Slashdot Mirror

I'm surprised and the US Cellular claims of PCS coverage in comparison to the Sprint PCS claims. I wonder why companies wouldn't mutally negotiate terms for sharing PCS access. Unless PCS is some general term and TDMA and CDMA in no way like one-another.

-Daniel

ps, personally I don't think there's going to be a good solution, and he should abandon the "live" idea and just get a good camera with lots of storage, mount it, take slides, and upload them progressivly at the end of each day using a phone modem.

Meanwhile, Cingular's network looks to me like it's an absolute mess. Cingular is actually a combination of Ameritech, SW Bell, Pac Bell, Nevada Bell, Cellular One, and SNet. Pac Bell and Nevada Bell are GSM 1900 carriers, while Ameritech is TDMA and SW Bell is CDMA and TDMA! AFAIK, there is no equipment that works on both CDMA and TDMA networks, let alone any GSM handsets that work on anything besides GSM networks. Sure, they may claim to have some sort of "national network", but unless I'm absolutely missing something, there's no way that a Cingular customer can use their handset everywhere on the Cingular network.

Voicestream and cingular just traded some bandwidth, Cingular got 10Mhz in NY, St. Louis and Detroit in exchange for 10Mhz in SF and LA.

I have to say, I want GSM, and the (not-quite-so-)associated SMS, just so I can download fancy ringer tones. :)

---

Aerial was GSM 1900, as is Voicestream. See this for more details about their network. From looking further, it looks like they have acquired licenses for Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, LA, SF, and other markets but have yet to complete their network in those markets.

Voicestream's coverage map can be viewed here. From experience, I know that there is no Voicestream coverage in Cleveland or Cincinnati, and by looking at the map it looks like the don't cover most of the SW US, no Chicago, and no California. I'm willing to bet that a job with a lot of travel would be frequenting at least one of the areas. GSM is far superior to CDMA and TDMA, and AFAIK Voicestream is the only provider still offering "first incoming minute free" to new subscribers, but it's too bad that it's taking Voicestream so long in providing coverage to new areas.

I'm getting slightly peeved at all the messages going "you have to pay for incoming cell phone calls?!" I think it seems truly odd that large portions of the technologically-advanced world have to pay to make local phone calls on a landline. US$55/month for phone service (in North Texas, USA) includes extended metro service, and I can call an area of about 250 square miles.

Anyway, back on topic: VoiceStream has GSM service in good portions of the US, and their phones are capable of roaming internationally. A friend of mine just got one, and she's never going back to SWBell. The coverage where she lives is excellent, and she's out in the Middle Of Nowhere(tm).

---

Voicestream sells two such phones in the Northeast, and more are coming. So does Pacif ic Bell.

Use Avantgo for your surfing. It's good quality and it's free. There are also two or three good email clients (OneTouch email from JPSystems comes to mind).

Get an account with a GSM carrier (Voicestream, Powertel, Bellsouth DCS , etc.) and get circuit switched data enabled and your good to go with a reliable connection.

FYI, if anyone is interested, the only cell company I know that offers unmetered ($10/Month) internet access, VoiceStream, won't be selling or connecting these little beauties, because the VS technology requires those pesky little SmartCards. [Most] of the other digital providers use the required process called CDMA, which is supposed to lend well to full-blown internet, as opposed to those text pager features. I got a quote from a tech guy at Sprint who said that they were expecting to have full internet support by 3/99 and would finally start pushing the pdQ's. (There's an analog model, for all you folks in the boonies.) He implied that there would be an entirely new billing format to account for the web access. Hmmm.