KQED‘s Forum program had an hour on Verizon’s new decision to unlock its network and the future of consumer wireless technologies. The first part is more about business and consumers, but the conversation wends its way later to issues of unloading cellular traffic to WiFi networks (much as Blackberries do now, I guess). The whole “femtocell” idea is an interesting one, as is the mesh network that Meraki and others are proposing. Of course, the hardest part is convincing consumers to adopt/use the changes, but there are plenty of research questions in there as well, and even good theory questions.

As an added bonus, a caller towards the end named Rajiv who is a “researcher in mobile internet” called in to say that these changes are not really “new innovation.” At the time I thought, “maybe that’s Rajiv Laroia,” but I doubt it.