If Mr Bush needs to get hold of Mr Hu outside the formal meetings, they will be able to converse on their Wonder-Phones, helpfully supplied to those attending the summit by Korea Telecom. If Mr Bush feels inclined, he can have a video call with China抯 president while their motorcades drive around Busan, the Korean city where the summit will be held.
Big deal, you might say: anyone with a mobile phone can make a call from a car. But there is a difference. The Wonder-Phone is not a cellular phone: it uses a technology known as mobile WiMax ?a kind of grown-up version of WiFi. And Mr Bush抯 call would be transmitted over an internet-protocol network, rather than the GSM or CDMA technology that dominates mobile telephony.
Probably the biggest wonder of the Wonder-Phone is that it exists at all. Technology seers have predicted the coming of WiMax for so long that a lot of people gave up waiting. You might have known it would emerge in South Korea, where broadband is commonplace and Samsung and LG Electronics are among the world抯 biggest phone manufacturers.
Having shown off its WiMax service (called WiBro) in Busan, Korea Telecom plans to launch it in Seoul next year. Seoul will be the first WiMax-covered city, but others from Philadelphia to Amsterdam are becoming giant WiFi hotspots. They will have WiFi mesh networks, allowing anyone within their city boundaries to view the internet on a laptop or mobile device.
WiMax and WiFi mesh networks extend the broadband connectivity that is common in homes and offices to cities. That is good for consumers. It promises greater convenience ?they will no longer have to search for a caf?with a WiFi hotspot ?and the possibility of making voice calls on the move using internet phone services such as Skype.
Conversely, it unsettles companies such as Vodafone and Cingular. Until now, they have faced no external competition for mobile data or voice services. If people walking in cities can call each other free via Skype, why would they pay a cellular tariff? What will protect mobile operators from the same price pressures now facing fixed line companies?
Cellular companies are not standing still: many sell 3G broadband services. Verizon Wireless has launched a service across 60 cities that provides a fast internet connection for $60 per month. But Verizon is clearly wary of cannibalising its cellular revenues. Subscribers are barred from using their 3G data connections to make voice calls via the internet.
The company that could lose most from WiMax is Qualcomm, which not only makes mobile phone chips but holds many patents relating to CDMA standards. Korean companies such as Samsung and LG Electronics are estimated to have paid Qualcomm $2.8bn last year. 換ualcomm has tied the mobile industry up in knots with patents,?says Keith Woolcock of Westhall Capital, the stockbrokers.
Relations within the industry are already tense. Qualcomm sued Nokia this week for allegedly breaching its patents after six companies including Nokia complained to the European Commission about the US company. In contrast, WiMax and WiFi are open standards and companies that make devices that use these networks will not have to pay licence fees.
Furthermore, Qualcomm抯 US west coast rival Intel is backing WiMax. One of Intel抯 biggest recent successes is the Centrino chip, designed to help laptops link to WiFi networks. Intel is now developing WiMax chips and is at the head of a broader effort by Silicon Valley companies to dominate the next generation of mobile devices and technology, known as 4G.
It is a little early to sound the death knell for cellular technology. As Qualcomm executives tirelessly point out, mobile WiMax has yet to prove itself and faces many obstacles. Cellular technology is sophisticated and in place: networks blanket most countries. Not only is WiMax a vision rather than a reality in most places but companies are still working out the mobile WiMax standard.
Even supporters of WiMax doubt whether it will be a direct competitor to cellular technology in the near future. By the time companies are considering whether to invest money in WiMax masts and equipment to cover many cities, cellular operators will have 3G data services in place and will be offering them cheaply enough to make it tough for new entrants to gain a foothold.
But the threat of WiMax is already keeping phone companies honest: they must keep an eye over their shoulders when setting charges for 3G mobile broadband in the lucky places with WiMax or a WiFi network. The same goes for voice calls. Korea Telecom plans to offer phones that switch between WiBro and cellular networks, depending on which is cheaper.
Ultimately, it is hard to see the closed networks and licensing deals of the cellular world surviving intact. By the time 4G services arrive ?some time after 2010 ?internet standards will have come to mobile telephony. If Mr Bush talks into his Wonder-Phone next week, he will be one of the few to have used WiMax. But where Busan goes, other cities will follow.
