worldwide wireless messaging

Simple answer. No. Not yet, anyway. There's some stuff on the horizon, but still a way off, and once available, it still won't be cheap. In the US, the closest you can get is CDPD, or one of the Mobitex services. Limited coverage, but, in general, it works. I use a CDPD modem (a Sierra Wireless PC-Card), and service through AT&T wireless, and it works pretty well. I use it both in Windoze laptops (Win2K, Win98) and HP 690 CE handheld. The big problem worldwide is a lack of standards in many areas...telcos, cellular, utility rules & regs, radio spectrum allocations, and signalling...it's a really ugly mix world-wide. The only real solution is to put it all into orbit, and have everything talk over a standardized 'network' created by a constellation of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites. Iridium was an attempt at this...and was a dismal failure (look for a pretty cool light show in the sky when they deorbit the constellation of satellites sometime soon!). There are others that are working on getting a world-wide satellite network up, and already some of the constellations are partially built, but...building such infrastructures is incredibly expen$ive, and frought with numerous problems... on being that of making a handheld device that can transmit a strong enough signal to reach a satellite in orbit is a bit of a challenge....but not insurmountable. But again, it's all expensive. Such a system is likely to be really spendy for the early adopters to use...but it'll be world-wide, and allow for more than just data...it'll do voice (goodbye all the myriad cellular "standards"), and, perhaps even limited video. Rick Bensene