Ever since we discovered electricity, we have used metal (copper) wires to pass around electrons. In the 21st century, we now can, and will, pass around photons using optical storage media and fiber optics (all made possible by the invention of laser-diode light sources).

However, it was only in the last century that we learned how to use electromagnetic waves to send information through space rather than with electrons in wires. Radio, and later Television, became the controlling medium of political information distributed by those who were given the "license" to operate at one of the very few frequencies of such radiation controlled by the government. It was only that very small spectrum of "Citizen Band" radio that permitted any individual to use his own 5 watt transmitter to run his business (trucking typically) using a personal radio. BUT then along came Motorola and its techniques of "multiplexing" many signals (typically low-data-rate voice) into a few frequencies in the "citizen band" range of frequencies and power levels.

THAT broke open the idea of a personal portable (sorta) phone run on radio waves in the many "megahertz" range. With enough "towers" scattered all over high population centers, the "cell-phone" idea became an essential business tool. HOWEVER, that world did NOT break wide open until the analog-RF signal processing was converted to digital techniques which permitted even MORE compression, MORE subscribers, SMALLER cell-phones and cheaper bandwidth costs to the end-user consumer. All that was "good enough" until the personal radio-phone, running non-voice data-bits, was integrated into applications that were now common on networked (wired-phone) computers. Intelligent Phones were born, and the limitation of existing channels and frequencies almost doomed the revolutionary breakthrough of the i-phone.

So, along has come the need to use the Ultra-High Frequencies that were once used by the rather failed UHF television channel networks. UHF is the range of frequencies from 300 megahertz to 3 GIGAHERTZ. These higher frequencies do NOT travel well for long distances, or through building walls of steel, etc. But they were perfect for "portable phones" and garage door openers and short range signaling devices that eventually found their way into "wireless" networking of laptop computers (802.11b-WiFi).

But the toothpaste was now irrevocably out of the tube, and individuals are now able to use the FOURTH generation of digital cell phone communication bandwidths to pass around (primarily receive) user data at several megabits/sec in small bursts of connectivity. Today, millions of children, raised under the Apple-banner, now expect to download full length "high definition (sorta)" Hollywood movies to their break-through personal computer called the "i-pad".

That works for now, but the current generation of "i-pad" clones running Goggle's Android Operating System have the ambition of making a smaller unit work with two built-in video cameras (with resolutions sufficient to take beautiful still pictures, and record Higher Def Video to EEPROMs). Not only do we now have the real potential for a "video-phone" method of people talking to people, but we now can do so from anywhere, at any time, for any reason. The GIGAHERTZ bandwidth-boggles-da-brain.

Our problem has been that those who sell/rent time on their cell-tower transceivers can only see the market as a downloading of "data-products" that could be purchased from some remote server (movies, Apps, songs, software etc). More importantly, they also want to prevent all their customers from becoming broadcasters and publishers of stolen intellectual property, so the "UP-link" bandwidth and transfer speeds and total capacities have been intentionally limited. If it is permitted at all (they can control who is sending out questionable content as did the Russian/Chinese/Egyptian governments recently), the subscription costs will be high and at particular times and locations will be insufficient to handle heavy "up-load" demands if everyone has an intelligent "cell phone/pad" with very high resolution video cameras built in.

GIGAHERTZ radio frequencies will be the dominant universal personal data path for the rest of the 21st century. "Terahertz" signaling will never be a reality, so we are at the real-world's RF frequency limits, but we certainly are not at the limiting number of applications of this type of data transfer. We now know that the right network configuration is the use of optical fiber (photons, not electrons) to many many fixed locations (even to the home/family-room) which does not have a serious problem with bi-directional signaling as do existing RF transmitter based ideas. The needed GIGMEDIA CONSULTING research is the integration of ultra-small/cheap RF signaling in local networks that have the ability to route content up AND down to a nearby fiber access node. Today, that is beyond the thinking of those who sell "intelligent" cell phones, but is certain to become the end-user preferred mode of talking to (not from) the rest of the world of 6 gigabodies.

BUT, the hidden invention proposed here is to use the very low power, very small size, of gigahertz signaling devices at very very high data rates in near line-of-sight applications as the control circuitry for very complex devices. What was the 20th century garage door opener, will soon the be logical control-bus of all functional devices in the future of aviation. Rather than mechanical control "cables" and hydraulic lines, and electrical cables, or even optical fibers, complex engineering can now be managed by unbelievably small yet powerful computers whose I/O will be upgrades of the WiFi networking strategy developed for laptops. All of that will have its greatest impact on future aircraft that must be ultra-light in order to take off on limited power in a VTOL flight mode.