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Wang, M., and Kettinger, W. J. 1995. "Projecting the Growth of Cellular Communications,"
Communications of the ACM(38:10), pp. 25-31.
The tremendous success of cellular technology has fundamentally changed the way people
communicate and prompted the evolution of a new multibillion dollar wireless communications
industry. Linking service areas, wireless communications has altered the way business
is conducted. For instance, with a laptop computer, a PCMCIA modem and a cellular
phone, a real estate agent can contact his or her office and clients, check sales
listings and arrange appointments while traveling. Field service and sales people
can, from customer locations, access corporate databases to check inventory status,
prepare up-to-the-minute price and delivery quotes, and cut orders directly to the
factory. Two-way paging services allow a firm's workforce to stay in close contact,
even when traditional wired communication services are not available. Hand-held hybrids
of phone-computer-fax machines feed information to wireless communication networks,
allowing an executive to make decisions while watching a little league baseball game.
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