Last night during his State of the Union Address, President Obama, an avid BlackBerry user, noted how important new technology is to the United States of America.
The president would like to blanket the country,with wireless broadband coverage in 98% of the U.S. He also would probably like everyone to have a smartphone.
"Within the next five years, we'll make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans," Obama said. "This isn't just about a faster Internet and fewer dropped calls. It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age."
Obama thought that businesses could use the mobile web to sell
products all over the world. Firefighters with smartphones (he didn't
mention whether BlackBerry, iPhone, Android or Windows Pnone) could
see the design of a burning building. Students could read eBooks and doctors could see patients with video
chat.
Features Mentioned Such as Front-Facing Camera at Forefront
The features the president suggested would require a smartphone, such as an iPhone, Android, Windows Phone or BlackBerry. The front-facing camera is only available on certain iPhones and Android smartphones (HTC EVO 4G, Samsung Epic 4G, Nexus S, T-Mobile MyTouch 4G). The BlackBerry Playbook and Droid Bionic will have front-facing cameras. It is suspected that the next iPad will have a front-facing camera. Video chat over 3G will work on the Verizon iPhone 4 but is only available with Wi-Fi for the AT&T iPhone 4.
Of course carriers, such as Sprint, who like the idea of mobile broadband, issued the following statement. "Within the next five years, we'll
make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of
high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans."
This all sounds great, but then who's going to pay the extra money for the smartphone and the $30 data plan?
Currently, not all of the country is covered by 3G networks, and coverage by 4G LTE fast data networks is smaller.
The last we heard, President Obama uses, for personal use only, a super-secure BlackBerry 8830 with SecurVoice that some people refer to as the "BarackBerry."
We don't know if Obama uses a secure Wi-Fi connection or if he's planning to switch to LTE or 4G sevices so that he can download building plans, read books, or video chat with his doctor.