Even when you look at cellular phones in the second generation you have four different standards: GSM, TDMA, CDMA, PDC.

CNN: Business: Inside the Semiconductor Boom

Economides said the agency had the opportunity to make the wrong choice back in the 1990s, when cellular carriers were bidding on spectrum for new digital systems and had to decide among the GSM, TDMA and CDMA standards.

FORBES: Liberty Media Unit Says Standards Manipulated By Competitors

Traditionally, engineers who wanted multilingual phones had to laboriously design custom chips. ("Dual-mode" cell phones that can hop between, say, TDMA and GSM, have been around for years.) Once they are finally designed, such chips can be mass-produced cheaply and consume a reasonable amount of battery juice.

FORBES: Bridging The Gaps

Earlier standards wars mean Europe has phones that work on a system called GSM, while U.S. phones run on GSM, plus TDMA and CDMA. Before the new standard, wireless data had still other incompatible designs and only 700, 000 users in the U.S. "Diplomacy is harder than technology, " says Rossman.

FORBES: WAP music