And on February 7th Alcatel-Lucent unveiled technology that reduces the size of a wireless base station from a filing cabinet's to that of a Rubik's cube.

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These modules, powered by AAA batteries, can be placed anywhere in your home and will simultaneously blast audio alerts on the base station and the wireless speakers.

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When you make a wireless connection, the signals between you and the base station scatter off in multiple directions, but only a fraction of the signal actually hits its intended target.

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Ericsson's Screen Phone, which runs the open-source Linux operating system, combines both Internet access and a speaker phone, and will communicate with a home base station using the emerging Bluetooth technology for wireless personal area networking.

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That base station is what really sets the Ghost Bee apart from other wireless headphones on the market.

ENGADGET

One of Google's trials is in Cape Town, South Africa, involving a "base station" that broadcasts the signals with a range of several miles, and wireless access points, or small boxes that receive the signals.

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The data eventually move to a base station 5 inches tall, from where the info is sent to a PC or onto a wireless network.

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The data eventually move to a base station 12.5cm tall, from where the info is sent to a PC or onto a wireless network.

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