North American has the distinction of being home to some of the world's leading wireless gadget companies, but at the same time having one of the lowest adoption rates for the technology.
While Motorola, Research in Motion and a host of others develop the next generation of GPRS devices, the United States and Canada are lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to rolling out the services that will make them work.
Analysts say it will be 2002 or 2003 by the time GPRS is widely used, even though tests have been underway since late 1999, and several companies say they will have functioning networks running by late summer.
North American's are closing the technology gap with Asia and Europe, but still have a far lower penetration rate for mobile phones and other wireless devices.
North America has also been held back by its decentralised approach to developing communications standards. European and Asian mobile phone operators use the common GSM system, but North Americans have GSM, CDMA and TDMA networks to deal with.
It is expected the arrival of 3G will eventually force the adoption of a common standard within North America.