Analysis of the wireless communications industry

The topic we will be working on for our project this semester deals with
the analysis of the wireless communications industry.  The first part of
the project will go through the history of wireless communications from
the early stages of radio where two-way radios were used to communicate
across fixed distances.  We will then go through the history of two-way
radios the "pre-cellular" era and discuss the technologies and
capabilities.  The second portion of the project will go through the
history of the cellular phone industry and the technology, which has
developed as a result of the massive infrastructure, which has been
built to support that technology.  The third portion of the project will
deal with the pager industry and the satellite infrastructure setup to
handle pagers, transportation monitoring systems for big rigs, and
national cellular phone systems.  The forth portion of the project will
deal with the present technology of digital cellular phone systems
better known as PCS.  This technology is presently being deployed in
order to allow for better quality communication to mobile phones and
allow for high-speed wireless communication for portable computers using
the cellular infrastructure.  The fifth portion of the project will deal
with Broadband Wireless Technology which will be the next wireless
infrastructure to be deployed in conjunction with a global satellite
system called Iridium.  This technology will allow for transmission
rates of data in excess of 1000 times that of traditional modem transfer
systems and provide T1 and T5 style systems over a wireless system.
Finally, we will explore the possible next steps beyond LMDS, PCS, and
Iridium.  We will wrap up with a comparison of these technological
trends to partnership industries and provide comparison to historical
industries studied throughout the course.