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2.5G Services Start Trial Run In Seattle
090h writes: "AT&T Wireless has started the tests of their GPRS 'always on' services in the Seattle area, according to this press release from Reuters on C|Net's News dot Com.
GPRS is the first system in the States to offer simultaneous and always-on voice & data services to a cell device. As well as speeds greater than 56 Kpbs. (much better than 19.2 we currently see on CDPD, but still a far cry from 3G and the ability to have multimedia content delivery.)" Pricey, though -- $50 covers just 1MB of data. When will unmetered low-earth satellite coverage get here instead?
This is all about money, and Cellular networks are expensive to build up and maintain (figure spectrum auctions in the billions, and upgrading their entire network every 3-5 years, and that is something the wireline folks don't have to do)
Mobile carriers are learning from their wireline brothers. The LEC's lost bigtime from not being able to cash in on all the transactions that went on over their infrastructure. Metered services will be the norm. QOS will also be a big factor, be prepared to pay much more for being more important traffic
Not allowing other portals allows the carriers not only to restrict the traffic, but also allows them to partner with other content and service providers, making for more money and complete control of the content.
Mobile networks, unlike wireline networks are private. No co-location and less government regulation. So they have far more leeway to do what they want.
Sorry folks but as long as the companies gotta keep shelling out the bux, you will too.
There have been at least 2 LEO satellite data systems proposed that I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more. The idea is that you don't have to track anything. They basically carpet-bomb the lower orbits with satellites (one system, Teledesic I think, would have a constellation of 900+ satellites) so that there is always at least 2 visible to the you. Then as one bird sets, you get handed off to one of the others.
It's actually worse than this. Even once everything's decided on and approved, time from design to bird-in-orbit is typically 3-5 years. That means space-based bandwidth is going to be running on equipment that is out of date the minute it is turned on. Even more so since you're not going to put cutting-edge technology on a satellite anyway, since you can't reliably fix it once its up.
Trying to estimate demand 5 years ahead of time and then satisfiy it with the technology of the day is why we're not going to see widespread satellite-provided bandwidth any time soon.
Freenets and public Wi-Fi (802.11b) in general are not competition for GPRS:
- 802.11b provides up to 11 Mbps in theory (3-5 Mbps in practice, and less if the wireless LAN is connected to a T1 as is quite common), but very little coverage - even when there are thousands millions of Freenets, you will have trouble using a WLAN outside certain urban/suburban areas or from a moving vehicle. Roaming between WLANs is not so seamless, particularly if you are going to bill for access in some way. 802.11b is great for laptops, but the impact on battery life on PDAs is not too great (about 2 hours usage in some cases).
- GPRS provides 10 to 40 Kbps initially, with more capacity as phones and networks improve, but huge coverage (essentially the same as GSM networks, which cover most of the world). Most GSM operators will upgrade to GPRS, a lot have already done so in Europe, and GSM has about 70% of world-wide digital mobile phone subscribers. GPRS is mainly useful for phones (if you think WAP is any use, or maybe i-mode) or more likely PDAs, which have better screens and input. It is designed for extended battery life, not much shorter than GSM phones today.
If anything, WLAN is a competitor to 3G, which has similar data rates but is more expensive. However, those who can afford 3G may well be sold on 3G's better coverage and battery life by using WLANs - think of 3G as 'WLANs to go'.
If you want simultaneous voice and data, you need two transceivers in the phone, which is expensive and consumes battery power. These are known as Grade A GPRS terminals (phones).
What's more useful is a Grade B terminal - this lets you take a phone call but keep your packet data session open. Since GPRS is always-on, like cable/ADSL, you don't really lose anything through this process, as long as your application is able to survive the connection outage.
Grade C terminals are worth avoiding, as they require you to drop either the data session or the voice call.
T-Mobil launched GPRS in Germany in February this year, and Vodafone and Cellnet did the same more recently in the UK.
...
Good thing that Slashdot isn't US-centric though
'Insightful'?? Ricochet doesn't even do voice, let alone video - see http://www.metricom.com/ricochet_advantage/benefit s/enterprise/faqs.html#technology - the network is designed purely for data, which it's very good at.
Ricochet has great bandwidth but quite high latency (you have to send packets from poletop to poletop quite a few times before they hit the low-latency wireline part of the network), so it's not clear you can do VoIP at all.
And in any case Metricom, who are the only Ricochet carrier, are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to the lack of subscribers vs. their huge expansion plans. Their technology sounds very nice, particularly use of unlicensed spectrum, but it's expensive to roll out widely and their flat-rate charging model is unlikely to help.
Metering is just a way of paying for the roll-outs - even a GPRS roll-out is hugely expensive, and 3G is much more costly.
Unmetered access is a great idea, but Metricom is having troubles partly because its unmetered Ricochet service is not generating enough revenues to keep it expanding. Ricochet's per-month fees are also quite high, and it's interesting to speculate whether a lower fee and some metered charges would have worked better to get people onto the network initially.
Also, its not 50 bux for 1 meg, its 50 bux a month for 400 minutes and 1 meg gprs data included (Tethered). (which pocketnet service should be unlimited, but I havnt seen a price sheet at work yet, so dont quote me...)
I have been using my GPRS test phone tethered, just point my phones IR port to my laptop and dial the special PPP number and get connected. Its faster than CDPD, but im only bonding 1 channel. I cant wait till they use more for those DSL type speeds. :)
BTW, its totaly cool to see something you work with, I run the 2G(CDPD) and 2.5G(GPRS) PocketNet servers and Portal boxes. (Aka, Download ringtones and bitmaps to your phones, etc..)
The comments above are my own, and not of my employer.
PDA's, PCCard Wireless Modems, Streaming Audio, Video Phones, Instant Messageing, etc..
Currently I have an Omnisky using CDPD (over ATTWS) and it rocks, I can SSH into my boxes, and work remotely. (Saves your ass more than once..) I just upgraded to a Ipaq PocketPC and waiting on my GPRS modem. Someone even picked me up a keyboard (god love those expense cards) for it. Full size Qwerty, and an SSH client. :)
And if you want a keyboard for you cellphone, get a Ericsson Chatboard It works with the Erricsson CDPD ATTWS PocketNet phone, so you can browse the web or irc. (No SSH yet, but I can wish.)
Or just to enable you laptop for wireless, go get a CDPD PCMCIA card from Sierra Wireless
Point is, I just listed some consumer products, there are business uses, kiosks, hardware monitors, coke machines, police mobile computers, fire and rescue, etc... Really with HighSpeed Wireless and Internet access, there will be some killer applications that people havnt even thought about, or waited till the technolgy was available. Now wheres my streaming pr0n. :)
-- ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.
Orville Wright (1871 - 1948)
No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris
It is here already, at Starband. Well, not so much unmetered, as it is limited. And, not for gamers... latency is way too high. But, if you don't live in a major metro area, it might be right for you.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
In Germany it has also been up and running for quite a while. The thing is that now when the great USA has got it we all have to look amazed on the great wonders that they can produce. And then we will yawn when we realize that it is just another product that we in Europe actually are using at the moment.
A typical LEO satellite is in view for 10 to 15 minutes before it disappears beneath the horizon. The time can be less for low elevation passes.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
GPRS isn't really 2.5G. 2.5G is what is currently being field tested in Japan (DoCoMo). GPRS is only 64Kbs, I'm not sure on the exact numbers but I think 2.5G starts out in the 144 Kbs range.
1. Is your problem.
2. Sounds like the same problem as #1.
3. Is probably a capacity issue. The cell towers can handle a finite amount of calls at a time and with all the cell phones at Adobe they're probably just maxed out.
4. Ummmm....sure...
I used a Motorola cell (I don't remember the details, sorry).
The phone is horrible by itself, and the MS-Windows drivers supplied with it suck big time.
Newer Nokia Communicators should be GPRS-enabled, I think. The Ericsson T39 supports GPRS. And I am sure I am forgetting at least one other terminal.
You say that it will be faster than 56k.
It's not entirely true.
GPRS works by allotting a number of timeslots in the GSM usual time allocation fabric to packet-switched communications in each cell (as in zone covered by one ground [base] station). The maximum number of timeslots that can be allocated in this fashion is (IIRC) 8 downstream and 2 upstream, for a whooping max 115200 bps downstream and 28800 upstream.
What's the catch? The "packet switching" part, of course. If in a cell N phones are active and using all the available bandwidth, then each of those will only get 1/N of 115200 bps.
Why then using GPRS at all then? Well, first it's always-on. Then it has an higher maximum througput than plain circuit-switched (one-slot-up-one-slot-down) phone, and third it's statistics. Circuit-switched lines are losing the battle against packet-switched because while the former give guarranteed-quality services, the latter offer better resource usage, especially in conditions of bursty traffic.
This said, those prices are INSANE. In Italy (where I am writing this from) the major phone providers are offering GPRS service for FREE for a couple of more months to launch it, and the service is already available in most of the country.
It was probably the gloating.
I'd moderate an attitude like that down too.
~dlb
When will unmetered low-earth satellite coverage get here instead?
Teledesic is trying. Doesn't look like until 2005 though. They must have pushed it back because it used to say it would be available in 2003. I wonder how this is going to affect radio astronomy, the Iridium satellites already pose a big enough problem.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I work for a mobile operator Cellis in Lebanon (as in Middle East) and we launched GPRS a few months ago for 22$ FLAT! + 6$ if you want to get the unified mail box. I am so surprised that in the US where bandwidth is so much cheaper the prices are so high! Phone calls are rather expensive though, but that's a whole different issue... Oh and the ericsson GPRS phone rules over the motorola timeport. (except for the sucky look)
Here in Poland, where we have GPRS running for some time now, the fastest available GPRS phone (the Motorola Timeport 260) can only do 40.2 kbps and the fastest "conventional GSM" (actually HSCSD) phone (Siemens S40) does 56 kbps.
(both numbers are download speeds, it's asymetric)
So just because the theoretical max for GPRS is 115.2 kbps it doesn't mean you will be getting it - check your phone first.
-jfedor
Never. There will never be unmetered low earth satellite coverage. Simply because the 8 people for whom it would be the most practical and cheap alternative would have to pay 3 billion dollars each per year in flat fees to keep it running.
Latency and ease of upgradability is stacked entirely in the favour of groundbased solutions. They will reach 99% of the potential customers. And the 1% left, well, they just cannot ever even dream of beginning to have a hope of cheaply obtaining satellite access, because there just arent enough potential customers to make it cheap. Most people simply will not accept always having a sorta sucky costly connection when they can have a fast cheap connection 50 weeks of the year and a modem connection the two weeks they are in the boondocks.
And for those who like living without a neighbour for 5 miles, well, suck it up and pay or use a modem or move.
Uhh ... actually, I'd be happy to pay for unmetered low-earth orbit satellite coverage. Which is why I named that. Why do you think? :)
Right now I'm paying for two types of connectivity (well, depending on how you count, paying for a few others as well), but that's what I'd really like. Not this dollars-per-MB, limited coverage stuff.
If Ricochet was available over even 60% of the country (and including my primary places of residence) I would happily pay what they were asking for it, even slightly more.
But since I suppose that was a troll anyhow ...
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Are you sure?
:-)
To quote from Ericsson's web-site about the R520
"Furthermore, GPRS allows for simultaneous voice and data communication, so you can receive incoming calls or make outgoing calls while in the midst of a data session.
The data session is simply paused while the call is in progress."
Hmmm. Sounds like Ericsson are using a slightly different meaning of the word 'simultaneous'
I haven't tried the R520 tho, so I can't say for sure.
Anyone actually subscribed to this?
We've had GPRS here in the UK for a while now and the Motorola GPRS phones we've got won't support simultaneous voice and data.
Indeed, looking at Motorola's own press release here they only claim to be able to switch between voice and data, not do both at the same time, which sounds more likely to me.
The GPRS standard does support simultaneous Voice + Data, but I don't think any of the handsets do yet.
Whhoo, 19.2 on CDPD!!! Someone must be sitting right under the cell tower. Having used it extensivly I think 9600 or 14.4 would be a more realistic estimate. Silly modem manufactures, they might as well start labeling their products like M$. This here is your CDPD '96 modem. Those data rates are completely misleading, by the time you account for packet loose due to noise etc.
So do you pronounce this "gee-pee-are-ess" or do you say jeepers! :)
$50 for 1Meg, or get a 802.11 device ..
I hope the ARRL or someone is lobbying to keep the 2Ghz bands open. It's not even that large of an allocation! Organized community wireless efforts have a real potential to put a great big ding in the profits of some of these commercial providers and users of bandwidth.
Remember, the RF spectrum is a public resource. The FCC in the US is supposed to act in the best interests of the public, and I think you could make a good case it's in the interests of the public to keep those bands open. The more 802.11 hardware out there, the harder it will be to stop, as well - so write your representatives (Congressmen, FCC Ombudsman, Member of Parliment, whatever).
I remember reading something about those bands being open by global agreement, too.. but I'm not sure.
..don't panic
As a Nextel subscriber, I have nationwide, always on packet data on my phone, unmetered, any site, for only $10 a month. They've had this for a year, and its pretty good.
Why would anyone want AT&T's implementation, and why are they claming to be the first when they clearly aren't?
We could just wait to send spam and surf porn 'til we get home.
Not that anybody cares, but I've got a DSL line at home and no cell phone. Somehow, I get by.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
I've love charged local calls considering the amount I use the phone. But if that happens, there better not be a monthly fee on top of that. Considering the long distance plans are 10cents/minute up to $20 -- the equivelent for local calls would make a lot of people happy. Monthly fee is just over $20 at the moment :)
Rod Taylor
I bought a T39 (with bluetooth handsfree) a couple a weeks ago but the service provider (comviq) i use dont offer GPRS yet. Europolitan/Vodaphone has an offer that cost $35/month and $2,50/MB. Then bluetooth SD card for Palm the only thing missing.
A nice phone for wireless Internet access, IRCing from train rocks.
On the more general note in Poland GPRS service is quite good you get a promotional offer of 3 phone, 3 gigabytes of data (and extra 10 megabytes for the WAP usage via the phone only).
--
LEO is the region where the shuttle and ISS are. It's 150-250 miles up, compared to geosynchronous communications satellites, which are 20000 miles away. So LEO should have 2 orders of magnitude lower latency. Not that I know whether timothy was talking out of his ass regarding LEO high bandwidth unmetered Internet access. In LEO you're moving at a pretty good clip, and typically traverse the full span of the sky in a minute or two. At any reasonably useful frequency, the beam pattern would be so narrow you'd end up spending all your money on equipment just to track the damn satellite. I've tracked the ISS across the sky with a telescope before, and it's a little hard to read email while doing it :P
There already exists a service that offers satellite internet access. Up to 500kpbs downlink, and 50-60kbps uplink. Too bad you'll have to carry a dish, though..
Stop the brainwash
Damn I love this phone.
it's in my head
Better be able to backcharge spammers. I ain't spending $50 for the privledge of having X10 popups or viagra e-mails in my wireless device.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Sorry to let my patriotism show so blatantly, but Microcell has been offering GPRS on their GSM network all across Canada since April 4, 2001.
Not only that, but they don't bend us over nearly as much: C$75 (~US$50) for 25MB (and $3/MB thereafter) on the cheapest GPRS plan.
--
Crank up those microwave towers a bit more and I'll be able to reheat my lunch and talk on the cell phone at the same time.
They can afford to go that cheaply because there is a lot of redundancy in your text downloads, with every 5th word being "eh" and all.
for the bandwidth. I guess everything starts around $50. Ricochet is faster and only a little
more expensive (crosses fingers that it keeps going).
Like Iridium? Never would be my guess. If you think cost of cellular data networks is prohibitive, don't even dream of using a swarm of low-orbit satellites. It is kind of intriguing why all those billionaires invest in an obviously flawed idea (Bill Gates et al). Perhaps they just don't know anything about economy? :-)
Thing is, with dozens of expensive relatively short-lived satellites launched dirt expensively, terminal devices that either need to use high energy transmitters and/or satellites having extra sensitive receivers... How could it be cheaper than using earth-based systems? The only (?) good thing is that in the middle of nowhere where it's not economical to build cellular networks, satellites may be your saviour. Unfortunately, 99% of time, cellnet is just fine (and depending on your usage pattern, 10-90% of time fixed line is fine)
If you don't need to move a lot you should use fixed wire stuff (in-house roaming with infra-red or short-distance wireless radio); practically unlimited bandwidth, low cost. If you need to move more, cellular networks are next in line; it's possible to get reasonable bandwidth, but operating costs are higher no matter what, so end user cost is as well (exception; if there's no ready decent infrastructure for fixed lines wireless might be competitive... like in Africa or some ass-kicked islamic country).
And if you just have to go in the middle of Sahara to browse porn, yeah, use Iridium. I'm sure this is enough to finance the multi-billion project on long-term.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
While GPRS is *capable* of supporting simultaneous voice and data calls, none of the handsets currently being built, and none of the networks currently rolling out GPRS, are doing this in the first wave. Just getting the data part of GPRS up and running on the networks has been an amazingly difficult thing for operators, base station providers, and handset vendors to get working.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
I agree with your answers to 1 and 2. Don't complain about the service if you don't want towers. I don't get it. A tower doesn't take up much space on land, and it doesn't really make your town/city ugly. So what other reason could you have for *not* wanting one in one of your valleys? It would eliminate your problem with too many people at Adobe using their phones and hogging all of the service, and you wouldn't have "spotty" reception.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
We have GPRS network in Estonia running for some months now. Its cheap compared to yours - only $2.2 for Mbyte and no additional fees.
I have Ericsson R520 GPRS phone, and it rocks.
I can be online and talk simultaneously, send email (it has built in client), have IR & Bluetooth connectivity and so on...
btw. Its triband phone so it works in US too.
__
__
L.
There are tons of GPRS phones on Ebay.
__
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L.
Probably not, because all those GPRS solutions tend to be behind firewall so you just dont have a real IP.
__
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L.
No problem... I have been up and running for approx 6+ hours from battery with my Ericsson R520 while testing GPRS network.
And yes, I was actively using the net.
__
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L.
Wow, $30 for an MP3? Forget that - I'm just going to go steal the CD the old-fashioned way.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Here in sweden, we have had GPRS for quite some time - comptetition is starting out just this summer, though, earlier there has been only one major company which supported it. I have had the service for some time now, using an m505 and an Ericsson r520m, and it works bloody well! Fast, stable, and always connected, and a fucking awesome coverage.
Anyway, I thought the prices here was disgusting, but the US are just plain BAD - here in Sweden, I pay appox 2.36$/MB. We have 3 major GSM providers here in sweden, and only one of them supports GPRS, however, number two will start rolling it out this summer, and that will make the prices drop somewhat. I hope.
You have no idea what you are talking about. UMTS is 3G not 2.5G! Don't worry, Denmark will get 3G long before the US does...
Microcell Solutions in Canada is offering 56k GPRS service at much cheaper rates:
$75CDN for 25MB
$100CDN for 50MB
$150CDN for 100MB
But I'm sure this is the same thing with most new technologies (especially wireless ones); the prices start out high and drop from there!
In theory, you are. I never bother with cell phones, when in the US, since prices are OUTRAGEOUS. In Europe, depending on the country, I pay between 40 and 90 cents for outgoing calls and 20-30 cents for incoming calls per minute.
All US Carriers with roaming agreements charge 1$ for incoming and 2-3.50$ for outgoing calls, per minute. I'm much better served with a 10$ phone card, since public phones are plentyful and it's dirt cheap.
I'm not real familar with Euopean cell phones (other than using one when I'm there, but I don't pay the bill nor do I roam) - do you pay a flat rate fro calls anywhere in europe - i.e. if I have a Portuguese provider does it cost m ethe same if I call from/to Lisbon or Berlin?
It really varies from country to country and within the country it can vary between operators (up to 40%). So it can be really worthwhile, to get the pricing information before you leave and manually select the cheapest carrier, when roaming.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You're implying here and you are dead wrong. (alas I can only speak for myself)
Roaming is expensive, but since I travel a lot and depend on this feature, it's well worth the price and I'm willing to pay for it.
If however a company tries to extort me, they'll lose my business and I sure as hell find alternatives.
For example: Whenever possible I will avoid AT&T products and services at all costs. Why ? I bought one of their calling cards at MIA airport for 10$, which gave me all of 4 minutes worth of calls to Switzerland. Although this is perfectly legal of course, I consider it corporate extortion of people that wouldn't / can't know better. Maybe AT&T made a 3000% profit on those ten bucks, but it's sure as hell the last money they get from me, if I can avoid it.
I'm willing to pay a price for a good service (and leaving the plane in Barcelona and having instant access and huge coverage on three mobile network is an excellent service and it is worth it's price); ripping off ignorant customers (or worse customers in dire need of a service) is a legalized form of theft, which I will not tolerate.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Sure, to a certain extent every service/product comes down to price. But that price musn't necessarily be cheap.
I give you an example: One of my vices are cigars, preferrably (but not necessary) Cuban cigars, which are readily available in most European countries. Not cheap, mind you, but worth the price.
Now, what happens, when you are in a place, where US territory is near (i.e. British Virgin Islands) you only get Cuban cigars at extorcionist prices. What I do then is, I stock up on Domenican/Honduran/Nicaraguan cigars when on US territory. Those are fine, well made smokes, with the advantage of being reasonable priced. It really pees me off when a vendor charges 30$ for a Montecristo #4, which is probably a fake in the first place. See, he tries to take advantage of a situation and apparently folks that usually don't have ready access to the product are willing to pay extortionist prices. I rather quit smoking for a week (you can do that with cigars), then getting ripped-off and blackmailed. And the behavior of some carriers is not really different, then the one of a seedy cigar pusher.
I don't understand why you can't have a plan like I have in the US - less than 10cents/minute, no roaming fees in the US.
A matter of standards for the most case. You can get GSM, but only in very selected (mostly urban) areas and as mentioned at extorcionist prices. Plus, you need a tri-band phone, which I wouldn't bother getting, given my calling patterns.
It's probably simply not worth the phone companies effort to try to offer true international roaming
It seems to be worth it in Europe. Roaming and SMS are probably the biggest cash cows for the phone companies. As with every product the price is a sensitive issue and they try to make it as high, that it generates nice profits, but not that high, that people don't roam. After all, the infrastructure and the (exorbitant expensive) billing systems are in place anyhow. So in essence, a call not made is lost revenue to them (at least until the network is saturated).
It's like the hotels in Europe with their phone surcharges (which US hotels are starting to do as well)- they're betting the business traveler will want the privacy of an in-room phone instead of going to the PTT.
On a sidenote, my most shocking experience was in the Berkeley Marriot. The phone information stated that calls are charged at AT&T rates, with a 55% markup. This is acceptable to me, since the hotel has to invest a lot into the infrastructure. What the brochure didn't mention however, was that (although you had IDD of course) calls where charged at AT&Ts operater assisted call rates, which makes a hell of a difference. Ahh, you live and learn.
Also, European hotels are learning a painful lesson: Nobody (at least not European business travellers) use their phones anymore. Why should they ? They have a GSM phone, which is cheaper, mobile and as reliable as a hotel phone, so why would you want to get ripped off ?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Hallelujah brother! I think I go out and do just that and toast on civilized discussions. Virtual or real. (Might substitute the port for a glass of red wine, though)
I wasn't very clear - I'm surprised that Europe doesn't have the equivalent of the US' no roam plans - you're still paying roaming fees throughout Europe?
Sure, you must understand that, else then in the US, Europe is composed of umpteen different coutries, each and every one quite sovereign in its actions, different languages and partially very different cultures. Although the EU does provide an umbrella (for better and for worse), this doesn't mean that it can just mandate flat roaming charges on all Europena carriers. It also shouldn't be able to do that. What it does for example, is getting carriers by the balls that enter into price fixing and other monopolistic shit and I think that's a good thing. Right now 9 German and UK carriers are under investigation for competition rigging and yeah, I agree that somebody should step in hard if anticompetitive tactics are applied.
Actually, I'm not all that surprised - even in the EU, each country has done a pretty good job of protecting its companies. It's not a bad deal for the companies, either, given the amount of cross border travel in Europe.
You're right, it didn't do much good to the consumer. On the other hand that's rapidly changing now. While in the middle of the nineties I payed 1.20$ a minute for a call to the US, this is available for 4 cents nowadays. And yeah, the ex monopolists are the ones with the rotten service too (they charge 7 cents now).
In Europe, it appears that consumers don't get all the benefits a single GSM standard can provide.
Yes they do; they can also extend those benefits to Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and several other countries. The thing works unobtrusive and just fine in a Sicilly mountain village. Of course we pay for that privilege. I don't have a problem with that (as long as it's not rip-off, see previous posts).
As for SMS, the Blackberry is very popular here, and personally, I think it's a better form factor for messaging than a phone. I've sent exactly one email on my phone, an dits easier to use my Palm and a modem at the airport than sending stuff from the phone.
Not that I necessarily disagree. SMS is not e-mail however, it's really firing off a brief, sensible (well, sometimes anyway) message (160 chars max, usually much less) to somebody; it can be a very convenient communication tool, in an asynchronous yet instantenous way.
I toast into your general direction...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
no, actually it stands for Generation. The reason for the 2 1/2 generation thing is like addresses they already were calling the next stuff 3G and then came out with something in the middle and therefore called it 2.5 generation.
OK - here in Czech Republic - we have GPRS available for a year now. The missing phone support is the key problem, but it's moving. Motorola and Ericsson are the best GPRS phones right now. R520 rocks - GPRS, Bluetooth, HSCSD (conventional, but 43kbps downloads). Speaking of HSCSD - that's available really widely, even with foreign roaming etc. So, we have 2 high-speed mobile access technologies working in paralel (on the same provider, on the same phone - choose any you like). The pricing is also much better - $12/MB - but consider that we have about 10times lower salaries then in US... ...still, speaking of mobile technology, I am happy to be in Central Europe not US. Which, I sadly cannot say about computers...
Wait for the service to get cheap with large amounts of users before signing, if $50/MB is too much.
Yeah. And for the service to become more widespread. Like, Toronto area. And a static IP would be a nice feature, but not absolutely essential.
Then, I can move my webserver to the trunk of my 1970 Dodge Dart and get Slashdotted while I'm driving to work!
More technology = more dubious projects for me.
Here's a couple of stills from my Junkyard Wars application, if you like dubious projects.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
according to The Industry Standard. Too rich for my blood.
sulli
RTFJ.
Is it really that much more expensive for providers to sell unlimited service? I imagine these are 'turn it on, use it, turn it off' type applications. You couldn't continuously use it if you tried.
So is there any reason for the cap, other than that they can?
How far is LEO? How about using one of them Helios planes?
3G wireless networks have been slower than expected, and I expect this "2.5G" trial to be disappointing as well. High-bandwidth wireless is a tough problem to solve.
I'm sure Denmark will get 3G long before the US does. Denmark is the size of many of the United States' smaller states. All of Europe together is just slightly larger than our "mid-west" expanse in the middle of our country.
Of course you'll have it first. It's pocket change to implement it in Denmark compared to an area as large as the U.S.
They did just that in Mexico. Mexico used to be like the U.S. in that the cell subscriber payed for all incoming calls. About two years ago they switched to "Whoever calls, pays." I hated it then and I still hate it now:
1. To call a local cell phone you no longer dial 123-4567, you have to dial 0448-123-4567. So to call a local cell phone you need to know its a cell phone, if you dial 123-4567 it tells you to hang up and dial again with "0448." If you call a local cell phone, you pay for it. The cell user doesn't.
2. To call a cell phone long distance, you treat it just like a normal phone, so you don't have to dial the 0448. But you do have to dial the long distance prefix and area code. You pay long distance charges since the # is long-distance from you and the cell phone user pays for the cell side of the call!
So you have a screwy system where a local cell phone number is different than a local phone number, where a long distance cell phone number looks the same as a normal long-distance phone number, and where--when you receive a call--you don't really know whether or not you're paying or the caller is paying unless you happen to know where they're calling you from.
It's complicated and it sucks.
PS--Mexico uses the same cell phone standards as the U.S. and Canada so U.S. cell phones theoretically should work in all of North America. That's good enough for 99.5% of Americans 99.9% of the time.
And, 1MB is about $2.5 (kr 25) - which is still way to expensive.
The US is way behind Europ in wireless stuff. Not the other way around.
I live in Fremont, Center of the Universe, which is one of the core neighborhoods of Seattle. We get very spotty cell coverage, because we're in a valley between Queen Anne hill and Phinney Ridge.
...
Similar areas have similar problems.
Basic result is this:
1. some areas won't want more towers - many neighborhoods have successfully stopped them.
2. some areas will have spotty service - because we're a city of hills and valleys.
3. some areas will have intermittent problems - think about where I live, next to Adobe - now imagine all those mobile high-speed users decide to hang out at the cafes within a two-block radius, broadcasting one of our fun parades that this city loves so well - they all try to broadcast it on their portable laptops with their software (and a lot of us do this, trust me) - there goes reception and packet availability
4. What about solar flares?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Perfect for PDAs though, you can synch a lot of email and web pages with a MB. And still a lot cheaper than being charged per minute, which is what's keeping me from doing it now.
READY.
#
Unmetered? Never.
---
Developers: We can use your help.
Is it just me or is the suffix "G" trying to be suggestively misleading as to represent Gig- ?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Microcell has had 2.5G GPRS running for at least a few weeks now. Expensive, yeah, but they're not going to go out of business at least.
http://www.fido.ca/NASApp/info/HomeFrame/Promotion 01.jsp?lang=en for the marketing junk.
MICROCELL FIRST TO DELIVER COMMERCIAL AVAILABILITY OF 2.5G WIRELESS DATA SERVICES ACROSS CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
And, of course, there's no need to mention that fact that this has been available in Japan and Europe for quite a while now. Is Slashdot the new vanguard boldly proclaiming America's technological backwardness to the world?
Simultaneous video and voice? Sounds alot like the Ricochet service to me. At least AT&T is charging for bandwidth, not time spent online. We all know how expensive cellular plans can be. Also, AT&T's potential network for such a system is huge. Hopefully this will lead to fast & reliable portable data communications for those junkies that absolutly have to have their Internet everwhere :)
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Please don't generalize and mix different standards up. In Finland there has been GPRS about half an year now in public so this is kind of old news for nerds in the mobile business. Believe me, the mobile infrastructure and culture has a loooong way to go in the states if you compare it to Nordic countries.
To a ridiculous system where
1) you pay to receive phone calls
(if you don't think it's ridiculous,
try to convince home users to pay
their incoming long-distance calls,
for example).
2) no text messaging between different carriers
3) no 'rechargeable' plan with long-lasting
charges (all expire at most in 3 months).
4) did I mention that you are incompatible with
the rest of the world?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
where did your famous 'free market competition'
lead you in this case?
To a ridiculous system where
1) you pay to receive phone calls (if you don't think it's ridiculous, try to convince home users to pay their incoming long-distance calls, for example).
That is probably an outgrowth of deregulation, with multiple companies who all want to profit from their investments. It's easier to simply charge their customer for use than to sign seperate agreements that split call revenue between carriers. It also avoids trying to setup a system to charge callers for calls to cell phones, which meant some local calls would actually be toll calls. That would have been a billing and customer service nightmare, and reduced the adoption rate for cell phones.
For many people, per minute metering is not an issue since you can get enough minutes to cover all your calling - ATT will even backdate your plan to the start of the billing cycle, so even heavier than expected usage is covered.
Free incoming long distance is a relic of teh dyas of Ma Bell - when she could cross subsidize services to promote them and all the money ultimately rolled into one pot. Once people got so used to that model, it's nearly impossible to switch. Cell phones started differently, and companies had a chance to use a different model for charges. If cell phones become "the" phone and replace landlines, we may see some changes - especially since people won't want to pay for tele-marketing and other bogus calls.
2) no text messaging between different carriers
I've never found etxt messages that complelling, and the RIM seems a better solution than hunt and peck on a phone (I've sent 1 email from my email capable Nokia). I suspect I could send email phone to phone if I had to.
3) no 'rechargeable' plan with long-lasting charges (all expire at most in 3 months).
I think that is a good example of the free market at work - short plans mean I can take advantage of better deals or dropping rates. Soumds like a win to me.
4) did I mention that you are incompatible with the rest of the world?
At the risk of being branded a narrow-minded American, I submit that most US cell phone users don't really need world-wide compatibility. Most don't regularly travel outside of the US, and so only need a phone that works here. (Mine also works in Canada, which is good because I hvae clients there). For people who travel outside the US, they can buy a worldphone (such as ATT's)for us outside of the US. They can also buy a prepaid package. yes, you have to carry to phones, but with features such as call forwarding at least you can keep in touch around the world. Sure it's expensive, but I'd bet it's generally a busines stravel who needs that, so cost is much less of a consideration, especially for the frequent traveler. If there truely was such a big market for universal phone service, several of teh big carriers would have gotten together and offered a service pack, complete with a multi-mode phone.
Let's also not forget that Europe is about the same size as the US, so standardizing across Europe is a no-brainer. I't be like each US state having its own incompatable network - no one would ever get a cell phone. At least Europe learned a lesson from having different TV standards, power and phone plugs, and railroad gauges.
Overall, it sounds like the free market has worked just fine for us. No one says it develops a solution for all needs.
PS - sorry about the previous blank post - that's what happens when preview and submit are next to each other. Operator error supported by poor human factors design.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Just because a free market results in solutions that everyone doesn't think are optimal does not mean the market has failed. It just means the market is still sorting things out - and some CDMA advocates would probably argue 3G CDMA is better and will be rolled out quicker than GSM could/would in the US. If that turns out to be true, then a government mandated GSM would rule out a better long term option.
:-)
Just for a historical note, GSM is in use in the US, so you should be able to use your phone here in teh (few) areas that have GSM service.
I'm not real familar with Euopean cell phones (other than using one when I'm there, but I don't pay the bill nor do I roam) - do you pay a flat rate fro calls anywhere in europe - i.e. if I have a Portuguese provider does it cost m ethe same if I call from/to Lisbon or Berlin?
Interestingly enough, at the dawn of the electrical era we had multiple vendors and competing formats (AC vs DC). The utilities asked for government regulation (i.e. local monopoly) in order to provide efficient, standardized service.
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on
Having worked with NATO (in US and Europe) over the years, I am amazed that Europe came up with one cell phone standard.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
In theory, you are. I never bother with cell phones, when in the US, since prices are OUTRAGEOUS. In Europe, depending on the country, I pay between 40 and 90 cents for outgoing calls and 20-30 cents for incoming calls per minute.
All US Carriers with roaming agreements charge 1$ for incoming and 2-3.50$ for outgoing calls, per minute. I'm much better served with a 10$ phone card, since public phones are plentyful and it's dirt cheap.
SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity. Nextel offer(ed) a phon ethat worked in the US and Europe - I haven't seen them advertise it recently, so I guess it never really caught on. My guess is pricing was what hurt it - people are used to cheap service in their home countries, an dbalk at the rates they pay overseas. Until a few companies become truely global providers, I doubt you'll see cheap global servcie, even if we have one 3G standard, since each carrier wants to make money on the service and has to cover billing costs, verification of service or allow for fraudulent use.
Roaming is one area where our market has an advantage - I can call from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US, with no roaming charges. It's all included in my monthly minutes. The only problem I've ever had is in rural Georgia, where I can call anywhere in the US but can't call to Europe. It turns out a few of the third tier carriers can't (!) handle international calls, because they can't figure out how to bill my carrier.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity
You're implying here and you are dead wrong. (alas I can only speak for myself)
Roaming is expensive, but since I travel a lot and depend on this feature, it's well worth the price and I'm willing to pay for it.
If however a company tries to extort me, they'll lose my business and I sure as hell find alternatives.
Still - it comes down to price. Calling Switzerland is not worth $2.50/minute to you, as you stated in your phonecard example. For you, the European roaming costs are worthwhile. Personally, I don't understand why you can't have a plan like I have in the US - less than 10cents/minute, no roaming fees in the US.
If you *really* valued roaming you would be much less price sensitive - but you only value it up to a certain price. It's probably simply not worth the phone companies effort to try to offer true international roaming, since they either would not make enough money off of it to cover the cost or they can make more from customers by selling them other long distance services.
Quite frankly, the phone company has you over a barrel - if you had a US phone number, you could get a calling card that gives you the same rates as does a normal landline call. There is no incentive for a phone company to cut rates for people who operate on a transactional basis (i.e. need the service but aren't a potential customer for other services, such as home/business long disatnce), and since they can identify them by phone card use, they can and do) charge alot for the service. It's like the hotels in Europe with their phone surcharges (which US hotels are starting to do as well)- they're betting the business traveler will want the privacy of an in-room phone instead of going to the PTT.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Sure, to a certain extent every service/product comes down to price. But that price musn't necessarily be cheap.
I give you an example: One of my vices are cigars, preferrably (but not necessary) Cuban cigars, which are readily available in most European countries. Not cheap, mind you, but worth the price.
I'm not a big cigar smoker, but I think Cubans are a bit overrated, in the US at least. I agree that the "you can't get it so it must be good factor" tends to inflate prices. I'd just a soon have a top of the line non-Cuban and a fine glass of Port.
It seems to be worth it in Europe. Roaming and SMS are probably the biggest cash cows for the phone companies. As with every product the price is a sensitive issue and they try to make it as high, that it generates nice profits, but not that high, that people don't roam. After all, the infrastructure and the (exorbitant expensive) billing systems are in place anyhow. So in essence, a call not made is lost revenue to them (at least until the network is saturated).
I wasn't very clear - I'm surprised that Europe doesn't have the equivalent of the US' no roam plans - you're still paying roaming fees throughout Europe?
Actually, I'm not all that surprised - even in the EU, each country has done a pretty good job of protecting its companies. It's not a bad deal for the companies, either, given the amount of cross border travel in Europe. It's another example how regulation ultimately benefits the regulated. Each countries carriers want to protect their home markets and get money from raoming. There is , after all no technical reason why a carrier couldn't establish a pan Euopean network - either by buying carriers or buying space on non-carrier owned infrastructure. Alternatively, they could also get agreements with other carriers to offset roaming use. Of course, that stil leaves the issue of how to collect taxes in each country unsolved.
In Europe, it appears that consumers don't get all the benefits a single GSM standard can provide.
Changing tower output could even let carriers cross borders without investing in a country - such as happened in northern Italy and Slovenia (if I rememebr correctly, that is the former Yugoslav country that borders northern Italy-Southern Tyrolia) Italians were getting inter-Italy calls via a neighboring country. Pissed off the Italian carriers.
As for SMS, the Blackberry is very popular here, and personally, I think it's a better form factor for messaging than a phone. I've sent exactly one email on my phone, an dits easier to use my Palm and a modem at the airport than sending stuff from the phone.
Also, European hotels are learning a painful lesson: Nobody (at least not European business travellers) use their phones anymore. Why should they ? They have a GSM phone, which is cheaper, mobile and as reliable as a hotel phone, so why would you want to get ripped off ?
We do that here too - I use my cell phone (unless its to an 800 number), especially since I pay a monthly flat rate rather than per minute.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I heard this a while ago (not sure how true it is) that the UK government is going to somehow provide (subsidising perhaps ?) digital TV to the population, turn off the analogue transmitters and sell all the frequencies off to the highest bidder. Could be good, could be evil. I wonder what the money would be used for though? Maybe they could give us a bigger tent.
greedy goverments here in europe (I'm in denmark) are still auctioning off UMTS licenses. dead tech already, but they won't know until their term in office is over. but 3G, hey, we'll probably see that in 5 years here, when it's outdated. suxxors ---> don't go there, http://go.to/gosub ---
Duh! bought by the US military! Won't see that again!!! I have had a GPRS phone for a year now - not worth the money (by the way, Europe has been having fun with these for a while - shouldn't have sold off quite so much of the spectrum eh?) It just means that WAP isn't quite so crap as before...
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
maybe the US is running out of area codes? hard to imagine, but who knows...
in any case, when i am in europe, i know exactly whether a given number is a cell or land line. i also know the operator.
while i think you are right that this is the reason for incoming-call charges, at the same time it really hurts cell phone growth.
let me just state the reasons i had a cell in europe. you will see that most of them don't apply here:
1) it's dirt-cheap. i got a nice phone free and pay $7 (yes, that's seven) a month, the contract runs for a year. if i never make any phone calls, that's already worth it just so people can reach me. entry barriers: zero. if it turns out i don't like it for some reason - i pay next to nothing.
2) voice quality is perfect. it's better than US land lines. i am surprised no one talks about it, but i have yet to see the US cell phone i can whisper into.
3) SMS. why is SMS useful? i could come up with lots of reasons, but i rather let the numbers do the talking: 20 billion are sent each month. end of story. who would want to miss out on such a market?
4) it works almost everywhere, even when leaving the country. world-wide. except for the US, that is.
5) everyone else has one. that multiplies it's usefulness - which is true for any communications device. the more people have it, the more useful it becomes.
my top 3 reasons for not using my US cell very much:
1) voice quality is horrible
2) reception is horrible
3) customer service is hell of hells. which is very surprising, since the US is usually far ahead of everyone else when it comes to customer service.
for some strange reasons, the US sucks BIG BIG time when it comes to mobile phones. the US sucks as much as europe did (and to some extent still does) when it comes to internet connectivity.
good old competition doesn't work in this case.
i liken the cell phone industry in this country to what would happen if all streets and highways in america had to be rebuilt, and private companies would take on the job with no government interference: all would build their own streets, with different widths and traffic rules, and then charge lots of money for everyone trying to use them (they are very expensive to build!). the result would be a complete mess that no one company would have the power to get out of by itself. for some things, deregulation simply fails miserably (as should be clear from the so-called california power crisis).
would the government step in and mandate GSM for all operators - we would have a booming mobile US in _no_ time flat.
nik
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on
I find the whole idea very interesting, but in the San Francisco/Bay Area
For $79 a month, fixed-in-place access is available via the same kind of dish many people currently use for digital satelite reception. The main transmitter is on the top of a nearby mountain, and offers incoming/outgoing data rates at about 3mbit/384kbit. So, not the kind of thing you might want to use if you have a server, but just the right kind of network you want if you like to surf.
The group is called wavepath, and is hq'ed in San Francisco. According to the last newsletter they put out, they intend to add a smaller PCMCIA/USB adapter for mobile wireless access by Q1 of 2002, which will offer ~3mbit rates for incoming data. This is something I definately look forward to.
More info -- www.wavepath.com
More general info on the state of wireless in the San Francisco / Bay Area --http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl/nooze/wireless.htm
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
The wireless system has been in beta test for the past few months in Anchorage, Alaska... and from what I understand the service works quite well. Now if they can only increase their cellular wirless system up here so the tourist don't take up all the digital slots with their damn roaming access...
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
I also think 3G will have a really hardtime. To get the full benefits of 3G, the aerials need to be setup very closely one to the next (about 300m for the best bandwidth/network coverage). The quantity of aerials is just going to explode and in most towns this is becoming too much for the citizens.