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Wireless bandwidth is like land in Manhattan -- it's extremely valuable because they're not making more of it.

But we sure are using more of it. The wireless-industry association CTIA reported in October 2011 that the number of wireless devices in the U.S. had, for the first time, exceeded the number of people. And Mobile Future, a coalition of vendors and consumers, estimated in a March 2011 report that by 2014, voice traffic will comprise only 2% of the total wireless traffic in the United States -- a worrisome statistic because, as the report noted, smartphones consume 24 times more data than old-school cell phones, and tablets consume 120 times more data than smartphones. (See Data needs bandwidth, but how much? for details.)

The result: Wireless networks are edging near capacity, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Credit Suisse conducted a survey last year that revealed mobile networks in North America were running at 80% of capacity, with 36% of base stations facing capacity constraints. The average globally for base station capacity utilization, the report said, was 65%.

PayPal has taken the wraps off its single sign-on digital identity service for online shopping, PayPal Access. The move comes as the San Jose-based payments operator unveils a series of new partnerships with a host of banking technology suppliers at the BAI Retail delivery show in Chicago.

PayPal Access is designed to simplify the checkout process by enabling the company's 100 million account holders to sign in at participating retailers' sites with just their PayPal user name and password.

Separately, PayPal is introducing a series of new relationships with banking technology suppliers as it bids to make it easier for banks to incorporate its services into their offerings. This morning it announced a partnership with NCR and S1 that enables people to make real-time person-to-person payments from cash machines.

Canada may be moving to polymer-based currency, but mobile payment services like Square -- which cater to classic plastic -- haven't yet taken time to trek to the Great White North. NetSecure is looking to offer similar convenience to the region with its new Kudos Payments service, which just so happens to ship with a shockingly curvy swiping dongle. Similar to Square, it creates a secure 'point of sale' without a hard-wired transaction terminal, and charges a slightly higher 2.9-percent fee to users' accounts for each exchange. Kudos has iOS, Android, and Blackberry apps to tap into the functionality and, even a version for Mac and PC -- in other words, you and yours should be suitably covered. Any roving entrepreneurs who are interested in the service will be able to snag the $49.99 kit free of charge from the company's website for a "limited time," which may or may not expire before Google decides to open its own Wallet a few miles kilometers north