Be sure to check out the May edition of our Wonder of Wireless (WOW) webcast. This month we're featuring the Paulding County (GA) School District's novel use of wireless technology to better manage its massive bus fleet, and an insider interview with CTIA Chairman and Verizon Wireless CEO and president Lowell McAdam.

Last week, I had the great pleasure of traveling to Southwest Virginia to participate in a cell site ground breaking ceremony. The event was held at a beautiful town hall in the rural community of Pound, Virginia. In fact, the town hall was once a school house where the current mayor - Sarah (Jackie) Gilliam - attended high school. Pound is an old coal town that sits near the Kentucky and Tennessee borders and the roughly 1,000 people that live there have never had wireless service. Enter Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher and Alltel President and CEO Scott Ford.  
 
As a member of both the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Congressman Boucher has a keen sense of how mobile communications are helping to revitalize communities all over the country. So it was with that in mind that Congressman Boucher reached out to Alltel about providing wireless service to the residents of Pound, Va. The result was Monday's event,

where Congressman Boucher, Scott Ford, Wise County Supervisor Frank Luntsford, Pound Mayor Gilliam and myself joined with local leaders and residents to break ground on a new cell site that will be operational in June. In his remarks, Scott Ford mentioned how critical the USF ETC program is for projects like the one in Pound, VA. Without USF support, he said projects like this simply wouldn't be possible.
 
So to Mayor Gilliam, Supervisor Luntsford and all of the wonderful people who joined us the other day for this exciting announcement, I want to thank you for your warm hospitality and welcome you to an ever-growing wireless community. We sincerely hope that wireless service will allow the residents of Pound to enjoy safer, more productive and more prosperous lives.

Steve

It's not even a question of whether we can 'leave home without it' these days... it's clear that Americans are feeling they just can't live without their cell phones! Or at least, we'd rather have them than any other communication technology.  That's one of the major findings of a December 2007 survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project. You can read it all for yourself at  http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Mobile.Data.Access.pdf , but I'd like to hit just a couple of the highlights. First, let's look at mobile data. According to Pew, 62% of Americans have "experience with mobile access to digital data and tools". 62%!

That is a big number. We're not just talking about 'talk' anymore, but using devices to email, text message, send or receive pictures or videos, surf the internet, play games, watch music.... the list goes on and on. Combine that with the FCC report  http://www.hraun.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attackmatch/DOC-277784A1.pdf that shows how much more quickly wireless broadband is being adopted than other high-speed data technologies (DSL and cable) and it's obvious wireless broadband is becoming an increasingly popular, viable and competitive technology. 

I also want to hit on the numbers of Americans identifying what technology would be hardest to give up. Six years ago, none was easier to forego than cell phones. 38% of Americans said they could give up their cell phone. And today? Well, the cell phone is now the 'must-have'... leading the pack as the technology most difficult to part with at 51%. The Internet is next at 45%, followed by television at 43%, and the old landline telephone sinking into the sunset with just 40% of Americans saying it would be the hardest to say goodbye to. That compares to 63% who felt that way just five years ago.

It's been a remarkable and rapid transformation, but one that is occuring because consumers demand more change and more innovation, and the wireless industry continues to answer their call.