The End is Nigh - for the Mobile Phone

A Salford engineer is predicting that the mobile phone as we know it will have died out within the next five years. The future, he says is mobile computing with, ultimately, wearable parts to replace traditional handsets.

Professor Nigel Linge from the UK's University of Salford predicts that the future of telephony will be about wearable technology - components that can be embedded within consumers' clothing.

He said: "It is 130 years since the invention of the telephone and we are moving into a world of mobile computing where voice communication is just one service.

"Instead of mobile phones, in five years we will all carry mobile computers on us. So, for example, the communicator on our collar might send signals to the keyboard on our sleeve. Already we are seeing simple everyday objects with communications systems called 'tags' built into them."

Nigel will be exploring the past and future of telecommunications technology in the Institution of Engineering and Technology Christmas lecture called From Talking 2 Txtng at the University of Salford on Monday 20 November.

The lecture - which is open to the general public - will feature an exhibition of historic telephone equipment from 1980 'brick'-style handsets to a Morse code telegraph sounder from the early 1900s. Nigel will also give a demonstration of the latest mobile phone technology that features video conferencing.

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Posted to the site on 15th November 2006