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)"
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.
Indeed.
In the last five years I've visited Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Malaysia, Japan, and Silicon Valley, Callifornia. Guess the one place my mobile phone didn't just work?
And when I say 'just work', I mean people dialling my ordinary number (in Scotland) got through to me, my SMS messages got through, I was able to call everyone...
The United States is about seven years behind the rest of the world on phone networks. You were seven years behind us switching from analogue to digital, so you aren't catching up at any noticable rate.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I just got annoyed at all Americans commenting who don't know anything about the subject except that the US mobile phone system must the best in the world, presumably because everything in the US is best in the world by definition. I picked your post pretty much at random from many.
This guy actually lives in the US, and has researched the phone market. He also has extensive first hand experience of the market in an other country. But instead of considering that his comparision might be valid and that he might have a point, you just assume that he must be confused about the facts. As he pointed out in his response, even your examples of that it can be cheap here too, are in fact quite expensive in an international comparision.
I felt better after posting, so something was achieved.
Yeah, we have 3 tier system here in CA. It's a 12 miles radius, not 10. Having 4 different phone companies to deal does not seem simple to any non americans.
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
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
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.
The point is that mobile numbers have a special area prefix, and then they are nationwide. The caller pays extra, but knows this because of the prefix. The receiver doesn't pay unless they are out of the country.
End result is that with the US-type system, private users like to keep their numbers quiet because of the cost issue whilst with the Europeanm type system, users often give out their mobile numbers in preference to their home numbers because of the ease of reachability.
This is an economics issue not a straight technical issue.
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.