THE WIRELESS WORLD

Just about every person over the age of 12 in Tokyo owns a mobile phone, of which a fifth are high-speed 3G phones that are Internet-enabled. "In terms of the variety of ways mobile technologies help shape people's lives, there's no other place like Tokyo," says Hiroshi Miyanaga, the country's leading telecom expert and a pro-fessor at Tokyo University of Science. Blame teenagers for creating an ever-changing culture around the phenomenon. "They pushed cell phones to get better and more fun, and the girls and mobile handsets are just inseparable," says Yasuko Nakamura, president of marketing firm Boom Planning.

From Parks to the Local Starbucks
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Population: 700,000
Why: Strong grassroots movement
Fact: The capital city has 11 hotspots for every 100,000 residents, including 50 free ones

Austin is only the fourth largest city in Texas, but it stands out in one category (besides being the state capital and the home of the Longhorns): it has more free hotspots per capita than anywhere else in the country. Users can pay to hook up to the Internet at Starbucks, Kinko's, Borders or Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Or they can hop online in any of the city's 50 free hotspots--downtown parks such as Republic Square and small independent stores such as Flipnotics Coffeespace and the Lovejoy Tap Room.

Credit a strong grass-roots wireless movement for helping to unwire the town. Since last year volunteers of the Austin Wireless City Project, a group that meets monthly, have been coordinating the city's free networks and helping residents and visitors get online with a single user name and password anywhere on the network. And "if there's trouble at one hotspot, instead of driving all the way over to investigate, we look at it online, see the status and fix it remotely," says founder Richard MacKennon.

STATISTICS COURTESY OF SPERLING'S BESTPLACES

© 2004