It appears that 3-G wireless has won the game as the new way that cell phones communicate. Although today there is a serious problem as many times the cell tower is in a different state or even a different country than the caller with the cell phone. This causes a huge problem as in who collects the tax revenue?

Along the Canadian border there are many cell towers and they transmit calls coming from the United States, the person using a cell phone is charged a roaming charge, but it is unfair to the cell phone subscriber to receive charges for international phone call or taxes from both countries.

The same problem occurs along the Mexican border of the United States where property is cheaper thus cell tower operators have put the cell tower in Mexico in order to avoid taxes and receive a faster return on investment. So far state agencies have not complained but in the future they will.

Right now many state governments are experiencing a windfall in collected tax revenue from increased fuel costs, but when that ends, these states will be looking to collect money from other sources and you can bet they will want their tax revenue from money generated from cell towers no matter what country the cell tower is actually located in.

Who owns the airwaves and who owns the airspace, if the signal is traveling over the ground then does that state or jurisdiction apply also to the tax revenue collected? In the future these court cases may get very large and change the way that cell phone charges come on your cell phone bill.