Voicestream Quietly Releases GPRS In The U.S.

hidden72 writes: "Voicestream quietly rolled out their iStream GPRS wireless data service in the United States last week. More information is available from Voicestream's website. General information about GPRS can be found here. Theoretically, GPRS data rates can reach close to 170k. Voicestream's per-packet charges are quite expensive, ($40 for 10MB) but it's an always-on 28k-56k data connection available in most metropolitan areas."

Comments

Re:Why GSM Sucks for America (not)

[shepd]

What's there to look at Finland? Oh yeah, they aren't anything like North America! You proved my point (if Finland really is the least dense place using GSM)! But here's the stats to back it up:

Taken from http://www.funet.fi/Finland/Finland-info.html
People per sq km: 16

(I'll use my home country, Canada to prove we need to use CDMA)

Taken from:
http://www.canadainfolink.ca/chartthree.htm

Canadian population: 30 million
Canadian land area: 10 000 000 sq km.
People per sq km: 3.

See what I'm talking about? I live in an area that would be considered 5 minutes out of town and my phone has to drop to analog to work! If it was GSM I wouldn't have service at all!

You might get away with only including the US in the stats, but even so, I'd be surprised if Finland's population were as evenly distributed as the US's.

>and it works over large parts of Russia

Great... a network that doesn't cover the times when you are out in the middle of nowhere and want to use the phone. Joy! Now I can take all my camping trips in fear that my car might explode on the way there since I can't afford an Iridium phone.

>hint you don't need many towers in Nebraska or Sibera because animals don't use mobiles

Try telling that to the 2 million "Animals" that live there under the mamalian class human.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/31000.ht ml

>You'd be hard pushed to find a more sparesely populated country

Nahh... I both live in one, and beside one.

I think you'll also find that wireless isn't popular here since it can't compete with local service. I pay $12 US a month for all the phone service I want. Is that how much it is in Finland? If its anything like the rest of europe, probably not.

I've heard of people in europe saying they use their mobile phones a lot because they hardly pay more to use them than a landline phone. I question if mobile phones can ever take off in a country where a local call is $0.15 US. Even the $30 US a month plans that include 600 minutes are a rip off! I can get more than 2 regular phone lines for that!

As long as wireless isn't cheap enough to be as popular as regular phones there won't be enough money coming in to build 12x the towers. Well, you could cut off customers and just have service in big cities like New York, but then everyone from europe would complain about how their phone only worked in the one city.

To me it all looks like chicken & egg.