Meganet

Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, has more mobile phones than does Paris. The largest phone system in Kampuchea is cellular. In the next twenty years, within one generation, everyone on earth will be able to place a phone call to anyone else anywhere. This Meganet is a patchwork of networks, big and small, local and global, primitive and high tech, that fit together because they share compatible technologies. Wilson Dizard, Jr.'s Meganet is a report on the progress and setbacks in expanding Meganet resources to everyone on earth. He examines not only the advantages, such as toll-free numbers and credit cards, but also such downsides as the potential invasions of privacy and the question of who will and who should control Meganet. Dizard describes the likely players: from the oil and utility companies who own desirable rights-of-way to Silicon Valley to emerging innovators in Chile and Germany.