One major common problem faced by cellular and landline service providers is market competition. In today's climate of competitive markets, cellular service providers have found that one way for them to grow market share and defend their businesses is to be proactive and form alliances, and to partner with landline service providers. In addition, cellular service providers seek to differentiate their service offerings, and to capture the largest portion of market revenue by meeting an ever increasing demand for access to a wide range of media forms such as MP3 encoded audio, still and video imaging, data, instant messaging, and email. In a similar manner, the landline service providers have found that to grow market share and ward off competition, they too must be proactive and form alliances, and to partner with cellular service providers. Support for broad economical access to these converging forms of communication is needed to enable unfettered market growth, and to support the development and use of new handheld devices needed to provide increasing levels of mobile multimedia communication functionality.
Although the formation of alliances and partnerships between cellular service providers and landline service providers may help to ward off competition, such alliances and partnerships are faced with other problems. For example, the erection of cellular infrastructure such as cellular towers may be an expensive venture since this may require acquisition of real estate, whether in the form of outright purchases or through leasing. Cellular infrastructure also requires the establishment of one or more expensive backbone links to handle core network traffic. Another cellular-related problem is that the cellular signals do not penetrate and propagate in buildings such as homes and offices very well. This is especially true with the frequencies that are typically utilized in the United States, which may vary between 800 MHz and 1900 MHz or 1.9 GHz.
The use of digital media is growing at an extremely rapid pace. Most consumers today have a variety of devices that gather, store, process, generate, communicate, play back, and/or display information electronically, in a digital form. Examples of such devices include digital still and video cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop and desktop personal computer (PC) systems, video cassette recorders (VCRs), personal video recorders (PVRs), document and photo scanners, digital and high definition television sets, stereo audio equipment, and cellular phones, to name only a few. Many times, this multimedia information is of interest to others, and the consumer has a desire to share the information with friends, family, and business associates. In some situations, the exchange may be accomplished by attaching copies of the information to electronic mail sent to those with whom the information is to be shared. In other situations, physical media containing a copy of the information may be sent by regular mail or express carriers, or delivered personally. The act of electronically sharing copies of multimedia information can be confusing even when the individual with whom the information is to be shared is physically with the individual doing the sharing.
Although technically savvy individuals may make such information available via, for example, an Internet web page, most consumers have no means of sharing electronic information in a convenient manner, while still maintaining control over who has access. The individual having a use for the information may not be aware that it is available. Most acts of sharing electronic forms of information subject to change, requires repeated, active involvement in providing updated copies. For example, information such as a personal calendar, address book, or telephone directory, may be of use to business associates or family members. Making certain that others that may make use of the information have the most recent copies currently requires active effort to effect the updates. Access to information on devices such as those listed above typically involves cabling the device that is the source of the information to the device that is to receive the information, and the use of software for transferring the information. The physical connection of cables between pieces of equipment, and the configuration and use of software for such a transfer is an intimidating activity for many users. This limits the exchange of such digital information to those having familiarity with the processes involved in sharing.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.