This is an important Always-On story.

Intel has announced its first "agile radio" chip.

This means you can have a device that supports multiple networks, and the chip will tune itself to whatever is available.

This is one step toward Always-On, but others are needed. We need agile radio chips that not only tune to the right frequency, but deliver just the right power to reach another chip in the network, and no more. We need agile radios whose antennas can point to other agile radios and not spread radio waves in every direction. When we have that we can "mold" local wireless networks to just the coverage area they need to have, no more.

But that is coming.