JBL: The Giant and the Rock Can't Miss

I am a character in a best-selling video game that I can't even begin to figure out how to play. Computers and technology hate me. It's the only way I can explain my apparent technological ineptitude. Certainly, it can't be me.

Recently, I went into a cell phone store for a repair. By the time I left, I had been sold Internet access, photo messaging, text messaging and the ability to get video news and sports highlights. I love all of this stuff that I really don't need and probably will never be able to figure out how to use.

I may not know how to use all of this technology, but I understand investment opportunities; the world is going wireless and it is dragging people like me with it. The two stocks I have on deck today are prime examples of the near future in a wireless world.

I believe land line phone companies are dead, they just don't know it yet. They are the eight-tracks trying to compete with CDs. Voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) and cell phones have leapfrogged the land line providers' technology. Wireless is the next generation that will replace broadband, and it will soon be here.

Andre the Giant

Like the legendary wrestler, Vodafone (VOD) is a huge foreign giant. Vodafone has 165 million customers worldwide. It is the cell phone industry's lumbering giant. But lumbering or not, giants are hard to beat.

Vodafone got a lot of negative press for overpaying for acquisitions and 3G technology licenses. 3G, or third generation, is a way of sending data faster. 3G is the equivalent of broadband technology over your cell phone.

Vodafone probably did overpay, but the 3G licenses are now paid for and beginning to produce revenue. Vodafone announced that 4.35 million customers had signed up for 3G. They are on track to hit their target of 10 million 3G customers by March 2006.