From balloons to shrimp-filled shallows, the future is wireless

SINGAPORE: The Internet may feel like it's everywhere, but large pockets of sky, swathes of land and most of the oceans are still beyond a signal's reach. 

Three decades after the first cellphone went on sale — the US$4,000 (RM13,086) Motorola DynaTAC 8000X "Brick" — half the world remains unconnected. For some it costs too much, but up to a fifth of the population, or some 1.4 billion people, live where "the basic network infrastructure has yet to be built," according to a Facebook white paper last month.