Wireless to the Rescue

Four of five news stories these days are all bailout-redux doom and gloom. The fifth is about boom times in wireless. I don't want to call it come-uppance but let's just say wireless veterans have enough scar tissue to gloat.

Case in point: Friday's news cycle was dominated by Citigroup, Detroit's groveling, Obama's sugar daddies... and Verizon's launch of the BlackBerry Storm. Quite the juxtaposition: economy faltering, retailers failing, government posturing, and lines around the building for tech bling.

What I want to know is who's out waiting in line at 4am? Is it the dude whose home was just foreclosed? The single mom drowning under the weight of credit card debt? The bonus-starved Wall Street banker who can't leave home without wearing a paper bag? To read the news, you'd think we all fall into one of those categories. The wireless industry is living proof we don't.

What once was a line used solely by tech-heads has become an enterprise-wide mantra: wireless is essential for business. No wink wink nod. No sneaking around CFO authorization. How else to explain Ovum's sunny mobile data revenue forecast this week? The analyst reports 51% data growth for AT&T in the past year, 43% for Verizon, and no sign of a slowdown through 2009. No sign of a slowdown! Wall Street's a smoldering heap, the Fed is bailing out anything that moves, and gallant wireless data on white horse with lance and shield is riding in to the rescue.

We've arrived. Took long enough.