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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, ($40 for 10MB) but it's an always-on 28k-56k data connection available in most metropolitan areas."
Palm has a nice GRPS modem out.. seems like anybody with a decent palm and the modem within a area that is accessible by GRPS would be quite happy except if they cant afford the service.. I for one wouldnt mind being in a Cafe and whipping out my Palm and looking up the current movie listings for teh area I'm in and be able to find a decent movie that I want to watch..
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Voicestream has a page that has GRPS capable devices at: http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/gprs_terminals
The reason mobile phones are doing so well in europe is the price and the flexibility. Sweden are for instance way ahead of the states, way better standard (GSM all the way), better deals and SIM cards instead of locking the consumers in.
So what does this got to do with GPRS? Well, charging per packets will be expensive, even more so as you will pay for everything in and out (I guess). WAP push will not be fun for example. And it could very very easily become extremly expensive for the cosumer, and hard to check up on how expensive it has become before it is too late. Charge me a monthly sum according to the QoS I get and I would think about it, like it is now I can not recommend anyone to use it, unless they are very rich.
99Fims (about 15$) a month for unlimited GPRS data-access :)
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
(and bluetooth, and irda, and SyncML, and background pictures, and sound&pictures in SMS [EMS], and
it's in my head
The other nice thing about Voicestream is that they use GSM, which allows me to roam internationally (no, not just Canada and Mexico). Recently I was on a trip to France, and was able to send and recieve calls just as if I was state-side.
It is a great idea, and the proof of that is AT&T is also building a GSM network.
I infact found my Motorola Timeport GPRS easier to setup under linux than ce or windows! The motorola software (for windows) does not work on com2 Active Sync does not like com2 either, and when it is working on com1 it does not seem to configure the modem correctly 50% of the time. Ce was just a pain requiring it to be configured on 2 different place, dial and modem, each screen you have to go though 3 pages of "advanced settings"
My chap script for linux however took me about 30 seconds to get working.
'' 'ATZ'
'' 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","ADF.BTCELLNET.NET"'
'OK' 'ATDT*99#'
'TIMEOUT' '30'
'~--' ''
James
Also known as "ISDN" on some phones.
With it, the connection time is practically zero as th GSM connects to the Internet Dialin port via ISDN instead of with a modem. To use it, you just need a different init string, and the other side has to support V110 (not all do, but a lot do).
I use it when connecting my laptop. I only get 9.6 kBit as I don't use it enough for the $10 extra a month to be able to use HSCSD (High speed circuit switched data) which is capable of transferring 14.4*3=43,2 down/14.4 up or something like that. And that only costs regular phone charges.
GPRS is too expensive here in Germany.
If I would use it, I would have to pay $0.35 per 10 kilobytes for the first 100kb and $0.10 after that.
So one MB would cost $3.50 + 90*$0.10 = $12.50 for one megabyte!!!
With HSCSD I only pay $0.10 per minute and get a decent connection. That makes a megabyte price if continously transferring data of $0.35
They're going to use GSM800 aren't they?
Just now phones are starting to have GSM 900/1800/1900 as a standard and now we have GSM 800 as well.
Oh well.
If you download an ssh client for your palm, you can really do interesting stuff with decent bandwidth (I've seen it done over a standard crappy cellphone connection)
I bet BOFH wouldn't be so pissed off if he knew he could delete a user's work or kill their processes whilst sipping a pint at the pub.
Hi everybody!
I just have to say one thing:
Here in Europe GPRS is already in use in cellular networks so I have some experience with it (the experience comes also from my job, I work at the largest cellular network provider here in Austria). Unlike HSCSD, GPRS does not provide stable data tranfer rates. 170 k sounds cool, but as experience has shown, these rates only apply if you stand directly next to a receiver. HSCSD uses multiple channels, reaches about 43 k and if you loose a channel (e.g. when the network gets crowded) you pay for one channel less. GPRS uses slots in one channel, and if a slot is unavailable - well, bad luck. Here in Austria most people prefer HSCSD for it is cheaper and more reliable, the maximum transmission speed reached with GRPS in real use is only slightly higher than HSCSD and generally speaking -> HSCSD is most times faster. GRPS is not a solution for high speed date. It is only a small step towards UMTS.
bye
johannes
".Sig Stealer" was here