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A country-wide wireless network is being built in Finland. It will use Flash-OFDM technology at frequencies around 450 MHz. Here's the story in Finnish.

Many providers are looking to converge their separate networks into a single network that is cheaper to maintain. Mobile WiFi based phone service is just a step into that direction. Eventually, I see Cell providers switching to a pure IP based service using WiFi type standards. It's not here quiet yet, but it's coming. Has anybody looked into Flarion? (http://www.flarion.com/ I believe a system like this could be a step into moving to a pure IP based system. A local cell carrier has been beta testing flarion in my area for a while and some of the cities cop cars have had flarion systems implemented into them so that they can get more detailed information quickly to their cars. VoIP may not be as stable or as secure as a typical digital cell service, but the day is coming when VoIP technology will over take the typeical cell service because it's cheaper.

Making cell phones use WiFi might not be a very good choice, when people will start ceasing to have WiFi connections in the first place. Flarion has come up with OFDM technology which provides real broadband speeds on wireless networks (scaleable to cellular networks level), much faster than forthcoming CDMA2000-EvDO (or whatever), and any other technology available in the forthcoming future. Nextel has already started a successful trial network.

Wired WiFi services have limited life, it seems.

Another twist to this story is the fact that Verzon has offered news.com article5 Billion in an effort to halt the spectrum swap to its competitor Nextel. This is in comparison to the only $ 850 Million that Nextel offered to help reband its network, and pay for retuning/equipment of public safety systems and others whom its towers interfere with. Why does Nextel want the spectrum at 1.9 GHz? It's because this is where it plans to roll out its future high speed technoloy (Flash OFDM) that it is currently piloting in the Raleigh-Durham metro area using hardware from Flarion. This spectrum will allow Nextel a huge advantage when it launches this service nationwide, essentially allowing it to jump right into and dominate the markets that Verizon (EVDO) and AT&T-Cingular(EDGE) are currently trying to capture. Company propaganda "With burst rate for the downlink is 3 Megabits per second (Mbps), and 900 Kilobits per second (Kbps) for the uplink. Typical user experience is 1 Mbps in the downlink, and 300 to 500 Kbps in the uplink, with average latency below 50 milliseconds." I beta tested EVDO for Verizon and when let me tell you its impressive. Nextel's foray into this space is serious and Verizon and other carriers want to prevent this from happening.