In the United States, the typical corporate "policy" has been: "Let the employees buy their own phones and use their business judgment, and we'll reimburse them for their itemized business calls."

"I like to say that they're pursuing a strategy of trying to save money no matter how much it costs," says In-Stat's Hughes. His recent report signaled a dangerous inflection point if wireless mismanagement continues: U.S. corporate spending on wireless voice and mobile data services will exceed spending on all wired voice and data services by 2010.

The Problem With Your Carrier
For most U.S. businesspeople and consumers, the difficulty of simply making the wireless connection with each other and the home office network has been a significant and limiting factor of mobile adoption. In this sense, the wireless carriers have been the elephant in the mobile room.

Most of the frustration with carriers stems from three areas: inconsistent networking standards among competitors, the two-year customer lock-in agreement (which is unique to the United States), and the slower speeds and smaller bandwidth connections on those networks. "Mobile networks are incredibly bad in the United States compared with Europe and the more advanced countries in Asia," says Nielsen.

In Japan, for example, they're pushing fourth generation (or 4G) speeds, says the 451 Group's Rizzo. "But here in the U.S., we're patting ourselves on the back for 3G."

It's a different story in most of Asia, Rizzo says. There, demand for new devices and the latest content has fostered better, faster networks as well as new types of service providers. Hughes Hubbard & Reed's Sommer hears about the differences between U.S. and Japanese wireless technology from the firm's Japanese attorneys. "Their screens are always better than ours," he says. "And the phones are so fast."