Infostations Challenge: Balancing Cost and Ubiquity in Delivering Wireless Data

Infostations Challenge: Balancing Cost and Ubiquity in Delivering Wireless Data

Frenkiel*, Richard, B. R. Badrinath, Joan Borràs, and Roy D. Yates**
IEEE Personal Communications 7, no. 2 (2000): 66-71
https://doi.org/10.1109/98.839333

* Draper Prize Winner
** Marconi Prize Winner

“In the first 15 years of the cellular revolution, voice services have become commonplace and ubiquitous, and the attention of researchers has shifted to wireless information. Here we find a rather dramatic contrast between expectations and results. It seems clear that information services have an almost unlimited potential in a wireless environment. Many of today’s “fixed” applications will continue to make sense in a mobile environment, and a variety of new services are certain to evolve for people on the move. The total number of bits required for voice is limited, even for the most talkative among us, but “information bits” are limited only by imagination and time. Even for the communication we think of as “voice”, a significant fraction is already in the form of messages that could be transferred as information files.”

— Richard Frenkiel et al.