Slashdot Mirror
SMS vs. E-mail?
Chase asks: "I have a Motorola I85s (Java phones rock!). The issue I've run into is that from what I've been able to find out, most phones overseas (I'm in the US) support SMS to send text messages between mobile devices. Also alot of two-way devices are now popping up in the US. Nextel (my service provider) only lets me use SMS to other Nextel customers. Their two messaging service is e-mail based. So I end up using a web site to send SMS messages to my friends overseas but we'd really like to send directly each others phones. Is this just a problem with Nextel or do all mobile phone companies in the US have this issue? Are most of the current crop of two-way devices coming out in the US email based, SMS, or something else?"
"All of you anti-Microsoft people would probably like to know that if you have Nextels national plan and a I85s you get the ability to send and recieve from a Hotmail or MSN account for free. I'm paying $5 a month for the regular email support. I read something about MSN only supporting non-standard protocols for email, do we also have to worry about Microsoft messing with moble messaging? (and yes, I have a Passport option on my phone)"
Actually, the frequencies most commonly used for GSM (900/1800MHz) outside the US were assigned/registered by the ITU; they weren't just "invented" by the developers of the GSM standard. The ITU is an international organization representing 189 countries, and part of it's mission is worldwide frequency planning. USA has been a member of the ITU since 1908, so you can't really blame anyone but the USA for assigning these frequencies to the military instead of following international standards/recommendations. Besides, every major manufacturer has multi-band telephones operating on the 1900MHz-band used in the US, so US operators can implement GSM and european/worldwide-style roaming and services any time they want. Mattias
Hey, I'm the lead developer on a project called MobileIM( www.mobileim.com )that is attempting to integrate exactly these two dissimilar means of sending messages - we use the open source Jabber Server( www.jabber.org )internally for interoperability with ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc, and we liked it so much that we're going to be using the protocol for our mobile and desktop clients too, which will be forthcoming shortly.
Right now we're doing a lot of research into establishing a virtual SMSC via the SMPP protocol so we can have a direct SMS-to-SMTP adaptor, so if you're really interested in this topic, check out our news site occasionally in the next few months, we might have something interesting someday. =)
if($SenseOfHumour == 0 && $foreigners > 0):
$troll = 1;
$status = "attack on sense of nationalism";
printf($country."trash" . $USNukeArsenal $randmSocalisticInsult);
Else:
while ($foreigners == 0) {
printf("Buy Coke!");
printf("Buy HotDogs!");
printf("Buy Donuts!");
printf("Watch TV!");
EndIf;
The Software Labs has a product called PageAbility which has been bridging this gap for several years. Though it's not the best solution, by far, it does work fairly well if you have a MS Windows system which can be left on all day.
Hardware is always a problem, due to the fact that once it's been distributed, there's virtually no way to revamp the entire system. Of course, many phones can be programmed remotely, but major investments must be made in order to get the back end to deal as well.
Therefore, we're left to stop-gap solutions. Thanks, big multi-national mega-conglomerate corporations!
I guess... but if the US govt really wanted the free market run free they would make the spectrum less 'regulated', the amount of stuff allocated for military apps is ridiculous, it seems they just hang onto the frequencies for the sake of it, this is the reason the 3G auctions will be so long coming, there's one almighty battle going on with the Pentagon regarding the spectrum. Everyone else got their auctions over with over 18 months ago.
/. would take to this. I don't think we can really point fingers at the Europeans here.
If we get off our military peddle stall for a second and take a look around, how come other countries can manage a modern fighting force without requiring huge soaves of spectrum being allocated to military use? The Brits have a decent Navy and Army, yet their spectrum isn't ruled by the forces. If our forces are more technologically advanced at least in theory we should only require slim spectrum allocations, certainly no more than other countries.
I don't think you can really blame Europe for US domestic problems. In fact, if the EU started complaining US frequency allocations within the USA, you think they would be given a warm welcome? I can just imagine how
To be specific PCS is a term that refers to the 1900MHz wireless band, no matter the protocol used on that band. Sprint uses CDMA on the PCS band while AT&T amoung others use TDMA on the PCS band.
chap
One.Tel, which built its network using GSM1800 only, went out of business few weeks ago and was shut down completely. Telstra ended up taking most of the home and mobile customers.
-----
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
I don't know about you, but my shiny Ericsson R520m seems better than most of the Motorola crap phones I have seen. All US-built phones that I have seen includes two useless things: extendable antenna and some sort of flip-down hatch. Why? They are totally useless anyway.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
They (the mobile phone providers) were told they had to here in Australia :)
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
This has got to be a troll 8-) I am often in the US and see the housebricks my friends over there call mobile phones. The US is not a viable market for mobile phone producers and therefore gets ignored to a large extent. It is far more profitable for the phone companies to focus on the whole world, where one model suits all, rather than one country that is daft enough to go it alone. Therefore phones are brought out in the global market first then later a US version.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
#include
But Vodafone's GPRS prices are through the roof (NZ$30/mb), and no-one seems to think that prepay customers are really interested in data services (the only viable option for prepay data is using telecom, and it's *not* advertised).
--
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
Next to that it's also nice to know that you can send from one country to another one without one single interaction. I send regulary from Belgium to the Netherlands and from the Netherlands (while on a belgium subscription) to the Netherlands and to Belgium :)
:))
Almost all of the cellular phone operators have deals with (almost all) international operators (roaming). You can call almost at local charges if you are calling in the same (roaming) charges.
Some even provide a server that you can roam in the United States without changing your phone (if your phone is having US std's of'course, else you'll need to get one with a SIM card
Freaker / TuC
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
SMS would have been a factor of ten more popular in the US did we not have really cheap landline communication. AOL has a bajillion users because it doesn't cost ten cents a minute to make a local telephone call. You can tie up the locals loops here ad infinitum for free. Thus chatting and e-mail on AOL is extremely popular and often used. When you go across the pond it is a very different story. Landlines aren't nearly as cheap and abundant as they are here thus people don't spend a trillion hours on AOL tying up local loops. The EU however in the name of a better economy suggested everyone's wireless networks ought to talk to one another. Europe started off with a better wireless arrangement than in the US (in response to a poorer landline arrangement) and now SMS is more popular than e-mail with the kids. I'm not really sure SMS will really ever take off in the US like it has elsewhere because most people have already got enough ways to keep in touch if not too many ways.
A slashdotter talking to an AOLer about SMS:
[AOLer]:I wish I could send e-mail to my friends with my cell phone!
[slashdotter]:You can, it's called SMS.
[AOLer]:So like you mean I could use AOL on my phone?
[slashdotter]:It's different from e-mail.
[AOLer]:But I want to send an e-mail to my friends not some weird thing!
[slashdotter]:You'd be sending them something like an e-mail but it's different.
[AOLer]:Shut up geek!
[slashdotter]:*mumbling and jotting something down* You're going on my list!
I just don't see SMS catching on in the laziest country on the planet. What American is going to spend a bunch of time writing email with only 12 keys for input? It'd be cool more companies offered it though so you at least had the option. You can fit alot of information into 160 characters, there are plenty of uses for SMS on PCS networks hint:dedicated SMS pagers for professionals and regular consumers.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Entangled in the free-market ideology that is ruling the mind of every european bureaucrat nowadays, decision has been made not to make any decisions about the next generation, and to let competition, not only between companies, but also between governments, yield to the best for the consummer.
Hence the UMTS fiasco, a technical failure and financial disaster that puts at stake the very existence of previously prosperous European telcos, will never give birth to any viable product or service, and has dramaticaly delayed the exploitation of current technology for intersting internet-on-the-road services (expecially through GPRS packet tehcnology).
This and the US still struggling to have a mobile voice network that is not a joke, and the whole world can watch the Japanese comfortably take a 4-to-5 years headstart in mobile internet usage and tehcnologies. Japan : the country where telecommunications are the most regulated in the world, the last country where the main telco has a de facto monopoly.
Yeah, what the Hell's up with Austin? I was just down there last week and thought it was supposed to be a big tech town. Well, my hotel had ethernet connections, but my phone bill's going to be obnoxious this month because of all the roaming Verizon calls I was making. Oh well, the bars/music were still great, anyway...
Cheers,
Hmmm...so that's why Russia never made it to the moon.
What does that say about the US mobile infrastructure then?
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I drank what?"
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Of course, recommeneded way to call customer support (*666 from cell phone) does not work in europe.
:o)
You call *666 to get customer service?
666?
And you expect it to work???
Hey, if you gave me a choice between dinky text messages and a cable modem for 30$ a month, I'll take the cable modem. The US is far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of high speed internet.
Minor point, but at my apartment in Stockholm (Sweden) I can get cable internet via UPC for 229 SEK/Month (approximately 23 USD) and ADSL via Telia for 330 SEK/Month (approximately 33 USD).
Oh - and we get "dinky" text messaging.
Also you can now get GPRS (always on, internet connected 2.5G mobile).
What was your point again?
Just because US companies don't use GSM doesn't mean that US cell phone technology is five years behind GSM-using countries.
I've got a UK Orange mobile for when I travel in Europe, a SprintPCS phone for personal use, and a Nextel for work. Based on sound quality alone, US phone networks beat GSM hands down (at least Orange's network).
How about features? Can your precious GSM phone networks do Voicecommand or DirectConnect? I doubt it.
I think it's better to compare inter-country GSM roaming to interstate roaming in the US. My Sprint & Nextel phone work in almost every major market in the US (and Sprint even in Canada) - that's all that matters to most people in this country.
Mobile services in US are quite retarded anyway - different standards, even GSM standard is different from European; different networks incompatible, no decent mobile phones (Nokia 62xx series that is)...
:)
Well, in some things US lags way behind, and unfortunately this has shown no signs of getting better. Makes me happy to live in Europe
Just buy a tri-band phone instead of renting one next time you're overseas.
Last time I've been there I picked up an Ericsson thingy for about $400, it works on 900 & 1800 MHz as well as on the 1900 MHz standard in the US.
I inserted my European SIM card, and was able to use the phone in New York, Detroit & Vegas - pretty much everywhere I've been on that trip.
The only downside was people who didn't know I was overseas, calling me at 7 fucking am in the morning. Oh yeah, and then there was the phone bill, about $2 per minute with those stupid roaming charges.
Hi,
the good thing about GSM and PDA is this:
1) phonegook from my phone is (within 10sec) in the Palm Pilot memory
2) all my SMS are in palm within few sec.
3) I can send (yes, short, but it works) SMS, e-mail and so on using my Palm very quickly
4) i can synchro my calendar with the phone (ericsson R320s)
5) i can use WAP with the palm
and so on. So IMHO PDA+GMS phone really rocks! And it is VERY cheap in Czech republic (WAP - 0.77 Kc per minute! It is 50 minutes of WAP connection for $1 !!)
Cuba++ let's make ++ better
I figure until GSM becomes more widespread in the US they won't get a decent and quick SMS. I have read however that it is becoming more widespread in the North East (New York, Mass., etc., ).
I think the US get better pricing deals though - around $50 a month for 1500mins of calls I heard from some services.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
R520m is cool - bluetooth and all...(and the bluetooth stuff actually works (!)) but the 8850 is the most beautiful phone ever made..
Out here in Malaysia, SMS is a popular form of messaging, even putting pagers out of business. Most mobile carriers also give you an email interface, so anyone on the internet can send me an SMS by just sending an email. Fortunately, the carriers have also implemented anti-spam capabilities, so no one gets spam on your mobile.
Yet.
American superiority complex eh? At least here in Germany the entwork is as advanced if not ahead of the US's networks (quit a lot ISDN connections - at least 1/3 - don't have recent figures).
The drive for wireless phone services is due to the fact that the state monopolies for ground based telephony have been desolved later than in the US (early '90s) and building a mobile network is cheaper than to build a ground based one.
--Ulrich
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
I don't know how SMS relates to the communications protocol that the phone uses to interface with the tower (such as GSM, CDMA, etc.) But I have noticed that many have assumed that NexTel uses CDMA. They in fact use a protocol developed by Motorola called iDEN.
http://www.motorola.com/iDEN
The parts of Cingular that were Pacific Bell Wireless in California and Nevada are GSM based. The BellSouth parts are TDMA.
Cingular (formerly PacBell PCS in my area) also supplies every phone with this type of email address but they also send SMS outside of their network. I'm able to SMS my friends who use the SprintPCS network and friends in Europe with my 300 free messages/mo. Oh, and my unlimited nights and weekends, no long distance in the US and free US roaming is much cheaper and more convienient than that "pay as originator of call" system they use in Europe IMHO.
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
Prepaid SIMs in Europe cost about £10, and call credit is in multiples of £5. I don't think losing that'll be much of a worry to anyone.
I almost use SMS more than IRC or ICQ sometimes, or use SMS to get people to get on IRC or ICQ ;)
:P
But email... I use that to get forgotten passwords mailed, pretty much
Hmm I think you're just going the "American way" For Example, here in Europe ISDN is something really great.. we are using the ATM network technology, a really intelligent network switching/routing protocoll...
;))
In the states you just waited for a year or two and now you have that bigass OC lines for your voice over IP needs... With SMS it's going to be the same quality-quantity situation... (But I have no idea what you are going to use to outperform our SMS
What did you expect?
Sure, shitty thing happen all the time, but could we change them if we wouldn't ask for oversea SMS? If you want to change something, donate food and donate money, but don't bitch about it in the wrong places. http://www.thehungersite.com
Probably already said, but in the UK we now enjoy free texting between networks. In fact, from most countries around the world we can freely text back and forth to the UK, and to other phones in that and other countries. The exception I have come across is the USA. I bought a triband phone for my girlfriend who spends a lot of time in the US. Sometimes it manages to send text messages (LA seemed quite good, as did San Francisco), but other times it simply fails (and doesn't admit to it!) for example, chicago and washington. It sometimes amazes me that she can keep contact from the third world, but not from the USA. Only recently has the advent of triband allowed her to even carry a mobile phone!
Sure you might alse get free nationwide long-distance(for extra money) but once you exit your local calling area you get a horrific roaming charge(to be fair.. europe's roaming charges are bad too when you hop countries). Receiving calls while outside your local calling area is also expensive. In Europe "local" calling area(for cellphones) is generally the country you live in and not the couple of surrounding counties around you. If you want something like the whole east coast as your local calling area prepare to give out triple digits/month..
I pay about $49 a month for 350 minutes of nationwide longdistance with no roaming charges.
Of that $49 I think $10 of it is what I'm paying so that I don't get charged roaming or longdistance charges from anywhere in the U.S.
European, many Asian (not all), and nearly all of Australasia are using this great standard known as GSM (and GSM2 and GPRS are coming soon to a quality vendor near you).
The great thing about GSM is that I can use my GSM phone in nearly every part of the world I go to. Most countries have standardised on the bands used and so its a breeze to travel with. The only time a tri-band phone is needed is when you head for the US.
I have no problems with GSM and although there are some limitations, they're really not anything worth complaining about. I can send SMS messages to my friends in Australia, England, Germany and they can reply. Why would I want anything else?
In New Zealand we really only have two providers. Telecom NZ and Vodafone. Telecom NZ has lost huge market share to Vodafone because the corporates want to be able to use their phone from anywhere, without a hassle. Telecom only allows you to go to Sydney from NZ if you want to use international roaming. The are about to roll out CDMA (end of July) but even that only increases the roaming capabilities marginally. With so many using GSM already, GPRS is going to have a much larger market share than CDMA.
Its great when friends come over from the UK because before they even get through customs (but after they're off the plane) we can be talking away, making sure someone is there to collect them. If it wasn't for GSM, this would be nearly impossible.
GSM is the most widely used network in the world. I have always lamented the fact that if I want to go to the US or Canada, I have to make special arrangements, rent a phone and probably lose a lot of functionality. I have never been able to understand why it is that Americans can't just bite the ego bullet and accept something that was not developed by the US and use something the majority of the rest of the world is very much enjoying. Surely the frequencies used is not the issue... However it would be a lot better if there was a global standard, instead of the US and the Rest.
The only time I have paid for a cell phone has been when I wanted a major feature update over the phone that came (extremely) subsidized with my contract. The fact that I do not venture to the US/Canada often does not put me in much frame of mind to consider a triband phone just yet. The majority of my travels have been within the Asia/Sth Pacific region (Singapore, Australia mostly) where the 900/1800 freq's are used.
Rental, if I get it in NZ before I leave, is pretty cheap and the charge goes on my phone bill at the end of the month instead of having to pay it up front. Makes life a lot easier that way.
Besides, I don't intend replacing my Nokia 6210 until I can buy a 9210 in NZ. I'm tempted to get one when I go to Europe at the end of the year, but can't justify it the expense when I have basically the same functions using my PDA and 6210. Even if it is two devices and I suck the batteries dry with IR communication, it negates any real reason for purchasing the 9210 other than the "wow!" factor.
Still... Rental of a triband phone will suffice for now unless prices go up severely.
Take a look at europe, the mobile industry work great. I can SMS to anyone I want that has a mobile, and the other way around. I can use the same phone with any carrier, even go to another carriers pre paid services. In other words, the US carriers suck ass. Isn't it time this is sorted out? And not only that, look at regions for DVDs... I let it as an exercise for the readers of slashdot to complete my list.
I recommend that everyone complain, time for the people to sue MPAA, carriers, spammers, telemarketers, and everyone else who only makes our lives less enjoyable...
Well... There *are* a standard. ;-)
But that's european, so why should US companies bother about them, right?
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
That's no worry anyway, since I can send and recieve E-mail through SMS.
And since my SMS adress is my mobile-phone number, I can switch to a phone that supports the "final" standard when it comes and keep my adress/phone number.
(I the new phone doesn't change the cardstandard too...)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Or you could simplify the entire thing and move to a provider that supports GSM and SMS such as Voicestream (or Pacbell in the Seattle area or Iowa Wireless in Iowa... etc)
Being a nextel "wireless consultant" i can tell you that two-way messaging is available for $10 a month per phone. It's not sms, but it's what (I think) you want. -neil
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Firstly it's cingular.... the phone your using doesn't actually use GSM in the US, it simply flips to GSM when your over seas. Secondly, there are about 15 companies nationwide that offer this service... and I hope you can get a refund on that prepaid gsm card, because chances are it isn't going to work.
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Last week me and my girlfriend was at a party with some friends of her family, mid summer festival party. One of the daughters of the host family, a friend of my girlfriend, is on Iceland a.t.m., going to work for a year. While we sat at the table her sisters cell phone went "meeeeep!". She had sent an SMS from Iceland, sitting in some café. The SMS was read aloud, and everybody came up with things to say in the reply, which was promptly sent. A few of minutes later the reply landed. It went back and forth like that a couple of times. This girl on Iceland was more or less sitting by the table =) She certainly has email access and uses it to communicate with her friends and family in Sweden. But they are different applications for different types of communication...
So what's the point? Well, an email is not an appropriate replacement for SMS (a.t.m., come back when sending email from a phone/PDA is a common thing, then it's essentially SMS anyhow), they do different things. The above scenario would not have worked out with email, it would have required a (noisy) computer in the same room, it would have required the typist to leave the table (or turn away), or it would have required a keyboard one the table (it was full of food and glasses anyhow).
And sending SMS from Iceland to Sweden works fine. Things working together makes it seem so seemless that one doesn't even consider the U.S. mess an possibility. It just works, if it didn't people wouldn't use it. Broken/useless service -> No demand -> No better service. And that's the way it always goes =)
-
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Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In california it is GSM.
I have dual band Ericsson T28world.
I bough it unlocked on ebay and it works
fine with prepaid SIM cards.
I have no problem SMSing between PacBell in CA and UK cellnet, Vodaphone, Orange etc. I take my UK GSM phone (dual-band GSM900 for UK, GSM1900 for USA Ericsson i888) from London, switch on at SFO, and it all just works. PacBell Wireless is a GSM1900 service.
Not true. In GSM networks, SMS travels on the signalling channel, not the voice channels. Therefore, it is usually billed as a "flagfall" or per SMS. And since SMS is restricted to 160 chars per message, it is not really possible to bill by volume.
Heh, hope my friend doesn't find out he just got screwed out of $800
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Sprint, uses CDMA, as do Verizon, Qwest, Cricket, etc, making it the #1 cell protocl in the USA by number of subscribers. Europe uses GSM, as do a few providers in the USA, and soon (not soon enough) AT&T.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
So ... SMS pretty much has to be delivered via email here. According to page 7 of this pdf, your phone's email is tendigits@messaging.nextel.com. On page 42 of this other i85-specific PDF this details sending email from a Nextel phone.
42. The answer to everything
Just ask your european counterparts what their phone's email addresses are. If their phones don't have the feature, the problem, for the very first time, is their technological inadequacies.
And I don't even have Nextel. I have AT&T!
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
This must be some new use of the word `think' I was not previously aware of.
I've seen all kinds of reasons proposed of thr US lag in mobile telecoms, but they all basicly boil down to the existing US telecoms companies not wanting it to take off and no one else getting the funding together to challenge them.
With a side issue, perhaps, of the low US popuation density.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
So far as I know no one has a cable modem small enough to fit in my shirt pocket, and pulling that cable around would be such a drag.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Oh, horse puckey! There are something like 385 million Europeans in Western Europe alone, all sectioned off into fiercely competing bureaucracies[...]
He said size not population. The (percieved) problem is that there are too few people. TV and radio solved this by having local companies who operated interoperable systems (though I presume this ws why the US was late with TV). I don't know if that was sanity or government regulation, but it's clearly been missin in the UK mobile market.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Cingular is GSM in some places? Here in Austin, TX, they use a TDMA network.
I think the reason for doing this interesting in-band signaling was the fact that with T1 all 24 channels were used for payload, whereas E1 uses one (or was it more?) of 32 channels exclusively for signalling. I'm sure this isn't 100% accurate description, it's been few years since I got through the telecomm courses... But it's something along those lines. :-)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
One of my principal channels of communication with my cousins in New Zealand (I'm in England) is SMS. 5 pence a message, don't need to be at a computer, tested it using a landline at the same time and the messages can be pretty much instantaneous (or take several days depending on network load, that's the biggest downside of SMS), and that's from a nokia Orange Phone (UK) to a panasonic Vodaphone (NZ) and vice-versa.
Same method also works between UK, NZ and South Africa.
There is a standard - it's the control channel on GSM, and it works across most of the world already.
TomV
Last time I've been there I picked up an Ericsson thingy for about $400,
And here, I suspect we've hit upon yet another glaring difference between US and European mobile phone culture...
No way am I prepared to actually pay for a mobile phone, unless it's a fashion accessory type model. The usual approach here is that the phone comes either free or massively subsidised as part of the inital sign up package (which is why contracts tend to run for a munimum 12 months, to defray the cost of the phone).
Now, i'm on a prepay (which means I bought a voucher for £50 of outgoing calls in mid 2000 and I'm still running on that, taking incoming calls (cost me nothing), sending lots and lots of SMS and making very very occasional outgoing calls).
Because I had a Motorola startac and the UI is wretched (basically, can't do phonebook lookups at any of the points you'd want to), I actually went out and paid money for a replacement handset to house my SIM. Got a nokia 3210 for £50. Wouldn't dream of paying any more than that. And that was a phone-only deal. For a phone-with-service detail, I'll take a massively subsidised or free phone every single time.
TomV
Vodafone NZ (relative newcomer) runs a GSM based network and their SMS service works with almost every other service on earth! However......
Telecom NZ (incumbent former state monopoly) runs some old hack of a system and their SMS is a bit of a shambles:
So here it really depends on your provider. Either the Clunky old tech monopoly or the High tech new-comer
Cheers Koz
I think the US get better pricing deals though - around $50 a month for 1500mins of calls I heard from some services.
This would be true if it weren't for the other thing that cripples the US mobile telephony market - this ridiculous idea that you pay (or use up your free airtime) to receive calls! So, all the US airtime packages seem attractive... until you realise that you're actually not getting to use all those airtime minutes to make calls yourself.
In contrast, because of the call-originator-pays system that the rest of the world uses, pre-pay packages are viable and attractive. Having bought a phone (in the UK the cheapest pre-pay packages are now around 70 UKP or about $100 US) the user pays nothing ever again, as long as they only receive calls and SMS's. If the user wishes to make calls or send an SMS they buy in advance airtime cards from practically any shop, or via plastic over the phone. Of course, you don't get any free minutes, but calls are not necessarily expensive either with this system - the best on offer is I think 2p (about 3 cents) a minute off-peak (7pm-7am weekdays and all day weekends) and 10p (about 14 cents) a minute at peak time (all other times). SMS's are charged at a flat rate of 10p each. You can now even do international roaming with pre-pay phones.
If you want to understand why mobile phones have taken off in Europe in such a huge way compared with the US, then this is one of the major pieces of the puzzle. Before pre-pay packages became available in late 1998, around 20% of UK adults had a mobile phone and growth was slow (a few percent a year). Everything else was the same it is now - GSM was the standard and there was around 98% coverage of the UK population. Fast forward 3 years after the introduction of pre-pay packages and the market penetration is now 75% and growth is finally levelling off after a totally explosive period - the market has nearly become saturated. Pretty much everyone who wants a mobile phone has one.
What I find most interesting is that SMS was only a minor feature of GSM phones before pre-pay became available - people used it, but not very widely. Initially, mobile phone networks priced the call costs of pre-pay phones very high to offset the fact that they were not getting a monthly service fee. Thus, SMS suddenly became all-important as a way for pre-pay users to save money. Now pre-pay call charges are much more reasonable, but SMS is now ubiquitous.
I agree. I really would want to have American-style pricing for landline calls. Just think about what this does for internet access!
SMS is cute and all...but I don't see what the purpose is given this system.
I used to have the same opinion. I don't use SMS much myself, but here in Sweden all teenagers are using it constantly for chatting. It's great in the classroom! According to the Wired article mentioned above, the operators had $3.6 billion in revenue on SMS last year. I believe that!
That (and not to start a flame war) I am one of those who subscribes to the idea that CDMA and TDMA is superior technology to GSM. I used to have a GSM phone (Aerial) and I have been much happier with CDMA.
As a consumer, I could not care less! All I want is interoperability, roaming and global coverage. Which these "superior" technologies fail to deliver!
)9TSS
If you want good quality message service from a phone company on a cellphone, you are probably not looking in the right direction.
:-)
Buy a RIM blackberry pager (availiable in many different service provider flavours, mine's a Rogers/AT&T model -- I think AOL does one). It has more service range, its cheaper to operate, easier to type on (actually, easier to type on than anything its size, IMHO), and smaller than any cellphone I've ever seen (I'm talking about the 950 model here).
For me, I've found the coverage area for the pager exceeds what I'm used to getting with a cellphone.
It is designed to send/receive emails (not phone calls), so the interface is good. I can understand why you would hate having to send emails on a phone. If you get one of these I'm certain you'll see that email is the way to go.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Over the past year the number of voice calls on the bus has dropped dramatically, but SMS usage has increased.
I've even seen one woman sending an SMS message on one phone whilst talking on another one.
Users in Czech Republic can use roaming. In some countries (Germany) you can use all services (including online billing) In others roaming is implemented via callback.
Until they [the service providers] decide to come up with some standard messaging protocals, you are pretty much screwed.
---
Hammer of Truth
Well, next time you hit "send" on your mail program, think about this: right now, you could be playing Phantasy Star, Thunderblade, or even Shinobi, instead! That's right. Shinobi. Classic side-scrolling shuriken-throwing ninja action. Right there on your Sega Master System. Aww yeah.
Now consider e-mail again. Think of all the spam you get, all the e-mail viruses, the chain letters, the Nigerian bank scams, the oversized attachments that take forever to download. Think of HTML mail. Free web mail services vanishing, your e-mail address with them. What a pain in the ass.
Clear winner: SMS.
I don't need an e-mail address for my phone when you've got WAP - just use Hotmail / Yahoo. Yes it might be slow, but how else can you connect to the internet from anywhere in the UK in under 3 seconds flat?
I do notice that Slashdot goes a bit funny on my 7110.
SMS is cool, but what's even better is using Yahoo's instant messenger from yer WAP phone - allows you to send IM's as if you're sat at your desk.
Bling bling!
I say in princple because there are programs(well, at least there is one i know) that connect to these public SMS senders and use them to send your messages, so you don't have to put up with banners, or using a bloated browser. Of course, that, while being legal, isn't very welcome by the portals that offer the SMS messaging service, that change the forms used to send it every now and then, fortunately the program has an update feature and uses various servers, so you can send SMS all the time.
Oh yeah, the link:
http://almorox.net/azrael/index2.html (WinSMS)
The program is written primarily for spanish users, but it can send to international numbers too(Well at least it works for civilized places--places with GSM network). I'm sure there are programs of this kind out there, so search Google.
I don't think the average English-speaking European thinks "scheme" is synonymous with "deceitful enterprise". I certainly don't. As far as I am concerned a "scheme" is a system, arrangement, setup etc - no moral bias implied when used on its own.
I'm fascinated that this equation is made in the US though. It must be one of the many examples of "two peoples separated by a common language" (Oscar Wilde?)
Surely for a _mobile_ phone, little or no roaming is a pretty serious downside?
Some people don't get out much.. (iow, never leave town...) They seem to be doing pretty well, anyway, despite that distinct disadvantage.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
Alternatively, shouldn't the caller pay to call the person on the mobile, as they are seeing the benefit of being able to call them when they are away from a landline?
I've always seen it as an advantage to the person with the mobile, simply because they are no longer tied to their landline phone when they are expecting a call. There is, of course, nothing forcing the person with the mobile to pay for the calling party's charges, since they can either restrict the distribution of their number, or they can choose to *gasp* not answer the phone, since nearly all digital providers in the US provide Caller ID for no charge.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
If you have a landline in the US, you have to pay an ADDITIONAL fee to use TOUCHTONE dialling - yes, touchtone, as in the 60s technology that has been used in every telephone since they dropped the rotary handset.
This may be true in some states, but where I live, Touch Tone is free. It has been that way for many years.
Actually, now I'm on the landline thing... why so many problems with US landlines? I have lived in California, Texas, and Massachusetts, and they all have appallingly bad service. The long distance and local service are never integrated properly, calls frequently cannot be completed because circuits are busy, and the charges are far higher than in Europe.
You just named the three worst states as far as landline telephones are concerned. For whatever reason, while Southwestern Bell works great in Arkansas, in Texas, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. In California and Massachussetts, the PUCs have turned phone service European-style and charge per-minute for most calls (in California, calls outside a 10 mile radius, I believe). In my case, I pay $17 a month and can call 400,000 access lines or so. The calling area is most of two counties.About Sprint PCS...they are ridiculous, pompous, self-aggrandizing, and they use deceptive marketing. (Trying to compare their Free and Clear to Cingular Nation plans, AT&T One Rate, and the like, when they charge roaming anytime you're off their network, while the others don't) :)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
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I'm paying for a call to his usual mobile region
That is where the comparison breaks down. In the US, most people do not pay for local calls, therefore paying to call a mobile seems outrageous. Due to that, the person with the mobile pays for the recieved call, and more if they are out of their home area, assuming their plan doesn't include roaming charges. Here, people would be loath to call you if they had to pay to call your mobile when it is free to call your landline.
The issue really boils down to the systems being different because the telecommunications philosophies are different, thanks to the flat-rate landline calls here. Therefore, I conclude that both systems have their merits. The US way would not suit those in places where you normally pay for calls, and vice versa.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
This would be true if it weren't for the other thing that cripples the US mobile telephony market - this ridiculous idea that you pay (or use up your free airtime) to receive calls! So, all the US airtime packages seem attractive... until you realise that you're actually not getting to use all those airtime minutes to make calls yourself.
The idea is not ridiculous. It is a natural extension of the way the land-line telephones work here. It is a simple extension of the philosophy that those who see the benifit should pay for it. If you choose to "go mobile," you pay for that choice. Those who call you do not. Besides, we're not paying for someone else to call us, we're paying for the finite resource of spectrum we are using.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
Say I call my brother's cell phone in France from the UK, it's the same charge if I call him in Switzerland or Germany. I don't have to dial different country codes for each country (how am I meant to know what country he's in without speaking to him, or even know he's abroad? catch 22) so you just dial the same number you do in the UK, and if the cell is roaming in France it gets patched over to their GSM network.
We have Follow-Me Roaming, too, you know. :) Check the NACN membership list. If I'm roaming on any one of those providers (ones with compatible air interfaces, obviously, which, in the US for me means AMPS, NAMPS, or IS-136) calls to my local number will normally ring me. You must remember that in the US, since we have flat-rate landline calls, callers would throw a fit if they had to pay to call your mobile. Therefore the systems are both good for their respective markets. :)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
Doesn't California have 3-tier calling zones? Like within a 10 mile radius is an untimed, uncharged call, and going up from there? That is considerably more confusing than most places in the US, where you have a simple list of cities that are free to call from your city, all the rest are either local toll or long-distance (Thanks to the FCC for that local toll clusterfuck...*sigh*)
BTW, I wasn't trying to imply that the poster was an idiot, merely that he may not quite understand the US system, since he's used to another, that's all :) Besides, why are you getting worked up over a percieved insult to someone else? Why not watch your own back, eh?
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
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I think what he means is that you have to define an initial operator number for SMS service. The cellphone then sends the message to that service, which in turn makes sure it's delivered (even when the recipient is offline at the time of sending).
Most of my friends use AOL Instant Messenger at home and most of them have it on their phones, so this is my preferred text message format on my cell phone, if you dont have sprint some of my friends were able to get AOL IM on their phones by going to wim.aol.com on their wireless web.
-- James
It is incredible howmuch SMS has become a part in everyday life here. It's ideal for sending messages but not bothering people when they are busy, plus it's a lot cheaper than calling someone (0.50$ for 1 min. of talking...)
It's weird to see ppl depend on sms in europe, whereas ppl in the US don't even use it. Silly American's ;o)
This sig is intentionally left blank
I know that you can send SMS from Australia to the UK and Singapore, because I have done it. It costs the same as sending an SMS within Australia, i.e 20c. Pity it costs the British counterpart 30p back! Cam
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
you're kidding me, right? i just returned from England and was laughing at all the stupid cell phones the english are carrying around. looks like the US 4 years ago!
It was also the same in Australia until late '99. At the time we had three networks who decided to go for a similar agreement. There are ways around this. I use a Nokia so i'm not sure what the setting on your phone is called, but you need to change your mailbox number. You can usually find out numbers around the place and you need to change it for each carrier you want to send to. You could find out the mailbox number by asking a friend who is on that network.
"...do we also have to worry about Microsoft messing with moble messaging?"
I don't see how Microsoft fits in on this issue, probably because it isn't clear what "email-based" actually means. AFAIK SMSs are recieved and sent by the mobile phone companies' SMS servers to and from the phones and among each other (yeah, that's probably a *really* simplified version of how it actually works ;) so they never even see the light of the Internet.
If you mean services that route your emails to your cell phone (which have to be provided by the people running your email account - BTW, often done by hooking a cell phone to the server that is used to send the SMS, pretty cool hack), and services that send your SMSs as emails (normally your cell phone company), then you shouldn't be worried. As long as MS doesn't take over the cell phone company it can be done completely independent of them ;-)
But now, we just Ask Slashdot. And the second post will point you towards an article you'd have found had you bothered to look. Ahh well. At least it wasn't a story about Anime.
- Dan I.
Nextel's i2000plus phone has GSM capabilities, and Nextel has agreements with a number of GSM countries to allow phone service there. To do SMS two-way messaging in other countries, you must have an i2000plus (the older i2000 won't do) and ask your account rep for International Two-Way Service. (Sounds kinda kinky.)
Nextel doesn't support data internationally--yet. But wim.aol.com from any data-capable Nextel phone in the US will get you there.
There are no connection charges for being logged into AIM from a Nextel phone. (In fact, you can stay logged in even while using other sites or talking on the phone.) But you get dinged every time you receive an AIM message, so make sure that you get the Wireless Web Unlimited plan if you plan to receive over 300 AIM messages a month.
... or what is the youth doing in the US ?
I think the main reason why SMS is so popular in Germany (propably rest of europe and aisa too) is that teens hang out allday long writing sms. But other as wired wrote it's not a money reason. A usual sms costs 0,40 DM where as a minute phonecall costs the same. The reasons are more teenager based. Writing is more like chatting. You have a certain "distance" between the chatters and you can write things more easily ("Why didn't you go out with me last night?")
So the main sms boom is caused by teens. When you drive bus, walk through the city or sit in a pub (yes teens are allowed) you can seen them hanging over their cellphone writing sms.
So what are the US teens doing ?
Matt
I am a Canadian resident who has an account with FIDO, the Canadian GSM provider. I have a Motorola 3-band phone - use it worldwide (UK, Hong Kong, Holland, India, Australia, USA, etc). And SMS does usually work - over the past year it has gone from about 60% working in different countries (receiving as well as sending) to about 80%. So the providers are clearly working on interoperability. Michael
---
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
BTW you can buy them new and unlocked (ie usable on any GSM network) from Melon Telecoms for $549.99 (the cheapest I've seen).
VoiceStream and Cingular, the GSM carriers in the US are reasonably clueful. I'm with Cingular and they seem to have their act together. I can SMS some Australian networks, and inbound international roaming works pretty well.
But I think the cross-carrier SMS situation will remain pretty bad. There's very little incentive for the networks to work together when it's all of their interests to keep their solutions proprietory.
Not correct - What used to be Bellsouth DCS in NC, SC, FL, etc is now Cingular GSM. I'm in NC with Cingular and I have a GSM phone. Cingular's TDMA market is in the midwest, I believe.
The disadvantage wrt "standard" companies being that there is little or no roaming.
Surely for a _mobile_ phone, little or no roaming is a pretty serious downside?
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
Yep, and when you're meeting one of them in town in an incredibly noisy place (busy street, subway, nightclub etc) rendering the voice side of your phone useless - how do you find them when you or they have missed the rendevous? You can't just rush home and email them.
This is where SMS works extremely well.
thank you weirdo, for explaining things a little more. another reason mobile phone prices are far lower than in the us is related to the flipside of what weirdo said in the previous post... (i won't say this for all countries, but i can tell you this is true in israel and morocco) part of the cheapness is related to the expense of a landline. in both countries there is government financial support (or downright partial ownership) to help subsidize individual cellphone ownership.
SMS is extremely cheap from the network viewpoint It is as portable as the mobile telephone and it works better than voice when the coverage is poor or the network is congested. An example of this is the use of SMS for rescue calls, one the other side of the world.
My kids have mobiles and a fairly tight allowance for calls (intentionally so, otherwise they would bankrupt me!!!). This is not atypical of the situation with other teenagers. SMS stretches their budget and allows them to use the network in a more efficient way than with voice. The pricing scheme is such that they pay much more per network packet with SMS than with voice.
This is why I disagree with you about first the Email question and then the network economics question.
We also seem to be ahead in terms of bad service. My cable modem has been almost nonfunctional for 3 months now. And it's not hard to find other people that have had longer outages.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
This HAS to be a troll :)
In England and Ireland, (I'm a citizen of both) mobiles phones are a fashion accessory. Sure, they do pretty things, and you can even communicate with them, but I overhear too many conversations about why 'the 8000 series will never be trendy'. It's ridiculous.
Seriously though, Ireland probably has it best. Very up to date phone range, quite cheap phone rates, and the service providers often give you a day's free calls or £5 free credit on special occasions. (pre-pay) The only thing that sucks is that they still lock the phones, but if you own the phone for over 12 months or use over £100 credit, they will give you an unlock code if you ask.
"We kill to cure, with cures that kill" - Skinny Puppy
Check out SimpleWire. They will let you send SMS messages to any American network that supports true SMS, or psudeo SMS (eg: Sprint PCS). They also have an API and, using Perl, you can create your own e-mail to SMS gatewaye. Unfortunately, it is one way.
I don't think the flagfall is a big issue anymore. The average cost of the flagfall is only about 20% of the SMS fee for one SMS. You can call at least 30 seconds for the price of one SMS. My opinion is that SMS is just more convenient for 'one-shot' conversations. Messages like "I'll be late" or "bring my jacket" are handled much more efficient by SMS than by regular calls because you skip the 'hi and bye' stuff.
:)
The younger generation is especially fond of SMS. They even use it for dating. This is partly because they adapt more easily to the tiny keypads in contrast to the older people, but sometimes it gets a bit extreme. I've seen people having 'SMS wars' of 10 to 15 messages in a row, which far exceeds the price of a normal call...
The phenomenon of a SMS war is quite interesting. Sometimes I have one too. You don't realize you have one until it's too late, because with every SMS you think: 'This will be the last one'.
Marijn
Well shit, I better just pack my bags tonight and move to Australia.
i found the least expensive way of having a mobile phone in europe was getting a brand new one from an operator in my home country (austria).
the US phone [a crap ATT TDMA unit] costs $40/month, i pay for incoming calls and i have no SMS. the austrian phone costs $6/month, i don't pay incoming and SMS is included. the phone was free with the contract.
that's $46/month for an international phone w/o ridiculous international roaming fees in europe and US.
2 phones, cheaper than 1. it makes no sense, does it?
Cingular Wireless(US) is the top company for SMS direct messaging. They are the best and I highly recommend them to all. They are called iPagers, and are cropping up big-time in Atlanta, Ga. right now, but will spread throughout the market very rapidly. ~=NeuroMorphus=~ "Journies Lead to Knowledge and Passion Lights the Way"
python >>>
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))
*gets on soap box and pulls out hash pipe* As a Customer support rep for Qwest wireless and previously for AtnT wireless I can honestly speak from both exp and knowlege. Both Qwest and ATnT and many other mobile operators do offer SMS. You have to have a compatiable phone. Most of the Nokia pcs's offered on both companies networks can send text messages. The way to get around not being able to send messages to people on another network(my example is Me sending a message to my ATnT phone to my Qwest work phone.) I would send a text message on my atnt phone to 9700000000@qwestmp.com since the ATnT offered the ability to send the text to either another atnt pcs or to a Email address. On my qwest phone I would then send a reply to my 9700001234@mobile.attws.net(don't remember exact addy) and that would be received on my atnt phone. though its a longer route than to simply include the number and hit send it offers more advantages because you can send a message and forward a copy to a email address for future referance. I am sure there are other companies that support it. *puts away pipe* -Often the hardest thing to do in life is nothing at all.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I work for Telus Mobility (formerly Clearnet) in Canada. I have seen that SMS can be sent to Fido (the only major GSM provider here) from our iDEN based phones, but not the other way around. You might need to know the network gateway, and this can be hard to find if the company thinks SMS is usless (as Telus does - as most non-GSM providers in North America do)I dont remember exactally how it is done, but it may be an email that gets parsed by Fido and sent as SMS (not an email) to the phone. I think it might be all in the addressing of the message.
SMS doesn't take up any 'airtime' as such, since it doesn't even use the voice channel and therefore it's basically impossible to bill per minute (it only takes a slit second to send anyway).
SMS uses the control channel, this layer is normally used to alert your phone to an incoming call, exchange public keys and hand you over to different cell sites etc, your GSM phone is always locked onto this channel when it's switched on.
SMS was originally created so operators could send new settings to phones, it's still used for this purpose and you can also send new ringtones and logo's via SMS.
I can remember when SMS was a little known feature in GSM phones, operators never even charged for texting until about 1996 when they started to hit critical mass and take off in a big way. You might be mistaken in thinking this was all planned, however SMS was an obscure technical feature that took the operators by surprise, it's one of those unexpected applications never planned for.
I hear the ICQ developers took their inspiration from SMS, which is fitting since you can do SMS to ICQ in both directions now.
Ahh... but this is the thing with mobiles in Europe, the whole local/national scheme goes out the window, it doesn't matter if you call a landline next to you or some phone box 500 miles away in Scotland, it's the same charge (quite a reasonable one too).
Since mobiles by their very nature roaming across huge distances you can't penalise the caller or the recipient on distances or location. In fact, apart from specialist call-back cards I've never seen recipients paying for incoming calls. (what an odd scheme of things).
It's a similar thing with international calls too since cell phones have their own location independent area codes (for instance all mobiles begin with 07xxx in the UK), it's the same across Europe.
Say I call my brother's cell phone in France from the UK, it's the same charge if I call him in Switzerland or Germany. I don't have to dial different country codes for each country (how am I meant to know what country he's in without speaking to him, or even know he's abroad? catch 22) so you just dial the same number you do in the UK, and if the cell is roaming in France it gets patched over to their GSM network.
In fact, many of the web to SMS gateways take advantage of this unified network, the messages goes to an Eastern European nation then is injected onto the GSM network and finds its way to the UK or France etc. Companies buy huge SMS quotas from an operator in Prague for example.
As for the call allowances, we get those too, certain tariffs include 10-20 txt messages a day and 50 minutes of free talk time per day for instance, and free access to voice mail etc. Then there's the "pay as you go" phones that incur no monthly fees, but you pay more for the calls.
As an American, I just can't get my head around this idea that each outgoing call on a landline phone has a separate charge, and as other posts said, this is what makes such a huge difference between the two systems.
Having said that, I used to call my friend in the Netherlands on her cellphone, but then my long distance company changed the rate. If I were calling a landline Dutch phone I would pay 11cents per minute, but a Dutch cellphone cost 55cents per minute. It was a great transatlantic deal until they raises rates for cellphones. I stopped calling her because that was dumb.
While she didn't pay anything to receive calls, outgoing calls were outrageously priced imho. Sprint PCS offers the following right now--3000 minutes for $50. Outgoing/incoming/long distance. At best, my landline phone could have 4.5cents interstate long distance--but if all 3000 minutes were used for outgoing long distance--well that's about two cents a minute. You can't beat the outgoing rate, and in fact, I use my cell for long distance service exclusively, opting not to have it on my landline phone (which would be irrelevant if it were not for my fax machine.)
SMS is cute and all...but I don't see what the purpose is given this system. That (and not to start a flame war) I am one of those who subscribes to the idea that CDMA and TDMA is superior technology to GSM. I used to have a GSM phone (Aerial) and I have been much happier with CDMA.
It's fast, a maximum of 160chars can be typed in, with nokia phone's you can send pictures together with the message, if the receiver's phone is on you see a "delivered" message (when option is on), if unreacheable the receiver will receive the message if his phone has been turned on inside 24hrs.
Some webbased services (alike MTN (SMS) and others) offer (10) SMS's for per day, from the phone to another phone we pay 5Bef (for about 10 cents), in holland the double.
We use short internet terms like LOL,
Freaker / TuC
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
That depends on your coverage area - some Cingular phones use TDMA, some use GSM, and in some areas customers are having TDMA phones exchanged for GSM.
l
See http://www.uwcc.org/pressrelease/uwccdoc32348.htm
A big problem is that the US regulator, the FCC, decided to simply license spectrum for cellular and PCS services, not to mandate a technology. While this was admirably laissez faire, it meant that operators and device/network vendors compete with different technologies: AMPS (analogue), D-AMPS/TDMA, CDMA and GSM. Nowhere else in the world has four actively used technologies, and almost nowhere else is still using analogue.
The European regulators took the view that a single standard would promote competition better - everyone uses GSM, so consumers can choose from a bigger pool of GSM phones, GSM operators and so on, than if there were multiple fragmented standards.
The European market is not really more regulated than the US, it's just that they took the opportunity to standardise the technology not just the spectrum. The result is that GSM now has just over 500 million users world-wide, about 70% of the market, and is gaining share in the US and most other places.
I really hope we can avoid bulk SMS without very carefully controlled opt-in... It's bad enough when I go to Italy and get 'welcome to operator Foo' spam on roaming to a new operator.
Your comments seem quite specific to Australia - when in Europe I've had little trouble sending SMSs to people back home, although some European operators don't seem to support this, so I have had to roam to a new one occasionally.
Pre-paid SMS internationally didn't work for some time but someone else on this thread said this was now working.
One of the most interesting stories I heard was that when carriers opened up to inter-carrier SMS, *every carrier's* SMS volume went up 20%. Shouldn't be a surprise really, that's why (eventually) the world went to Internet email, after a long period in the Eighties and early Nineties when proprietary email islands dominated... This means that enlightened operators should just open up inter-carrier SMS right now, as they will end up gaining in outbound SMS volumes.
SMS in Europe has achieved a critical mass, so that you know everyone with a mobile phone has SMS, and almost everyone has a mobile of course. Email in the US achieved a similar critical mass much earlier, at least a few years ago, which is why the various wireless email systems have held off true interoperable SMS.
You must be readig too many magazines. Maybe the US were quicker with initial broadband roll-out, but they've slacked off majorly lately. Forget DSL, the Bells are doing everything they can to drag their feet. Regarding cable, do a quick poll of user opinions of the major providers and you'll find they're all equally sucky. Cable has been available in some markets for what--over three years now?--and I only just was able to get it last week. I'm happy, yes, but let's not gush over the US' supposed leadership in the field. From talking to family and friends in Germany, broadband is becoming quite available in Europe as well. I think the US is losing its reason to gloat.
Comparing the communications charges I'm paying now compared to what I was, I can assure you the US system is very much NOT a better deal. Given the economies of scale that should be possible here it's very surprising how much more people seem to be happy to pay for a substandard service.
... the extra money is money well spent, at least paying for a service rather than subsidizing a disservice. But I digress...).
... many do not.) Building a free market with privately owned wire and cabling, without having the owners of the wire and cabling use unfair tactics to destroy their competition, is hideously complex. Perhaps not even really possible. It is akin to trying to have a free market with privately owned toll roads everywhere you drive, and having those roads owned by one or another of the major car manufactuerers or trucking companies and then hoping to achieve "fair" competition through regulations.
... oh no!) is absent and our physical economy works rather well. Unfortunately this basic concept is missing from the realm of electricity and communications, so instead of a relatively simple system to build and manage we end up with a web of unmaintainable and incomprehensible regulations to try and simulate the same results. This is a lesson that will probably take at least another generation or two for the United States to learn, possible now only because communism in its authoritarian form is dead and the need for mindless propaganda against the very concept of a public commons is diminished. Unfortunately, a people fed on a steady diet of such propaganda will only be able to reevalute some of the more absurd implications of such propaganda over time ... certainly not overnight, and probably not anytime soon.
People here are NOT happy with substandard service or high prices. Just ask any Chicagoan how they feel about Ameritech (hint: I switched entirely to AT&T wireless, with its additional cost, simply to not have to ever deal with Ameritech again. I made the switch 3 years ago and haven't regretted it for a second
The problem is that our market really isn't as free as you think. The last mile of wire is almost always owned by the local telco monopoly, with a complex web of regulations dictating how and for how much access to that wire will be "sold" to competitors (assuming a particular area has competitors for local service
Far, far easier to nationalize the roads and create a level playing field for all of the players, be they car manufacturers, trucking companies, private buslines (e.g. Greyhound), or taxi services. Ironic, isn't it, that only the most extreme of free market zealots call for privatization of roads, while everyone accepts the privatization of other basic infrastructures that lead to the kinds of telecommunications horrors we have in the US.
It is no coincidence that so many DSL services are going under, and that none of them are the local telcos providing the last mile of wire. Sometime's the FCC manages the balancing act moderately well and a semblance of a free market can exist, even if it is very overpriced. Other times, such as with DSL, they don't get it right and providors die off like flies.
Fortunately, with our highway system, this sort of misguided notion that government has no role to play in owning the infrastructure (it's socialism
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The first time I saw one of those Java Phones, I understood why France Telecom sunk a bunch of dough into Jabber. Imagine being able to send messages to AIM, yahoo, msn and all the others via yer cell phone. Imagine further, that your friends or company have a private jabber server, and you connect via SSL
Yep, encrypted chat and IM on a server you control, connecting via your cellphone, wouldn't that be lovely (voice chat too?). Especially if your private jabber server was hosted by havenco.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Useless tidbit: Text messaging is all the rage in Europe and a lot of phones come with a preset selection of messages you can send, in addition to those you can write yourself.
BTW a good site for discussing cellphones and the various providers, for those of you in North America is http://www.howardforums.com/.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
they are no longer tied to their landline phone when they are expecting a call.
But what about if you are not expecting a call? The mobile owner is letting other people have the benefit of calling him when he is not near a landline.
Say if the mobile owner is out shopping and someone desperately wants to talk to him. The mobile owner gets no benefit here. However, the person calling gets the benefit, as without the mobile the caller would have to wait until the mobile owner gets near a landline. Even then the caller would need to know which landline (work, home, partner's etc).
Take another example. My girlfriend gets lost when driving somewhere but has left her map on the kitchen table. She wants to phone me for directions as she is sure that I know how to get there, but I have just gone out to post a letter. So she phones me on my mobile and speaks to me. Who gets the benefit there? I didn't want to go anywhere. I get no benefit from her getting the directions. I didn't need the call. I wasn't waiting for the call. Mobile usage isn't just about being able to make calls. A lot of calls to mobiles are about people needing you, not you needing people.
Also in Europe all providers (that I have seen, having lived in both the UK and Sweden) provide Caller ID for no charge. Digital doesn't come into it as hardly anyone has analogue anymore.
It is a simple extension of the philosophy that those who see the benifit should pay for it. If you choose to "go mobile," you pay for that choice.
Alternatively, shouldn't the caller pay to call the person on the mobile, as they are seeing the benefit of being able to call them when they are away from a landline?
The company that I work for Telecommunication Systems Inc. (TCS) has an SMPP (short message packet protocol) to e-mail gateway product that we sell to carriers and businesses to cure this problem. Inter carrier messaging is cool stuff.
Hey, if you gave me a choice between dinky text messages and a cable modem for 30$ a month, I'll take the cable modem. The US is far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of high speed internet. In Australia you get dialup or nothing. You would have to pay hundreds a month even for iDSL.
I also use nextel for my cell phone, and I find the quickest way to message people is Aol Instant Messenger. I have instructions at my site on setting up any wap phone to use AIM. Apparently, AOL doesn't want you to know how to do it, forcing you to use their partners cell phone service.
Unfiltered SMS centers RULE. Nothing beats a free SMS. (Well, a free lunch would, but there's no such thing.)
A Google search on "free sms center numbers" yields an amazing result: a page titled "Free SMS Center numbers". Haven't tried the numbers, but at least one should work.
The article is not entirely accurate. In some European countries you do pay per-minute for voice calls (as opposed to the claim in the article), and per-message for SMS. I pay ~13.5 cents per minute for voice calls and ~11 cents for one SMS message sent. That much is true that the reciever (call or message) doesn't pay anything. Heck, some advertising campaigns even promise to pay the reciever!
I think the US has problems in its wireless industry because our ground telephone system is so solid.
That would explain why two of the major suppliers of landline telephone hardware are located in Europe... Indeed the nearest you'd get to the US would be Nortel in Canada.
For a long time, Europe's telephone network lagged behind in system stability and in price
Didn't AT&T manage to crash their entire network a few years back, hardly that stable.
Let alone that the pricing of calls in the US is hardly easy to work out from the number, or as a consquence of the NANP, even if the call is international or not.
I'm no telco historian, but my wild guess would be that the US developed and started refining the cell phone technology and Europe waited and let us spend all kinds of money perfecting things before they implemented.
Actually the technology was developed in Europe. The situation in the US probably isn't helped by the NIH attitude which the US telephone industry.
And let's face it, even if that's not true, it's gotta be easier for the *much* smaller countries of Europe to update the networks than the whole stinkin' US.
That'll explain how Australia and South Africa have large GSM networks....
With mobile phones, you've hit exactly my point. $24.95 every three months and $0.65/min is significantly more expensive than $15.00 every three months and $0.25/min. Even if you take off the roaming thing (never understood the point of this anyhow) you are still paying $0.35/min and that's even if someone calls you.
The telcos here just haven't noticed what happened in every other country in the world when they removed the charge for incoming calls on mobile phones - usage grew to about 75% of the population. I enjoyed the phone because it allowed people to keep in touch with me, and allowed me to keep in touch with my wife for relatively little expense.
The companys here seem to be obsessed with "minutes" rather than getting the base rate down. I don't want "minutes" - I just want a phone.
As for land lines, it's mainly the FCC charges I'm talking about. I'm used to not having lots of extra taxes on communication - rather paying about US$12/month for a full service line (caller id, call waiting, diversion etc.) Again, here you seem to be paying for "extra" services like call waiting that actually cost the telco nothing.
As a point of note - you don't pay per minute calls in Australia either. You pay about $0.12 per local call. The local calling areas are significantly larger as well - usually encompassing the entire capital cities, rather than just a few exchanges. As an example, under the Australian system you'd expect any call between any two numbers in New York City to not be time charged.
Comparing the communications charges I'm paying now compared to what I was, I can assure you the US system is very much NOT a better deal. Given the economies of scale that should be possible here it's very surprising how much more people seem to be happy to pay for a substandard service.
The amusing thing about it all is that people in Australia are screaming at the telcos claiming they are being ripped off everywhere - often claiming that they are worse off than people in other countries (like the US). As soon as you actually look at the charges you realize just how wrong they really are.
On the bright side - international calls are much cheaper here if you can find the right carrier. I'm quite amused that it's cheaper for me to call Australia (9c/min) than it is to call across town (10c/min)!!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Having worked in the SMS field for some years, this is nothing new. This is one of the biggest gripes about short messaging.
Most carriers around the world restrict where you can send SMS for one of two reasons.
Cost - Carriers make more profit from local SMS, as it costs them nothing. Where international SMS is dependent on the price negotiated with the destination carrier. Since SMS pricing is generally flat rate, regardless of the destination, it's in the carrier best interest to only promote local SMS.
SPAM - This is the biggest problem and why inter-carrier SMS is only supported by a handful of carriers.
In the early days many carriers supported the inter-carrier SMS, but with the falling prices of bulk SMS in the European countries, SPAMers spoiled it for the masses. Even the great South African carrier, MTN(http://www.mtnsms.com/), had it's agreements revoked.
Carriers are reluctant to open the floodgates to foreign SMS. If your carrier wants to allow you to send SMS to carrier X, then carrier X would expect that their customers be able to do the reverse. Carrier's hate not having complete control over their network and thus prefer not to support inter-carrier SMS where their jurisdiction over SPAMers is in doubt.
Here in Australia, we've only had agreements in place for local SMS for about 9 months, allowing any Aussie GSM user SMS access to the 4 major networks. This is great, but the carriers only support the boring standard text messaging. Many of the powerful SMS features (Class 2 and 3 messaging) are blocked at the gateways.
On top of this the carriers have agreed not sell any bulk SMS products with inter-carrier SMS facilities. This is good in the sense that it will prevent SPAMers, but on the down side, it puts bulk SMS out of reach to the small developer. (Where I fit in)
In short, you have very little hope in convincing your carrier to allow inter-carrier SMS by yourself. Your best bet is to rally up other subscribers and put pressure on them that way. This is how it was achieved in Australia. (See your US eqivalent of www.tio.com.au for help).
Mac.
Area51 - We are watching...
I have a Siemens M20 GSM modem hooked up to my Linux box, which lets me do all sorts of nifty stuff, like run SMS mailing lists and other services, run programs on my machine in response to an SMS message, play-by-SMS games, recieve SMS alerts etc.
at NZ$0.20 a message (sender pays), it can get expensive with heavy use, but is not cost-prohibitive with moderate use.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
If you find land-line billing complex, you must have trouble grasping flat rate pricing (unless you're in California, Chicago, NYC, or one of the other areas without flat-rate calling) It's very simple.
Yes, of course. If someone points out that the US is behind the rest of the world in some respect, it must be because he's an idiot who can't comprehend the very simple and superior US system.
BTW, I live in Califoria and have flat-rate calling, genius.
If mobile calls are cheap enough that there is no reason to not answer incoming calls, how can it be too expensive to make outgoing calls?
Yes, you pay more to call a mobile phone. They have special area codes, so you know what you'll pay.
Of course it's the person who makes the calls who should be paying for it. That is how every other market works. Imagine if you would have to pay airline tickets when people came visiting you...
but it seems to me that the states are pretty retarded when it comes to SMS and digital mobile telephony... ;)) ;)
Here in Austria (Yes that's the little spot in Europe...) we use SMS for our daily needs... There are 7 million inhabitants in my little country and the number of SMS sent per day exceeds 8 millions, we basically use them for everything, like getting Slashdot news, as a beeper to wake up, for better marks at school (cheating via SMS is GREAT
So my 0.02 of opinion I want to share is that everybody should literally *BEAT* their cellphone providers to enable sending and receiving SMS to and from every network... It's really cool, SMS are like ICQ for your mobile
That said.. Yes, landlines are horribly expensive in europe, but what do you really need them for aside faxes and internet? If landlines are charged per min and cell phones are charged per min at a comparable rate which one would you choose? I'd rather have the cellphone anyway so this just simplifies the decision..
As for the pricing: once you call outside your local calling area in US all bets are off. Local calling areas don't cover full areacodes and prices depend on your provider. Most of the time in europe prices for calls within the areacode are same. Simplifies things a little. Also there is a different price for calls during business hours and calls outside business hours.. And per minute charges generally make longer calls more expensive than short ones.. Not too complicated.. definetly easier then trying to make any sense of US cell phone calling plans..
In US if you get a cellphone plan you first decide your local calling area(small=cheap, large=expensive) and how many minutes(little=cheap, alot=expensive) you want to have per month. After this you find out that although you have 1000min/month you can only talk on an avrg. 10min/day between 9-7 or otherwise you'll be charged a lot extra(minutes when you are awake=expensive, minutes when you sleep=cheap, reflects on the quota). Rest of the minutes are usable in the middle of the night or during the weekend. You've got anytime minutes, night/weekend-minutes, daytime minutes, promotonial minutes, local minutes, long-distance minutes, etc.. Who the hell is going to keep track of all of them.. Why don't you just scrap the freaking quotas and charge per min based on areacodes..
Sure you might alse get free nationwide long-distance(for extra money) but once you exit your local calling area you get a horrific roaming charge(to be fair.. europe's roaming charges are bad too when you hop countries). Receiving calls while outside your local calling area is also expensive. In Europe "local" calling area(for cellphones) is generally the country you live in and not the couple of surrounding counties around you. If you want something like the whole east coast as your local calling area prepare to give out triple digits/month..
Since you might already have to pay extra for calling within your areacode(calls outside local calling area) why not impose the same thing for cell phones and making receiving calls free like almost all of rest of the world does. Receiving calls on a cellphone is most of the time for the convenience of people calling you so make them pay for it.
Btw. My cellphone back home costs about 4-5$/month to have active so even though I've been to US for almost 4 years I still have my mobile abroad working. Whenever I go home I can just borrow a phone from someone, insert my sim-card and be off. Any calls I make are charged per min(10-15c) and receiving is free.. Most of time I use the latter..
All of europe to my knowledge pays normally per minute in the originating end and per message for sms(it takes like what, umm.. 0.5sec to send the sms?). I think that in Russia you have to pay for receiving calls too but most of the countries(unless you're roaming) offer free receiving.
In my opinion US system is screwed up. You get a ton of minutes you can only use at certain times of day or certain days and have to pay for all of them even if you end up using none.. Paying for what you actually use and getting free receiving makes much more sense(unless you really use all of your monthly quota up every month).
Huh? Japan isn't a GSM country either, situation there is even worse than in the US -- but their own proprietary iMode phones are way cool...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
We have GSM in the US. It's called PCS. PCS is GSM at 1920mHz, whereas GSM in Europe and elsewhere, runs at 800-900mHz, which is where TDMA is in the U.S.
I worked for an RF consulting company that helped launch Sprint's PCS system. Part of the software I wrote interpreted low-level messaging (this is basically the protocol that the phone uses to speak to the base station). The protocol is identical to GSM. In fact, all my code was based on GSM documentation and standards, simply modified for frequency.
Not that this is particularly important to the question at hand.
CDMA provides better quality of service and a higher traffic load at the same bandwidth, as TDMA or GSM/PCS. While the protocols are completely different, it has little to do with SMS. SMS has little to do with the phone protocol, at least from my knowledge. It would seem to have more to do with the switch at the provider. Therefore, I can't see why protocol (i.e. TDMA, CDMA, GSM, PCS) would have anything to do with it.
I would hazard a guess that the reason for the lack of adoption in the States has more to do with a lack of demand than anything else. I have SMS MT (mobile terminated) service, but I rarely use it, and if I had SMS MO (mobile originated), I doubt I'd use it much either.
Everyone I know, in the U.S. (and I'm speaking of friends, family, etc), have e-mail (let me clarify that I realize not every U.S. citizen has e-mail, I'm just speaking of people I know personally), and because e-mail is so prevalent and available here, I think people have little use for SMS. I have e-mail at home, and I have it at work. What do I need SMS for??? Everyone I communicate with regularly has e-mail day and night.
Even internationally, most of my friends in other countries, are more likely to have e-mail than a cell phone, let alone a cell phone with SMS. I think it's just a general difference between North America and the rest of the world.
In North America, Most people who have cell phones also have email. As a result, it's generally been easier to get messages off of the web. That's been "good enough" for most customers, so there hasn't been much of a push to get SMS running in competition to the already(baarely) working setup.
In Europe and (more so) developing countries, fewer people had email and SMS was built into the phones -- Guess which came first.
It should also be noted that the popularity of SMS came as a big surprise to the cell companies. They originally marketed it as a cheap add-on to cell service, but then found that income from SMS started to rival voice. This is probably why it is so well developed out there. This leads to the marketing barrier -- Convincing the marketing types at the various companies to support something that's supposed to save the customers money (i.e. cut their profits) is not an easy sell. When GSM came out, there wasn't much of a voice market out there, so there wasn't a voice market to 'lose'. This made sms a no-loss propsition... an added feature to get people 'in' to the market. In North America, on the other hand, (analog) voice was already entrenched. In this domain, text messaging feels more like competition to the already entrenched voice market.
So here in North America, the pricing scheme never really favored text messaging, and it's been much more of a hack, so it hasn't caught on.Having half a dozen incompatible protocols/providers as opposed to one or two doesn't help much, either.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I am using one of (very few) US GSM providers (Cyngular). While visiting France, I can send and receive SMS messages to my wifes phone in US.
The problem with Cingular is their support. It sucks! They have only 800 number, which could not
be called directly from outside US. They have support email address, but I never received responce to messages sent there. Finally I managed
to call their 800 number via calling card, just to hear message that I am calling from number
outside of their service zone, and they could not help me. Of course, recommeneded way to call customer support (*666 from cell phone) does not work in europe.
Taking in account that their roaming charges
outside US are $2.50/minute I just bought in France pre-paid GSM card and using while I am here.
Also, to be able to use their service outside US you need to call them and ask to activate "international roaming".
Do not forget that most of US GSM phones are using
different frequency than one in use in Europe and will not work there. You need dual or tripple band phone.
i can only speak of suncom. their SMS only talks to other suncom phones but as far as cost goes they have an unlimited monthly plan for only 49.95 which I'm thinking is not a bad deal considering that when i had a 5 hour plan before i would routinely go over my limit and end up paying monstrously for extra minutes. I figure if i can get dsl i might as well have a cell with unlimited minutes for the same price. plus the g/f uses the same company and we short message all day long.
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>Things will get more consistent as Cingular and >AT&T migrate to GSM, but until there are >business reasons to support SMS interconnect, >the networks in the US will be slow to move. The first reason is easy: "revenue". SMS messaging has proven to be one of the highest growth features of GSM services in Europe. Interconnect between carriers only further helped this. The second reason is harder (at least, for the United States): conformity to technical standards regarding interoperability. What if you couldn't call a west coast RBOC number from an east coast RBOC ? Yet, apparently you can't send an SMS from one network to another.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
I use a RIM BlackBerry, which sends and recieves standard SMTP email. That means that any piece of software that does a 20 year old messaging standard automagically works. Which means I can send and receive messages to/from all my servers, monitoring software, etc etc. Without needing to use extra programs, SMTP to SMS gateways, or anything. Nice.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
In Sweden there are several operators that give the receive a few cents per minute when they receive a mobile call!
This is very popular, especially with teenagers. And it certainly helps generating more traffic (and profit) for the mobile operators.
)9TSS
If your phone is capable of sending and receiving email, just use that instead of SMS. With my AT&T phone, I can SMS other AT&T customers, but for everyone else I just email them from my phone. The phone (Nokia 8260) makes little distinction.
The email address of my phone is 214xxxxxxx@mobile.att.net where the x's are my phone number. Sprint (I believe) is similar - so instead of SMSing 214xxxxxxx just email the associated phone address (which, I think, makes AT&T SMS me your message).
wishus
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I live in Czech Republic, which, as a post-communist country, is not exactly the most developed in Europe. Still - we have 70% population mobile phone penetration, WAP support everywhere, GPRS (2.5G) available for a year now.
Speaking of SMS - I am able to send and recieve SMS throughout whole Europe, I am also able to send SMS-to-email (for cca. 2 cents) and email-to-SMS (for free) - again, throughout whole Europe.
FWIW, the same is true in Egypt -- if your mobile provider is Mobinil, you cannot send SMS messages to Click subscribers, and vice versa.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
SMS is so popular here in the UK because it lets people who don't sit in front of their computers 24 hours a day to communicate with each other cheaply and efficiently from anywhere in the country and to a certain extent abroad. Here are some scenarios to try to explain why the non-geek community love it so much:
If you are sitting in a club and wondering where the friend you came out with has gone off to you send them a short text message "where r u?" to their phone. Because their phone not only beeps but also vibrates when they receive a message they look at their phone and respond with "busy flirting" you know not to bother trying to find them.
You are sitting in a pub with a few friends and remember you were going to invite your best mate James along to join you. He wanted to know when you got to the pub as he lives close by. Do you:
a) Leave your drink on the table with your friends and go to James' house to get him. Note that you could come back to find that your drink was drunk (some mates those are) or spiked (I only had the one officer). Note that you also loose valuable drinking time here.
b) Phone James from your mobile and attempt to have a conversation with him even though you have been drinking for a while and you start on one of your hour long drunken rambles about how wonderful/depressing the world is.
c) Send James a quick text message to get him down here quick.
Most people in the UK with a phone (and that is quite a lot of people) would now choose C.
You met some gorgeous looking girl/guy last night and want to know if they want to come out for lunch today. You haven't got the guts to actually phone them because you didn't really think they were that interested in you but you don't want to give up that easily. You send them a text message "Would you like to come out for a drink? - dunos" and wait for a reply. SMS is also used a lot for flirting and you can sit for ages sending messaged back and fourth.
You want to ask a lot of your friends out to lunch. You could phone them all but this could mean between 5 and 10 minutes to each person, which could use a lot of your time. Instead you send a "group message" to all your friends from your phone. Everyone gets the message and they all come to lunch and you only spent a minute or two writing the message.
SMS messaging can be seen as a rather "sad" way to communicate and is amazingly annoying when you are sitting on a train and everyone's mobiles are bleeping all the time. However it is also very useful and until you actually use it you do not realise how useful it really is. It is also very easy because if you have someone's phone number in your address book you can send them a message. You don't need to worry about what carrier they are with or how to convert their number into an email address or anything like that.
...supposed leaders of the digital era...
:)
Hell, in Europe every country I know of have agreed that GSM should be standard a long time ago (now there's 3d and 4th generation networks developing, I know that).
All users of GSM phones in Europe can send SMS messages to / from each other, regardless of operator and country. Most telco networks have deals in all other european countries, so if I (a Norwegian) decide to go to Sweden, or the Netherlands, roaming is no problem. When I got to the netherlands, I just selected KPN as the provider and it was all good, I could call everywhere I wanted.
The only problems are with those who use pre-paid subscriptions, in Norway at least they can't use the phone abroad.
The US is really lagging behind in cellphone network technology. But I also understand it's going to cost a lot of money to upgrade the network since you have quite a big country and a lot of different operators
Blue skies... Barthie burgers... girls.
Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia have created Wireless Village, an initiative to create standards for instant messaging interopability. I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed for this to come to fruition in current devices any time soon (before 2005) though.
Boy, talk about hypocritical.... (I'm assuming that you live in Europe) I agree that with regards to interoperability, the US cell phone system is totally screwed up. It's stupid that every vendor has to mount their own towers, and that my AT&T approved device doesn't work on Sprint or MCI. But I'm living here in Germany for a while, and every landline phone call I make costs me, even if I call my next door neighbor. Furthermore, you need a chart to know what rate you'll pay because it differs based on locality, number of minutes called, day of the week, and time of day. Honestly, how can you complain about per-minute charges for airtime in the United States and put up with per-minute charges for landline usage in Europe? Here's a few things that maybe some people aren't aware of:
Having said all of this, I really wish the US would use the same technology and standards as Europe and Asia. It would make interoperability at home better, and it would potentially allow us to use our cell phones when traveling abroad without having to purchase very expensive models that can switch over.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
U.S is entering the wireless world with a disadvantage. I always thought that paying for airtime was a ridicolous idea.
The U.S. telco giants all aim at achieving world dominance and monopoly. Those very goals is the reason that they will achieve neither, and that they will be midgets standing in the way of innovation.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I find using an existing email provider on my cell phone is the easiest way to send "instant messenges". Yahoo has a cell phone portal that is quick, efficient and appears on most services. I recently started using it with my Sprint PCS phone and it works great as messages appear immediately -- plus, you're using an existing standard and won't have to worry if SMS doesn't become the "final" standard.
Oh, horse puckey! There are something like 385 million Europeans in Western Europe alone, all sectioned off into fiercely competing bureaucracies. The fact that even Europe can manage a unified mobile voice platform complete with transparent roaming, global text messaging, and standard frequencies is a testament to the power of government sponsored infrastructure building. The US is so far behind because private industry will always build proprietary systems where it can.
I am by no means a communist (or even socialist) but empirical evidence proves that private industry will not build open, interoperable standards and systems! It's just not in its interest to do so.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I drank what?"
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
The size of the country makes it much more difficult to implement a single digital-based standard than say, Germany, France, etc.
Both Australia and South Africa are large and sparsely populated outside of cities yet they can manage it.
And here we have the cultural differences popping up. For you cell phone is your convienience whereas for where i come from it is the convienience of people trying to reach you. Thus, they are willing to pay a little extra for it.. Most of the people I know in US have a cell phone so that they can use it for calling, not so that people can reach them and thus it ends up being turned off quite often.. vey irritating when you need to talk to someone.
Like I said, if you really use up your minutes on a regular basis it is worth it but I still haven't found a plan comparable to europe. Some providers give you 1000 minutes/month and then you can use 200 of these during the business hours. It comes down to something like 10min/day between 9-5 and extra minutes are charged heavily. Not my kind of plan.
Some plans do have free local calling but charge accordingly. Some have free local calling for an introductory period but after it runs out you're screwed. There are also plans that offer free calling within their network but then when you want to call someone outside the network you're paying big bucks.. Price of the plan also depends on your home calling area which is ridiculously small for the cheaper ones.. Get out of the county and you might be roaming. I'd much prefer a unified paying plan(use a minute, pay for a minute) but I suppose it comes down to personal preference and cultural differences.. US is also quite a bit larger than any european countries so comparisons are difficult..
However, my sister now has a cell phone provider from Moscow, and while my dad (a D2 customer) can send her an SMS, I (a E1 customer) cannot. Turns out that D2 gateways to my sister's provider and E1 does not. :(
Free Manning, jail Obama.
In Australia I was paying about US$5 per month for a mobile phone, not paying to receive calls and paying about US$0.25/min for outgoing calls. Given that I don't use the phone that much I was more than happy with that price. I could go anywhere in Australia with that phone and have coverage - all for that one price. I took that phone to Italy and STILL had coverage without even talking to a company in Italy.
You can do that here, just buy a pre-paid phone, and occasional pre-paid cards. I believe you can have a phone on AT&T's network for as little as $24.95 every three months. I believe that's for the 30 minute cards. I will grant you that we can't roam to Europe, which kind of sucks, but I'd wager that most people in the US with cellphones don't ever leave the US anyway, it's not like Europe, where most of the countries are larger than our average-sized states.If you find land-line billing complex, you must have trouble grasping flat rate pricing (unless you're in California, Chicago, NYC, or one of the other areas without flat-rate calling) It's very simple. If you call someone within your free calling area, it costs you no more, if you call past that, but within your state, it will cost whatever your "in-state" long distance carrier charges you, as per your agreement with them. If you call out of state, it will cost you whatever price you have negotiated with your "in country" long distance carrier. If for whatever reason, you'd prefer to use an alternative carrier to your normal one, use a 101-xxxx code and dial up the carrier you like. Not too hard.
Where I live, the price of my land line is based on the number of subscriber lines that are within my local calling area. In Arkansas, there are three ranges of numbers. My area was recently re-classified by the PUC as being in the highest group. I still pay only $17/mo for the line (not counting tax and FCC fees, which bring it to $21/mo)
If you have questions about your telephone bill, you might try calling your telco's customer service number. I'm sure they would be happy to explain the charges you are paying (with the exception of the FCC fees, which the tier 1 support folks have problems grasping).
The point of this whole thing is simply to point out that we are not being screwed, as we don't pay per minute to call our ISP, or anyone else in the same city (and usually several neighboring ones as well). For those of us who use our phones (both mobile and land line) the US system is a much better deal. BTW, if you want a cellphone for emergency use only, just buy some old analog phone. Federal law mandates that all wireless carriers allow 911 access, for no charge, to all phones capable of operating with that carrier's signal. If, however, you want to talk, you do have to pay, although there may be some CPP plans in larger cities of the US of which I'm not aware.
-Nathan
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In my opinion US system is screwed up. You get a ton of minutes you can only use at certain times of day or certain days and have to pay for all of them even if you end up using none.. Paying for what you actually use and getting free receiving makes much more sense(unless you really use all of your monthly quota up every month).
Apparently, you don't grok the advantages of not having to pay for local land-line calls. In certain cities or states, there are, but in most of the US, it's a flat rate for anywhere within a fairly wide (usually) calling area, and only if you place a long-distance call do you pay per minute. Due to this, along with the lack of mobile phones being in their own area codes, makes it nearly impossible to come up with a plan to implement calling party pays.
Even if it could be implemented, I would prefer the current system. I don't believe that others who are trying to reach my should have to pay for my own convienence. I pay for 550 minutes/mo with no roaming fees or long distance fees anywhere in the US, on any network with which my carrier has a roaming agreement (most of the carriers serving more than a single county, and at least one anywhere there is mobile phone service). I also get up to 200 text messages/e-mails for free each month. I am almost always within 25 minutes of my alotted 550, so the deal works well for me. I get the convienence of my phone, and having people willing to call that number to reach me, since they don't have to pay.
Many people argue that the lack of CPP in the US is causing less cellphone usage, but given how everyone I know who wants one has one, I don't really see how that can hold true. There is now even a carrier that gives you unlimited minutes for $29.95/mo, within your home area. Also, in the US, carriers are free to implement some sort of a CPP service, but there is apparently little demand for it.
People who choose to purchase blocks of Night & Weekend minutes usually do so because the rate is extremely cheap (thanks to the much lower usage during those hours), and that is when they do most of their calling. For people who use their phones during the day, they can also get a phone for $0.10/min or less for a "home area only" plan. It's really up to the individual. It is also possible, with most carriers to have either a small number of minutes or no minutes at all for a small monthly fee, but they charge you $0.40/min or so to use your phone.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
There are a few GSM operators in the US. I am
currently using Voicestream, a couple of my
friends are with someone else, although I'm not
sure whom. With GTE, Aerial, AT&T, Alltel and others playing the musical chairs game with networks and names it gets rather hard to keep up.
In any event, both I and all my friends (with Voicestream and with an alternate carrier) were able to send and receive SMS messages to Finland (Radiolinja), and to each other. I think the situation isn't quite as bad as it seems.
Now if the US would just finally unbundle phones from ludicrously long-term contracts and let people actually pick the phones they want...
Moving from Australia to the US has been a big surprise for me, given that the US is supposed to be benefitting from a more open market in telecommunications.
In Australia I was paying about US$5 per month for a mobile phone, not paying to receive calls and paying about US$0.25/min for outgoing calls. Given that I don't use the phone that much I was more than happy with that price. I could go anywhere in Australia with that phone and have coverage - all for that one price. I took that phone to Italy and STILL had coverage without even talking to a company in Italy.
Coming to the US, I find it impossible to get a phone for less than SIX TIMES that price, and find that I can't go to Europe or anywhere and expect to get coverage without getting a totally new phone. I even find that I have to pay for incoming calls. No way in hell I'm going to get a phone here from any company. I don't care - the telcos here just don't have any idea what is possible.
The "free market" has screwed people in the US so badly that they don't even notice it any more. Even the cost of land lines is higher, lower quality and so hideously complex in the billing that it is absolutely impossible to figure out who you are paying for what.
To any American who thinks they have it good, think again. The telcos are screwing you for at least 2 to 3 times what you would pay for a BETTER service in any other country.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
... which should answer you question quite nicely.
All of Europe, Australia, and most of the rest of the world use GSM, which has had SMS as a standard feature since its inception. So pretty much every handset has had SMS MO (mobile originated) and MT (mobile terminated) support since the mid 90s.
When the networks first offered SMS MO in Australia there was no carrier interoperability - you could only SMS people with the same carrier. Eventually it became more and more popular and the carriers signed interconnect agreements. Some Austrlian networks can't SMS international networks but it all depends on their interconnect and roaming agreements.
The US, with its mix of different standards and extensive Analog network is a different story. CDMA and TDMA now have SMS MO support, but I don't believe SMS MO was part of the original implementation. So there isn't extensive SMS MO support in existing handsets. Some providers like Sprint are using WAP to implement SMS MO!
There isn't enough demand to warrant SMS interconnect agreements, there's no single standard, and from a marketing point of view it's almost a reason to stick with the same network as your friends. In Australia, your phone number prefix indicates that it's both a mobile phone, and which network you subscribe to. So before there was interconnect, you could still tell if you could SMS someone based on their phone number. In the US, it's not obvious from the phone number whether your SMS will make it to its recipient, or just end up in a black hole.
Finally, US cellphone airtime pricing is just time based - there isn't usually a flagfall for originating a call. So it's not really a cost saving to SMS someone instead of calling them, as it is in other parts of the world.
Things will get more consistent as Cingular and AT&T migrate to GSM, but until there are business reasons to support SMS interconnect, the networks in the US will be slow to move.