Many changes lie ahead

Fort Frances and Rainy River district currently have a 2G network for cell-phone signal delivery. It replaced the first generation cell phone system with its analogue signal. Moving to a digital system, allowed cell phone users to have more services.
Those services included texting; Internet browsing, greater voice security came with a penalty. The maximum distance that a cell phone could be used from a tower was greatly reduced. Cell phone companies had to build more towers to reach their users. Cameras came with features that could take pictures and you could send those pictures to people.
When the third generation of cellular networks came into being, speed was dramatically increased. The 3G networks have facilitated greater freedom for users. Networks in the US now offer up connector antennas that are plugged into computers so that people with laptops can use their computers anywhere where a network is available. You could have simultaneous phone and data transfers, music playing plus many network-based applications. Your phone could even work as a credit card.
The I-Phone and other advanced phones took great advantage of the 3G networks. It enabled streaming video (Movies, Television), audio and much more. Most of the United States has 3G networks today. Here in northwestern Ontario, Thunder Bay Mobility has announced the roll out of the 3G network across the region in the next 18 months and have partnered with Rogers Communications.
I can hardly wait to have an I-Phone that will work in this region with all its fun gadgets. There are other similar advanced phones out on the market made by other manufacturers. What are surely to follow suit will be advances in mobile devices like the new I-Pad by Apple that will allow more network available programs. It is only a matter of time until these become available.
I also look forward to picking up a network card for my laptop. It is like an extension to me. It is normally on and even in the evening I will constantly refer to it, checking email, researching topics that I find as interest.
At home, I depend on the wireless network that I have in my home and as long as I can reach it, life is good.
While I am excited about the 3G networks, the Sprint in the United States has already rolled out the next generation of wireless networks in the United Sates now referred to as 4G or fourth generation. It makes phones faster in downloading or uploading information. You can download network applications and run them 100 times faster than you can on a 3G network.
In rural parts of the United States, they are learning that the 4G networks allow greater distances between towers and cell-phones or computers. It is enabling rural homeowners to have access to high-speed Internet connections. Many areas that previously were being denied Internet connections will now be able to receive them with 4G networks.
It is a technology that will prove to be attractive in Northwestern Ontario. It may not overcome issues with the granite shield, but will make serving remote areas better.
4G in our area will probably be 5 to ten years away. Having 3G by next year is wonderful, but we have to understand that technology and the world is moving forward. The 3G phones you may have next year probably won’t work on a 4G network. And in all likelihood your phone that you own today may not work on a 3G network and you will need to change just as you had to change when we went from our analogue phone service to second-generation phone service.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher