The Real Treasure is in Your Pocket Learning of a Foreign Language with the Mobile Phone in Off-Line Mode.

He learned that this would be close to impossible, because of a rule that says when a street decides to bury its lines, property owners must forfeit their right to a few square feet of space on the pavement to allow for electrical boxes every fifty meters or so. (Why there must be boxes so close together, and above ground, is not clear. After all, the basic idea is to put all the apparatus underground. It would seem to spring from bureaucratic resistance to the very idea of burying wires. Something should be above ground!) Japan's land values being what they are, no one can afford to give up those precious square feet. Mild addiction results in total addiction when Japan ends up relying on technologies that actually require the existence of poles. In the 1990s, Japan began pushing the PHS cellular phone as its big contender in the mobile-phone business. Unlike other new systems, which are truly wireless and satellite-linked, PHS sends signals to small relay boxes that must be set up every few dozen meters on traffic-light or telephone poles ...»