The world we live in today is different than that of the 70’s when FM Radio was king atlantic flag pole. The “cool guys” wore this, affectionately called a “Ghetto Blaster” and there were three kinds of music. Disco was led by The Bee Gees and The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack and Rock was led by The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Country Western with Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon.
If you needed to contact someone while on the road, whether they were outside salespeople or not, you couldn’t text, email, or fax them. You had to find a payphone. Some were located in telephone booths by the roadside. They had a 3” phonebook, which included a multitude of Yellow Page Advertisements worth $750.00 per month, as well as a bunch of local businesses competing for their share of the pie. Some of those telephone booths were very disgusting. In those days, people who weren’t as savory as they used to be took pleasure in disposing of them using “biological residual”, engraving their names on their handsets, or any other destructive and creative means. I made a small disposable sock to cover the handset, so that it wouldn’t be necessary to see through it. I then put it in a vending machine next to each phone and charged a quarter. In retrospect, I’m glad that I explored other possibilities, as payphones are rapidly disappearing.
But I digress. Everyone, their children, their mother, and even their least favorite Brother are equipped with a cell phone. 1 in 3 people own a tablet device. This could be an iPad, Nook or Kindle. The M2M (machine to machine) sector is growing. M2M technology allows equipment or devices to communicate over the internet or wirelessly about their condition. Remote generators that are low in fuel may “tell” headquarters they need to refill. A property management company remotely monitors high-rise buildings’ HVAC and lights. This allows them to maximize power efficiency and manage power. A security company can also monitor all doors and windows of secure facilities, sending alerts immediately to the command center in case of a breach, and many other applications.