Wireless coconut telegraph

Saipan has a few wireless “hotspots” for notebook computer users, and that’s no small blessing since notebook computers are as essential to island living as zoris are. Wouldn’t it be cool if the entire island was covered by one big wireless network?

Mind you, I’m not launching a crusade for such a thing. The last thing we need is some government-orchestrated fiasco involving Internet access.

And I have no idea if a private sector project would be financially feasible. I have never worked in that industry, so I’m not playing gadfly here: I’ll readily admit I’m dreaming about the frosting without knowing how to bake the cake.

Still, dreaming, well, it ain’t no sin.

So imagine having to take the next group of visiting business associates on the obligatory trip to Suicide Cliff, where you’re secretly grinding your teeth in frustration because it’s the 100th time you’ve made that time-zapping run. You’ve got work to do, and you’re not up for answering any more questions about the war, Cow Town, Marpi Dump, and all the rest of it.

But with wireless access, you could slink back to your car and go through your e-mail. Or get some research done. Either way, that’s a way to salvage some work out of an otherwise lost stretch of time. Visitors to Suicide Cliff go into a drooling, slack-jawed, half-hour trance when they stand at the fence anyway, so they won’t notice your absence.

Meanwhile, a wired island would be good PR fodder for the Commonwealth, though the CNMI currently lacks the acumen to really play such a card. The powers that be are too busy crowing about our “success” in the “promising” Vladivostok tourism industry (what happened to Japan?) and highlighting the next Harvard of the Pacific at the dead hulk of La Fiasco mall (yeah, right).

It’s possible, though, that a tour agency or two might highlight a wireless island as a counterpoint to the, er, backwards reputation that Saipan suffers from.

Police and other mobile government workers might get some benefit from a wireless network. Delivery men would. Warehouses would. Cargo shippers would. I’ll bet even hotel maintenance workers would.

And reporters sure would, they could e-mail their copy directly from the field…of course editors would then expect more copy, so this is probably a mixed blessing.

The addictive thing about notebook computers is that they compound connectivity with mobility, and everything else (fax, phone, carrier pigeon) soon seems toothless by comparison.

The biggest wireless footprint that I’m aware of is in the Oregon boonies, where 700 square miles of outback is covered. This came to my attention via an Associated Press story last month. Saipan’s area of 46.5 square miles is a mere morsel by comparison.

Even if a wireless network spontaneously sprang from the coconut trees, though, we’d have some complainers. We’d see newspaper stories lamenting the fact that not everyone has a notebook computer, and calling for a government crusade to staple IBM Thinkpads to welfare checks.

If you stapled books to welfare checks, would anybody read them?

No.

But we’d soon have a deputy director of Free Computers jetting off to junkets in Denmark for software conventions, Manila for hardware demonstrations, and the all-popular trips to Japan for conferences and, well, somewhere in that itinerary there’s time to squeeze in a massage or two, just to take the edge off those stressful deputy director duties.

Anyway: A wireless island; technically feasible, probably, but could Saipan ever pull such a thing off without bumbling into a fiasco and more government programs?

Now, no. If we change the political laundry…well, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, when Guam manages to build such a network, we can fly down there and try it out.

If, that is, if we have any airlines left.