🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Nov22.174929.23073@ariel.unm.edu> ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan n5gax) writes:
>>Remember how it was said that everyone would have Picturephones by now?
>>Things don't get cheap without substantial demand *first*.
>
>Agreed and disagreed.  The popularity of cellular phones, in spite of their
>current price (it _is_ becoming a major electronics market), suggests that
>cheaper Cphones will be even more widely popular -- the demand appears to
>be there.

I'm really not sure of this.  Hereabouts, at least, much of the advertising
for cellular phones seems to be pitched at people who have a professional
requirement for them.  I really question how much demand there will be from
people in more ordinary jobs, who very seldom have much need to make a
phone call without a fixed phone handy.

>Picturephones are a lousy counterexample, on account of because 1) they aren't
>that much of an improvement over audio-only, 2) they're too unreasonably ex-
>pensive, even given significant development (though this _could_ change),
>3) most people aren't interested in the frame-every-few-seconds that the cur-
>rent technology supports and 4) the 'phone system can't handle the BW neces-
>ary for a faster frame-transfer...

The Picturephone I was referring to is not the frame-every-few-seconds one,
but a specific (note the capitalization) live-video system that Bell tried
to sell about twenty years ago, with complete lack of success.  To my mind,
pocketphones share many of the same characteristics:  for most people they
do not represent a significant added utility, they'd be costly and at times
inconvenient, and the infrastructure (in this case, spectrum space) is not
there to support a really universal pocketphone system.
-- 
"I'm not sure it's possible            | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
to explain how X works."               |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry