Unicom has struggled, signing up only 30 million CDMA customers--well below its capacity of 70 million--a subscriber base only a sixth the size of that of China Mobile, the dominant GSM carrier.

FORBES

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