From number portability to communications with personality

How are we to reach a dream world of universally available, easy to use, controllable and individual telecommunications? It will not come about easily or nearly as soon as the optimists hope. There are many challenges still to be overcome: technical, social and commercial. From past experience, the technology problems will be the easiest to solve. Social change will happen or not, as the case may be, and there's not much we can do. The real show-stoppers are likely to be commercial.