As this is my last column, I would like to take this opportunity to bring some of the observations about mobility, spectrum, and television to a close. It is my position that television studies need to pay continued attention to the carriage and content debates as telecommunications companies are struggling with how to both deliver and control media content on cell phone devices. As well, we need to be asking important questions not only about the regulation of these telecommunications in the context of increased ownership and convergence of communication technologies, but also about users, aesthetics and design. Questions such as who uses these technologies when and how easy are they to use, see and hear with?

Google’s movement to develop and implement mobile telephony applications has moved from rumor to fact with Android. Android is an “open handset alliance project” designed to facilitate core mobile device functionality and combine information from web with data on cell phones. This intervention may serve as a wake up call to the industry about the possibilities of open sourcing and/or sharing licensing with their software applications. Apple, again like its foray into the distribution of digital music, sound and images with iTunes in 2001, is providing groundbreaking ways in which users can develop applications and and share revenues in an effort to increase brand awareness and build consumer loyalty to their iPhones.

However, despite what kind of observations I can make to industry about ways in which they may want to increase the possibilities of what their technologies can do to appease and interpellate consumers, I am also interested in how we can make the public and citizenship more central to mobile telephony.

As many of you know, cell phones have been one of the fastest growing forms of communication technology in the world1. For some communities and nations, telecommunications have been made available in ways they have not been before. Many nations are skipping land line infrastructure all together and are going straight to cell phones.

At a time when wireless communications, much like the promise of radio at the turn of the twentieth century, may have another moment for us to attend to how to make these communications open, affordable, relevant and easy to use.

There are numerous international organizations committed to a larger agenda of making communications fundamental human rights such as Amnesty International, World Summit on the Information Society, and more national ones such as Free Press, the New America Foundation, and the Independent Media Center.

And for those of us who are on the move and available “anytime,” “anywhere,” and “any place,” we need to keep asking how does this work, who benefits and why now? I hope these questions can move us to think about communication technologies not only as opportunities, but to address their conditions as well.

Image Credits:

1. Stephen Colbert
2. Android logo
3. Jim Prentice
4. Independent Media Center logo

Please feel free to comment.

1. Townsend, A. (2002). “Mobile communications in the twenty-first century.” In B. Brown, N. Green, & R. Harper (Eds.), Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age (pp. 62–77). London: Springer-Verlag.

On July 7, as a longtime consumer of Apple products (and on their mailing list), I received the following invitation. Upon opening the invitation, I was welcomed by an English-speaking white man explaining the simplicity of the iPhone—its “standard for design,” that it is a “revolutionary device,” its “advanced capabilities,” and that it would keep me connected “around the world . . . wherever you are.” After regaling me with its features, I was invited to a 30-minute guided tour on how the iPhone 3G works (I might also add that the spokesman for French-Canadian customers was much younger and hipper looking).

This preamble and insider invitation preceded Apple’s July 11th release of the iPhone in 22 countries outside of the United States. Not surprisingly, this launch in mostly western cell phone-dominated countries, Apple encountered challenges similar to their US launch last year—long lines, not enough inventory, and significant media coverage.

Something happened in Canada that quite surprised those of us researching mobility and specifically those of us who have been researching cell phone use in Canada. Many people may not be aware that Canada has one of the highest cell phone rates than most other countries in the world. There has been little protest on the part of Canadian consumers and citizens despite the fact that Canadians have enjoyed some of the lowest landline costs. Why did this release set Canadian consumers to protest costs? And what did their protests garner?

They were four factors that played a role. First, a significant amount of national news coverage of cell phone costs when most recent spectrum auction was announced Canada (may be investigative journalism matters). Second, the spectrum auction launched May 27, 2008 (it is almost at a close right now) with an explicit commitment from the federal government that 60 percent were open bids from any service provider with the other 40 percent reserved for new cell phone entrants. Third, it could be related to the fact that Canadians had to wait for the iPhone. Finally (and maybe related to the third point), Apple protested the high costs and three-year service contract with Rogers’ carrier.

The current spectrum auction in Canada, presently earning the federal government $4 billion, has alerted Canadians to the high costs and money telecos are spending to access the 3G and 4G network. This auction was introduced to increase competition in the cell phone market. However, incumbents clearly have more capital—both economically and politically. They have made significant claims about the long-term investments they have made in building previous networks and do not want to be subsidizing the competition. At this point, when examining the current bids, the major telecos will own most of the newly released spectrum and competition may have to work with incumbents to access their networks.

Despite awareness that cell phone costs are getting out of hand and that Canadian consumers may not necessarily benefit from the promise of increased competition, spectrum allocation has not been mentioned as a possible way to decrease costs nor has the proprietary software of mobile devices been on the radar. For that matter, at no point in the debate of “high costs” have Canadians been referred to as citizens. To construct Canadians solely as consumers continues to facilitate market, capital, and regulatory solutions. Could asking questions about what role telecommunications play in the realm of citizenship shift our expectations and possibly issues of access, delivery, and service?

Finally, as analog signals are to be phased out to privilege digital media delivery, the high cost of licensed spectrum that most mobile devices operate within and the ever more media convergence, means that consumers and citizens may have fewer choices.

The cell phone industry needs to reflect on the recent experiences of the music industry and take heed of how their conservative (and greedy) motives could not see what digital technologies (specifically as they manifested on the Internet) created new markets, new possibilities, and innovations directly the result of consumer/citizen participation in freeware, shareware, and open source software.

The recent rumour that Google is developing an open source mobile platform suggests some promise and possibilities of how opening code can develop applications and other possibilities that could result in more reasonable costs and of what these kinds of devices can be and do.

So, while Canadians had to wait, some consumer and corporate protest decreased the fees for iPhone service providers—however, the back story of licensed spectrum and proprietary software—keeps cell phone costs high, privileges a consumer model, and continues with predictable content.

Image Credits:

1. iPhone Canada, almost at your fingertips
2. iPhone 3G
3. Industry Minister Jim Prentice leaving a news conference, May 2008
4. Spectrum auctions promise to provide greater efficiency for mobile technology users

Please feel free to comment.

Spectrum, auctions, airwaves and frequencies: What we can’t see and why we need to

I delayed writing my third column on mobile television in the United States, as the national landscape is quite different from the one I live in and study. I was originally compelled to write about the relevance of mobile television in a U.S. context and not in a Canadian one. However, a recent spectrum auction generated fodder for this column.1

Spectrum: What is it and why is it important?
Spectrum refers to the transmission and regulation of airwaves into frequencies.

EM Spectrum Properties:
These frequencies are allocated in bands referring to services on an exclusive or shared basis (ITU 2004). There are also extensive regulations regarding service category (i.e., fixed service, mobile service) and service type (which describes types of transmissions and emissions). While spectrum, like the air we breathe, seems to exist in unlimited quantities, it is important that we understand spectrum, or these radio-wave frequencies, as a finite resource. (It is too difficult to represent on-line how this ephemeral space is allocated, but for those who are interested, a powerful representation of how little of this space is public and/or allocated for “free” use can be viewed in the U.S. Frequency Allocation Chart available from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.)

Most nations have a governing body with administering policies related to telecommunications (in the United States, it is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)). Internationally, two institutional bodies have played significant roles in shaping spectrum, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The ITU, in particular, has been critical in setting out standards and policy recommendations on how to allocate spectrum.

The main objective of the ITU is to establish frequency allocations and regulatory procedures for the harmonious operation of global radio communication services and to ensure that these services do not interfere with competing signals and transmissions. Briefly, the politics of the distribution of this resource involves:

. . . first, the allocation of these blocks of frequencies for particular users (e.g., broadcasters, military, mobile operators, etc.) and second, the assignment of specific frequencies within the allocated blocks to different ‘licensees’. Generally, licensees have the exclusive right to use the assigned frequencies to provide designated services. Typically, spectrum users are granted temporary licenses, even though renewal is often a formality (ITU 2006).

There are two primary methods of purchasing these frequencies through auctions and ‘beauty contests,’ a term which reveals the highly gendered assumptions embedded in this technical universe. Auctions tend to be the most popular way nations sell spectrum allocation, and beauty contests are determined by which individual, organization, or industry can demonstrate their capacity to best utilize it. Critics of the spectral auction raise concerns about governments generating revenue from licensing and the enormous capital required to bid for spectrum allocations. Those concerned with the beauty contest format worry whether government regulators have sufficient training to determine who has the best technical and business models (Xavier 2001).

These auctions and beauty contests are highly profitable events. In 2001, when the last set of auctions for 3G licenses in Europe were held, they raised over $1.5 billion dollars. Cost for the spectrum ranged from 20 Euros per capita in Switzerland to 650 Euros per capita in the United Kingdom (Klemperer 2004).

Important to understand, particularly for counter-public groups with limited financial resources, is that there are two forms of spectrum. The largest part of spectrum, while licensed and regulated, is primarily limited to corporate control and harnessed for profit because it is so expensive. There is a small proportion of spectrum that is unlicensed, free, and available for public use. It is this portion of the spectrum that is primarily available to wireless technology activists and not-for-profit and community-based organizations.2 The unlicensed spectrum was first guaranteed by the IEEE, another international body key to the development of the wireless world of communication.3

Why is this relevant for mobile TV?
A discussion of spectrum is particularly relevant, given the mandatory FCC digital tuner regulation:

. . . specifies that as of March 1, 2007, all new TVs must include digital tuners. This rule prohibits the manufacture, import, or interstate shipment of any device containing an analog tuner, unless it also contains a digital tuner. Despite this prohibition on manufacture and shipment, retailers may continue to sell analog-only devices from existing inventory. As a result, at the point of sale, many consumers may not be aware that this equipment will not be able to receive over-the-air-television signals after February 17, 2009.

By February 17, 2009 television broadcasting will only be delivered in digital format. The FCC will provide boxes for those with analog sets to convert digital television program delivery. They have been introducing “coupons,” as well as monitoring producers and sellers, to ensure proper notification to consumers of what is required to make your current television compatible and the status of new television sets and their compliance with digital conversion.

While the benefits of digital television have been espoused by the telecommunications industry in the United States, there has been little intervention beyond education workshops to prepare consumers for this transition. Most of the focus on the transition is on how to get consumers “digital” ready instead of the more long-term implications of the corporate benefits of this transition. The digital delivery of television is happening in licensed spectrum. The high costs of the spectrum and the proprietary software of the mobile phone industry will continue the telecommunications industries control of what and how we access, use, and watch digital television on mobile phones.

Spectrum matters and we need to learn more about how it works and where we can intervene. Its ephemeral qualities, its magical and mythical representations, and its promise to emancipate make it difficult for us to understand and make demands of its ever-expanding commodification.

References:
International Telecommunication Union. (2006). Overview – ITU Council. (7 February, 2007).
Klemperer, Paul. Auctions: Theory and Practice. New Jersey: Princeton University, 2004.
Xavier, Patrick. 2001. “Licensing of 3G Mobile.” Briefing Paper, School of Business, Swinburne University of Technology. www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/3G/workshop/presentations/Xavier_1.pdf (accessed 1 May 2007).

Image Credits:

1. Frequencies and Spectrum
2. ITU Logo
3. Mobile TV Phone

Please Feel Free to Comment

1. In Canada and the United States there have been two recent spectrum auctions, “The Real Cost of High Prices,” http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/cellphones/economy.html and “Government of Canada Opens Up Wireless Industry to More Competition,” Ottawa, May 27, 2008 http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/261ce500dfcd7259852564820068dc6d/85256a5d006b972085257456004d567b!OpenDocument and “FCC closes 700MHz spectrum auction,” http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/19/FCC-closes-700MHz-spectrum-auction_1.html: “The controversial 700MHz spectrum auction has closed, raising $19.59 billion, a record for a spectrum auction in the United States, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.”
2. This part of the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz public spectrum (802.11a, b, g, n) has been taken up, not unlike the ham and public radio in an earlier wireless era, by Community Wireless Networks (CWNs).
3. The last five paragraphs were edited from the jointly authored article, Barbara Crow and Kim Sawchuk, “The Spectral Politics of Mobile Communication Technologies: Gender, Infrastructure and International Policy,” in K. Sarikakis and L. Regan Shade, Eds., Minding the Gap: Feminist Interventions in International Communication, New York: Roman & Littlefield, 2008, pp. 90-105.

What is at the centre of debates about convergent technologies and cultures are questions of how we make use of these new technologies and networks to fashion shared as well as individual spaces in our lives, relationships, and ideas. Thus far, however, the developments surrounding and discourses characterising mobile television have tended to be obscure these developments and struggles in social relations and cultural politics – something that I think merits considered and urgent attention. (Goggin, 2006, p. 186)

In my last column, I raised some questions regarding the place of the conceptual turn to mobility to describe and facilitate understandings of the changing relations of power, the movement of capital and bodies and the ephemeral qualities of digital technologies. I would now like to explicitly address the mobile modification of television, mobile tv.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think of the resolution? When would you watch this? Would you be willing to pay $15 to watch tv programmes on your cell phone? Can your cell phone seamlessly deliver and store tv programmes? Where would you watch the program? Would you wear earphones? How would you feel if you were to hear someone else watching a tv programme near you? Would you consider projecting a tv programme from your mobile onto some kind of screen? Would you want to be able to move tv programmes from one of your digital devices to your mobile phone? Would you walk and watch? Would you talk and watch?

The answers to these questions are still unresolved largely as the result of the long-standing tension in the telecommunication industry’s struggle between content provision and carrier service, interoperability between services and devices, and consumer resistance to its high costs (particularly when individuals can watch television content on traditional sets and on the internet for minimal costs).1
The most recent industry data, IDATE’s mobile tv survey 2008, continues to predict high growth rates in the mobile phone industry (see Table 1) and increased ownership of mobile phones over other telecommunication services (see Figure 1). Moreover, the little empirical data that does exist regarding American uptake of mobile tv has found that its most significant users of mobile tv are young men (Table 3).

Despite industry predictions that mobile tv has significant market potential – it has not done well in North America. I would suggest that the questions I asked earlier have played a role in transitioning citizens, consumers and users from one form of media practice, large screen stationary television viewing, to another mobile, small screen one. Take up has been slow and the limited consumer data we have suggests that the market for this type of service is largely the purview of young men. One could speculate that if young men shape the mobile tv market, largely because of their purchasing power and access to more leisure time, this demographic could limit the kind of programming that may attract other kinds of viewers and consumers. However, I would argue that the kind of empirical data and theorizing that we do have about how North Americans use mobile telephones (World Internet Project, Networked Publics, Katz and Aakhus, 2002; Ling, 2004; Goggin, 2006; Gow and Smith, 2006; Horst and Miller, 2006; Katz, 2006; Castells, et al, 2007) provides us with some insight as to why uptake has been slow and ways that we might want to consider the potential for other media forms emerging from mobile phones.

Many of the cited scholars have engaged with questions about the transition from landline telephones to mobile telephones – how have we taken practices from old media to new ones. This line of inquiry is well articulated by Lev Manovich’s (2001) in The Language of New Media, as he analyzes:

…the language of new media by placing it within the history of modern visual and media cultures. What are the ways in which new media relies on older cultural forms and languages, and what are the ways in which it breaks with them? What is unique about how new media objects create the illusion of reality, address the viewer, and represent space and time [I would add place]? How do conventions and techniques of old media – such as the rectangular frame, mobile viewpoint, and montage – operate in new media? (p.8)

Given that much of our understanding is premised on theorizing the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ – what have we observed about how consumers, users and citizens have taken up in mobile phone practices? One of the most prevalent uses of mobile phones is communication — people like to talk and they are expanding their telephone talk from the confined ‘private’ spaces of home and work to just about anywhere, anytime, any place. So could it be that television viewing outside of the constraints of the household has had a longer public history in sports bars, airports, that as Dowler (2002) has argued the tv has become the ultimate ubiquitous object. My point is that we are asking one device to deliver many media forms and practices — and that may be we need and want more than one device (Middleton, 2007). Moreover, other factors such as non-proprietary software2 have closed interventions and innovations – and ultimately, I would argue development of applications that could make the delivery of tv more user friendly and less costly. However, I do think it is important that we also consider the ways in which consumers, users and citizens have taken up visual communication strategies with their mobile phones in unanticipated ways.

To more explicitly address Goggin’s observations and pleas, there have been a number of interventions and strategies that have circumvented expensive mobile telecommunication costs and that have worked within the confines, constraints and possibilities of mobile phones. Some of these include a series of mobile phone film festivals and artists’ projects. These interventions and strategies have generally taken up the sound and video capacities of mobile phones. Festivals such as Pocket Films, CellFlex, and artists’ projects such as murmur, Antoni Abad’s international projects facilitating community use of mobile phones, and Obx Labs have creatively demonstrated the aesthetic, political, and community potential of the small screen form and interestingly its multi-casting and distribution potential.

Hence, modifying tv with the mobile is not doing well as ‘old’ media practices are not transitioning well to mobile phone platforms — what is more exciting and interesting in terms of the mobile and visual communications have been the ways in which some artists’ projects make demands of and work with what mobile phones can do.

References:

Agar, K. 2003. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books.

Castells, M., M. Fernandez-Ardevol, J. Qiu and A. Sey. 2007. Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Dowler, K. 2002. “Television and Objecthood: The “place” of Television in Television Studies,” Topia 8: 43-60.

Goggin, G. 2006. Cell Phone Culture, London, UK: Routledge.

Gow, R. and R. Smith. 2006. Mobile and Wireless Communications. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press.

Horst, H. and D. Miller. 2006. The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. New York, NY: Berg.

Katz, J. and M. Aarkus. (Eds.) 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communications, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Katz, J. 2006. Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Ling, R. 2004. The Mobile Connection: Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. San Francisco, CA: Elsevier.

Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Middleton, C. 2007. “Understanding the BlackBerry as an Instrument of Organizational Culture,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. 21:2,165-178

Image Credits:
1. Mobile television
2. Table 1: Mobile 2008, Markets and Trends, Facts and Figures, IDATE 2008
3. Table 2: Mobile 2008, Markets and Trends, Facts and Figures, IDATE 2008
4. Table 3

Please feel free to comment.

1. However, this is not the case for Japan or France. Recently in Japan, “OneSeg simulcasts the country’s terrestrial TV networks, which means users who have an enabled handset can receive the digital service for free…[I]ts popularity stems from the fact that the broadcasts are DRM-free, which has allowed handset makers to build recording functions into mobile devices. Consumers can, for example, choose a TV show from an electronic program guide and record the show onto a memory card to watch later. In addition to phones, OneSeg tuners have been built into laptops, car navigation systems, MP3 players and electronic dictionaries.” From Moconews
   In France, there has been 225% growth in tv uptake largely due to bundling with other services. From Moconews.
2. In 2006, Nokia opened sourced one of its high-end mobile phones

I would like to thank FlowTV for inviting me to serve as a guest columnist. It is with pleasure that I take this opportunity to raise some issues in Communication Studies from north of the border. Specifically, I would like to focus on the place of “mobility” and “mobilities” in the discipline. Why are we modifying technologies with mobile? What kind of license and imagination is granted with the modification of technologies with mobile? What does the shift to mobile signify? What do we gain or lose by modifying technologies with mobile instead of digital? My sense from the literature is that we are in the midst of a conceptual shift from time, space, and place to ‘mobility’ to better explain and understand the post-modern west and its shifting economic, social, political, religious, and cultural practices. Is our discipline the site that should be taking up this concept? What value does this concept hold for us to intervene, resist, interrogate, refuse and/or liberate theories and practices in Communication Studies? How does mobility get deployed in other disciplines, most specifically geography, from where it has migrated? What kinds of residuals remain from mobility’s movement from one discipline to another? How do we address relations between moving, movement and mobility? I will use the first column as an opportunity to forward some of the terrain, terms, definitions of mobility and mobilities. In the second column, I will examine how these ideas manifest themselves in a mobile practice that is having difficulties transitioning (moving) from one platform and set of practices to another, mobile television. At the end of the series, I hope to come to a better understanding and consideration of the ways in which we may want to consider mobility and mobilities in Communication Studies.

For the last three years, I have worked on two large-scale interdisciplinary research projects focusing on wireless communications. The first research project, the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), brought together five different institutions (Banff New Media Institute, Concordia University, York University, Hexagram, and the Ontario College of Art and Design) with a range of skill sets including designers, engineers, social scientists and artists to develop and implement mobile experiences in the Canadian context. The second research project, the Canadian Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP), has been exploring various models for the delivery and implementation of Wi-Fi networks.

I relay my involvement with these projects as part of my reflection on thinking through ‘mobility’. In both of these projects, I was confronted with, almost on a daily basis, the lack of disconnect between the promises of mobile technologies and their implementation, the policy context shaping the cost, regulation, and take up of cellular phones,1 the ways in which the metaphors and our experiences of ‘old’ media are used to understand and negotiate the ‘new’, and the different creative and problem solving strategies of the various constituents in our research project. Each of these items alone could be a column onto itself, but I want to relay the context from where my reflections on ‘mobility’ come from — from a material interaction with mobile technologies — the making, creating, testing and assessing of two mobile experiences — Urban Archaeology: Sampling the Park and The Haunting — and extensive case studies of Wi-Fi networks.2

A simple, and popular strategy, to consider mobility is to turn to the OED. In this context, mobility is represented as:3

1. a. The ability to move or to be moved; capacity for movement or change of place; movableness, portability.
b. Movement or capacity for movement of a limb, part, or organ of the body. Also: liability of a limb, part, or organ to be abnormally displaced.
c. Ease or freedom of movement; capacity for rapid or comfortable locomotion or travel.

2. a. The ability or tendency to change easily or quickly; changeableness, instability; fickleness. Now chiefly literary.
b. Tendency or susceptibility to rapid emotional change; impressionability; excitability. Now rare.
c. Tendency to change expression readily and frequently; fluidity of facial expression; expressiveness.

3. Mil. The ability of a military force or its equipment to move or be moved rapidly from one position to another.

4. a. Chiefly Physics. The degree of movement of the particles of a liquid or gas; the mobile quality of a liquid or gas.
b. Chem. and Physics. The degree to which a charge carrier undergoes movement in a definite direction in response to an electric field.

5. Chiefly Sociol. The ability or potential of individuals within a society to move between different social levels (more fully vertical mobility) or between different occupations, etc. (more fully horizontal mobility); the ability or potential of a workforce to move from place to place.

6. Geol. and Ecol. The degree to which a substance (e.g. a mineral, pollutant, etc.) tends to be transported in a medium or system, or dispersed from its point of origin or introduction.

In his most recent book On the Move, Tim Cresswell (2006) examines the origin stories of the use and understanding of mobility in the western world. One of his many important insights is that movement and mobility often have positive connotations. He suggests that these associations are critical to interrogate to grant mobility more explanatory power.

He ends On the Move with the following:

“In this world it is important to understand that mobility is more than just about getting from A to B. It is about the contested world of meaning and power. It is about mobilities rubbing up against each other and causing friction. It is about a new hierarchy based on the ways we move and the meanings these movements have been given” (265).

Is it meaning and power we should be taking up more explicitly instead of moving and mobility? How is our discipline implicated in meaning and power by our take up and modification of communications and communication technologies with mobile? What do we lose and what do we gain? In the next column, I would like to further explore these ideas and think through their place in Communication Studies.

Image Credits:

1. Urban Archeology: User in the park with GPS and iPAQ. (Photos: M. Longford)
2. Urban Archeology: 3D Maps of hotspots tagged with GPS coordinates. (Illustration: A. Morris)
3. The Haunting – Using the metaphor of the Ouija Board as an interface for Mount Royal Park, Montreal. (Illustration: A. Landry)
4. The Haunting – Players in Mount Royal Park. (Illustration: L. Palmer)

Please feel free to comment.

1. ”At the end of 2006, Canadian wireless phone subscribers numbered 18.5 million, representing a national wireless penetration rate of approximately 58%. Recent CWTA research estimates wireless penetration in major urban centres has exceeded 70%, with some greater metropolitan areas approaching the 80% mark.” http://cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/index.html, accessed May 13, 2007
2. My colleagues and I have tried to address some of these issues in Wi: The Journal of the Mobile Digital Network and its more recent manifestation as wi: the journal of mobile media (forthcoming February 2008, “Pedestrian Traffic”).
3. OED