe, will become common in mobile telecommunications over the next few years," notes the study. "Judging by the results achieved in other industries, mobile operators could reduce the time to market of a new product by 30 percent and cut the cost of integrating it into an existing system by 60 to 70 percent." 1.6 A CONSIDERATE TELEPHONE Besides allowing people to communicate in entirely new ways, emerging tech- nology is also enabling individuals to interact with phone services in new and innovative ways. Telephones today, whether landline or wireless, are our cruel masters. They command our attention and don't care if we are eating dinner, engaged in a crucial business meeting, or watching a movie. But people may soon gain some control over their phones, thanks to pair of Carnegie Mellon University researchers who are working on a phone that could learn when- and when not-to summon its user. The technology, which is being developed by researchers James Fogarty and Scott Hudson, utilizes tiny microphones, cameras, and touch sensors to monitor a phone user's activity level an