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WHEN the talkers and texters upgrade to the next generation of faster 3G cellphone networks sometime in the next decade, what will happen to today’s common or garden mobile phone systems? Perhaps they will fall out of use and into disrepair, like canals did when the railways stole their traffic. Or maybe they will be switched off and forgotten about, like the old pneumatic tube system that Victorian London relied on to send messages and power lifts.

But there is a third possibility, say telecoms analysts: the old phone networks will be reborn with an important new function. They predict…

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