The Dream: A Cellphone With WiFi

Corie Lok says that once WiFi starts popping up in cellphones, the age-old dream of "one person, one phone" (we almost wrote "one vote") is about to become a reality:

In the next year, though, Wi-Fi—the popular wireless technology installed in many buildings that allows laptop
users to surf the Net—will make mobile phone calls work virtually anywhere. An emerging crop of technologies will
stitch Wi-Fi networks and existing cellular networks together, allowing calls to automatically switch between the
two. The percentage of mobile phones that are Wi-Fi enabled will grow from near 0 percent last year to 85 percent by
2007, predicts On World, a San Diego, CA-based wireless-market research firm. "I'm very optimistic that within 10
years, most people will be carrying a single phone and making and receiving most of their personal and business calls
on that one device," says J. Gerry Purdy, an analyst with Mobiletrax, a Cupertino, CA, mobile- and wireless-research
firm.

Seems to be a bit optimistic to us, but hey, we won't be complaining if it happens.

[Via Futurismic]