With hindsight, the 1994 predictions of the growth of cellular telephony in South Africa were rather pathetic. “Initial projections estimated that the person-to-person market in South Africa would reach a saturation at about 476 000 subscribers in 2003,” says Ian Lester, CEO of Beyond Wireless. “Today, human subscribers are numbering well in excess of 14 million active users.”

Yet the number of people living in a country, region or the world limits this market. But for every human subscriber, there are innumerable connectible devices out there that can talk to one another over a wireless network. As FutureWorld`s Wolfgang Grulke points out, there are only 6 billion people on the planet and as many as 50 billion machines.