 were and started taking notes. Same here," he says. Further work is anticipated in joint projects between Sandia and the University of New Mexico and also with Caltech. 2.12 TURBOCHARGING DATA A series of advances on the hardware component front promise to make telecom devices far more powerful than anything that's currently available. The technology that will drive future 4G networks is now being planned in TURBOCHARGING DATA research labs around the world. For example, a turbo decoder chip, developed by a Bell Labs research team in Sydney, Australia, offers the potential to speed data transmission on current 3 G and planned G wireless networks. The chip handles data at rates of up to 4Mbps-nearly 10 times faster than today's most advanced mobile networks. The design opens up a new world of application possibilities for wireless handsets. According to Bell Labs, the device can support wireless TV-quality videoconferencing, multimedia e-mail attachments, and the quick download- ing of high-quality music files. "This chip is a 'proof of concept'," says lead developer Mark Bickerstaff. "It demonstrates the possibility of receiving high- speed data on a handset." The device was designed by the same team that recently announced the first chip incorporating Bell Labs Layered Space Time (BLAST) technology for mobile communications. The BLAST chip enables wireless devices to receive data at 19.2Mbps in a 3G mobile network. The team believes that the new chip's many commercial possibilities will make it an ultimately successful tech- nology. "We believe the chip will inspire many enterprise applications because it will offer high-speed access to the office," Bickerstaff says. The turbo decoder supports the evolving High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard, an evolutionary enhancement to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) spread-spectrum technology, also known as wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). The chip is fast enough to support not only first-generation HSDPA systems, which will