"It is dangerous to put limits on wireless data rates, considering economic constraints," I said in 1999. Data rates are really what broadband is about. Broadband wireless communications will support applications up to 1 Gbps and will probably operate in the 60-GHz frequency [1 5]. However, many people argue whether there is a need for such high-capacity systems, bearing in mind all of the compression algorithms developed and the types of applications that require tens of megabits per second. One can look at this issue from another perspective. There is a need for high-capacity systems to give a perspective of what should be the "hot topics" in the area of telecommunications for research. In this visionary perspective of the road to follow, in order to go along with the needs of society in the year to come as far as communications is concerned, capacity is one of the major issues to be developed due to the foreseen increase in demand for new services (especially those based on multimedia). Together with this, personal mobility will impose new challenges to the development of new personal and mobile communications systems.

A conclusion can be drawn from this: Even if at a certain point it may look "academic" to develop a system for a capacity much higher than what seems reasonable (in the sense that there are no applications requiring such high capacity), it is worthwhile to do it since almost certainly in the future (which may not be very far off) applications will come...