 and be open to various innovative approaches to novel tech- nology. Such approaches have a better chance of succeeding than does the simple ex- port of first-world systems to a world of diverse cultures. Although we cannot predict what will happen, we can say that it is vital to the world that wireless communications continue to grow. In under 60 years, Europe has moved from a small continent torn by the most destructive war the world has ever seen to a cooperative union of nations with shared economic goals, a common currency, and in- creasing respect for one another's languages and cultures. Communications has played a major part in that transformation, and we need the same to happen across the entire globe. 49.2 The Future of CDMA It is hard to talk about the future without being speculative. However, others are spec- ulating and sometimes backing their speculations with thousands of millions of dollars of investment in research and development. We can report on these speculations and investments to give a sense of the possibilities-and the problems-that lie ahead. 49.2.1 3G and 4G technologies In the early 1990s, long before third-generations (3G) technologies were standardized, the fourth-generation (4G) initiative began. The current proposed standards for 4G sys- tems have two distinctive components: bandwidth of over 100 Mbps and use of the In- ternet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which has been defined for a number of years but has not entered production. If CDMA systems can reach the higher end of the bandwidth suggested by the 3G standards, then they will be entering the bottom edge of the 4G data rate capabilities, and some people are already referring to such technologies as 3.5G. A prototype 4G system already exists, but the standards changed after the prototype was built. The prototypes used Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), but the data stan- dard has changed to IPv6. The transmission method was time division multiple access (TDMA), but the new transmission method is proposed as orthogonal frequency 