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Sony Ericsson Makes a tri-band GPRS modem
prostoalex writes "Sony Ericsson announced their new PCMCIA GPRS wireless modem, capable of delivering 57.6 Kbps. It is tri-band and works in 900/1800/1900 MHz range, which led Sony Ericsson to imply that the card will work in 160 countries, providing an always-on Internet connection. Currently only Microsoft operating systems (starting at Windows 98) are supported. No exact price information on official site, but the PC Pro article above quotes 200 UK pounds. The manufacturer also runs a contest for those who would rather get one for free."
Finally I can lug my PC Case around with me to the mall and always have a connection to slashdot!
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
will they manufacture a wireless modem that is "always on" in 160 countries, but bumps it up to high speeds when I stroll through a Ricochet zone or a community 802.11b hot spot? Never? The Jetsons promised me way much more than this. Come on -- chop, chop -- make it happen.
I'll be darned, lol. When I clicked on the story, it had no comments. Thought I was first, but oh well. And yeah, the phone only supporting Windows blows. Not to mention - Can anyone see a company willing to let you use it as a (nearly) always on connection, without charging you an arm, a leg, and your firstborn child too? I can't.
Maybe to get irc wherever you are ? 8)
/*raccoon powered*/
What si the security like with this thing, it works in the 900Mhz range, I know alot of 900Mhz phones that are easily tapped with cheap equiptment. I hope Sony has thought this through.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Thoughts from a GPRS user:
I have a Handspring Treo phone here in Denmark, and it works great with GPRS. However, the cost (around 20c US / Mb) adds up quickly..
Coverage is fine and it is very usefull. But untill providers give unlimited use plans, this is very cost-prohibitive.
The manufacturer also runs a contest for those who would rather get one for free.
Who wouldn't rather get one for free?
As with the sun's light
My mom was magnificent
Unquestionable
is anyone else seeing the repeats of 20th centry technology being repeated but just on much smaller, portable computers... with interchangable faceplates?
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
Seems like a great product that could be very useful to travelling businessmen, and even just vacationers looking for a good place to eat. Lets just hope the security is there to go along with it. I have my doubts about it though, I would imagine something of this nature wouldnt be hard to intercept, theyve been intercepting cell phone transmissions for years.
So on the contest site (sonyericsson.com), in the rules it states that it's a EUR 399 value
The prize consists of one Sony Ericsson GPRS PC Card Modem, GC75, which has a recommended retail price of EUR 399.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Heh. Either you're trolling, or you completely miss the point. Try taking your cable modem to another country... or even accross town. Try using it from the local coffee shop. Nope. Didn't think so.
This is seriosly cool stuff. I wish (WISH!) that GPRS (or even good GSM coverage) was available in the USA at large. I'm still stuck with my TDMA phone until they get better coverage.
With At&T, I pay $5 for every 2 megs of bandwidth used. If I buy this card, it would cost me $15 just to download all the porn spam I get every morning. Unless the bandwidth costs get reasonable, I won't buy it. What happens if I accidently click on a goatse link? Can I send someone an invoice?
As far as I have understood, GPRS roaming in foreign networks is still a very rare service. GPRS works mostly only in your home network.
So marketing the modem as someting that enbles traveling people to have a constant internet connection is slightly overstated. Sure, the tri-band GPRS modem could work in 160 countries since it's hawdware-compatible, but in practice it doesn't since your SIM chip isn't operator-compatible. You'd have to sign up for a new subscription for each country you travel to.
So I've been reading about how in the UK everyone is using bluetooth enabled devices. This device becomes a perfect example of a "why do we need this?" product.
The way things should be:
- Most notebooks come with bluetooth.
- you have a Bluetooth enabled GPRS phone.
Done.. there is your internet connection.
Intead, for us stuck here in North America. We get CDMA, and no bluetooth to speak of (except as an option on some high end notebooks). Sure we can buy an adapter for the notebook. But no phones.
--- tracer.ca
GPRS, HSCSD, and 802.11 all in a single PC Card? orig=/ phones/nokiad211)
(http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html
If it's like other PCMCIA GPRS cards I've encountered, it might work under Linux/BSD/etc. - simply appearing as a serial device to which you send AT commands (and thus available to run pppd on).
The Windows-only sticker may just refer to some cutesy control centre applet which will (obviously) only run on Windows. Every modem needs its own control centre on Windows these days, it seems.
This is interesting. According to the article, you can swap out the SIM card on the modem. Two immediate options occured to me. One, cell phone theft is a problem in Europe. This can lead to people swiping a cell phone, grabbing the SIM card and doing whatever needs to be done anonymously via the Internet. I'm sure everyone can use their imagination. Second, and perhaps more interesting, there are various services that will purchase or provide SIM cards that are (more or less) anonymous, so you can make phone calls that are not traceable to you. These pre-paid SIM cards are rechargable. This could be a help if you had one in a climate where you needed to make sure something you posted on the web, for example, would be far more difficult to trace. Very exciting. Brave new world.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Also, compare it to the Nokia Cardphone. Works with Linux, too :-)
Check out the D211t ml
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,4879,1449,00.h
It is a wireless PCMCIA conectivity card, which supports both GPRS and 802.11b
There are even linux drivers avalabe to to download. (I don't know if they work)
It has been out for a couple of months.
The main downside is that it only supports dual band opperation, so I guess american readers are out of luck.
The other downside is that switching between GPRS and 802.11 is not automatic, though you could probably put together a script to make it so.
I dare say it is rather expensive as well.
Turns out with my T68, Bluetooth dongle, and iBook, I already have a tri-band GRPS phone that works with a stable operating system...
Score:-1, Funny
why not just buy a gprs phone? then use infra-red to connect your notebook/ppc to the phone?
They keep coming out with this cool technology but price it out of reach. My T39 Ericsson mobile phone has been able to connect via GPRS and my laptop's IrDA port for a year now, never done it though because my network providers (O2) costs is extortionate in my opinion, I stick to GSM dialup at 9600 bps to download my email when I am on the move. These mobile telcos shoot themselves in the foot.
Three years ago they were pushing WAP hard but then made it expensive to use, so no-one used it in Europe and all the techie press (including slashdot) said it was a dead and cr@p because of the small form factor, where are the WAP sites now? Slashdot's WAP site seems to have gone (eh Taco?). In South Korea they made WAP and GPRS affordable, and everyone used it, there are lots of sites and both technologies are considered a success.
The really strange technology success (for the telcos) is txting, they thought no-one would be interested so they bundled it as a cheap feature, and everyone used it. If they make GPRS cheap and put useful things on WAP (such as TV guides) then everyone will use it.
£rd generation mobile technologies will also fail unless these telcos learn this painful lesson.
Personally I get really offended when such a wide variety of countries are supported but my beloved home country of Ecuador is not.
If we're really small enough to just be casually tossed aside, then you are really the egomaniacs that the rest of the world seems to suggest.
Hmph.
Hardly. If they aren't going to support Win95c at least, then I flat out can't use their product, and I'm never going to buy another Microsoft OS again. The ball is in their court to support my OS.
I would tend to not worry about the actual cost of the card but rather the cost of having an "always on" wireless connection. Is there some kind of pricing plan out there for the actual service? I know if I spoke on my cell phone 24/7 it might cost a little bit of money. I don't see how this is any different.
My SonyEricsson has both Infrared and bluetooth, but my thinkpad only has infrared.
Turn the phone on infrared, and the thinkpad registers the "modem" T68i.
Voila, and no strings attached:)
We must quietly respect the gentle extension of market share on the part of the Big Guy. No whining, no complaints, no trolls: manufacturers are flooding the market with products that are only going to work with the Master System.
The reasonable thing to do is refuse to purchase these products until a reasonable selection of drivers is available for them.
Also, try not to by new boxes incorporating inflexible hardware.
Smarter markets are the key to a better future.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If you hover over the word "Contest" in the story blurb, it's a doubleclick.net ad link, for OSDN. That's a bit of a sneaky way of getting us to click-through isn't it?
Gee, too bad there's already the same thing... in Compact Flash.
0 00 .asp
http://www.shoppingpda.com/product/rtm8000/rtm8
GSM/GPRS, Tri-band, data, earphone jack for voice calls, supports PDAs & Windows - oh, and it's only $283 USD. Cheaper too.
When this tech is invisible, I'll be able to buy a laptop, and it will just be online. No worrying about cards or areas, it'll just be omnipresent connectivity.
All European cell-phones have removable SIM cards. Many, although most users don't realise it, have built in modems.
The Nokia 7xxx and 8xxx, plus the Ericsson R520, T28 and T68. By using either IR or Bluetooth, you can attach these phones to a laptop, and can then use an anonymous Internet account (like Freeserve in the UK.)
Indeed, I have been using this method (except for the Freeserve bit) for about four years now to access the web when I am travelling. It's not quick, but it's super useful.
Contrary to this posters' opinion, most criminals won't use stolen cell phones for Internet access. It's slow and clunky, and there are still ways to find who posted the hypothetical email message...
(1) Trace email message to ISP.
(2) Dredge ISP log to find phone number and time, duration of call.
(3) Contact cell phone company that carried the call, discover IMEI number of the cell-phone.
Now if anyone uses that cell phone again... you will know. You can track which cell they are in, etc. Complicated, but theoretically possible to catch the person you want.
Thx,
Robert
--- My dad's political betting
Seems like a great product that could be very useful to travelling businessmen, and even just vacationers looking for a good place to eat.
Finding food while travelling is one of the most basic instincts - even the most primitive hunters and gatherers managed it. I've been on many trips and vacations and never found it necessary to do much more than "follow my nose" to find something decent to eat. Most "travel guides" seem to steer you to over-priced tourist traps, so I would need some other motivation to take another expensive gizmo along on a vacation.
In most of the world there is no such thing as a doggie bag. -- Prof. Kelly Brownell
In the U.S., at least, you can already purchase a CDMA 1x PC Card for $200 that will get you speeds over 100kbps.
I have a Motorola P280 (purchased last year) TriBand GSM Mobile which does the same thing. It's access is via t-mobile here in the states; it came with a serial cable which plugs right into the phone - the phone is a full 56k modem which when plugged into serial port is addressable as a standard modem - no special software required.
It also handles GPRS modem, which does require special "iStream" software ( dunno what voicestream calls it now that they rebanded to t-mobile) and only runs on Windows.
It has all the same features of the above mentioned modem, but it also is a phone.
I paid about $300 for it in January, so it's probably more affordable now.
They have an i280 now also that is same phone PLUS bluetooth.
I love the Motorola bluetooth car kit....
Or do I completely not understand what this post is about?
Youch, that's a lot more expensive than it is here (Sweden) IIRC. That said, if you really need the portable connection, there are ways to minimise the bandwidth needed. Filter your mail on the server, use an IMAP client (mail.app on mac, mutt on *nix, pmail on windows all work alright for this) and set it to only download headers automatically, wait till you request the message to get the body, wait till you request attachments to get them... and browse with lynx. Or at least turn off image loading. Do all that and you'll cut your bandwidth usage tremendously.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
If your phone has bluetooth (or even IRDA/or a data cable) then it's essentially the same as the pccard
except it has the advantage of being a phone also!
It may be advantagious for certain custom systems,
but for general mobile situations laptop + phone
is the most flexible solution.
- if it only works with windows, who cares?
- why would it only work with windows?
- the manufacturer doesn't care about other market segments?
- why buy this POS? for US$28 a month i get 115200 on a no-cost kyocera that works with *any* computer..
Seems to me using a GPRS enabled phone with bluetooth or irda would be the better solution, and here's why:
- Most laptops come with only 2 pcmcia card slots, and frequently you can only get one card in at one time. No big deal, just a little bit of hassle factor if I have a pcmcia hardrive/usb 2.0 adaptor etc in there already.
- If I already have a GPRS/GSM account with a provider, I don't want to have to transfer the sim card from my phone into the card every time I want to use it, since then I won't be able to receive or return calls!
I have Nokia 6310i triple band phone w bluetooth and a socket bluetooth cf card. GPRS works fine and is supposed to work in US too in most of the urban areas although my operator lists them as untested. Downside is that my operator charges 16 (about equal in $)/ 1MB of data / month and 1 for additional MB's
YES! Your are right, free "broaddband" when you travel!
So get this card and a WiFi card and configure your computer to change over to the WiFi network when possible. Something similar to how dual-band phones work. The project to implement an open (free as in speech and beer) wireless phone network is designed in such a way.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Looking for an alternative ? Option International's GlobeTrotter Universal TriBand PCMCIA GSM/GPRS card has been shipping for months now... Driver supports for Windows family, PocketPC 2000/2002, MacOS and Linux support. And all that for 399 Euros.
Option International has been a leading company in bringing modems to PDA's and Laptops for years. They sold the first GSM Modem for the PalmOS as long ago as in 1996.
funny, you can get the service in 160 countries but you cant get it in farking north dakota
forget it.
as you pointed, the problem with seamless roaming over WiFi and other radio access such as GSM and UMTS is at the network (read billing) side of things.
/.ers love to bash UMTS - or they are all on Qualcomm payroll :) - but the truth is that WiFi in a multiuser environment is not better than a nicely behaving UMTS TDD access.
right now there are countless R&D projects trying to figure how to do it in a way that is both minimal cost to the user and still makes business sense for the operators.
a little bird tells me that it will be available in the near future. you need big muscle operators like Vodafone to jump into the WiFi hotspot business, and the natural order of things is to sell you a complete package: in your office you use your own, in hotspots you are connected to WiFi and in other areas you use UMTS or GPRS.
Lucent has recently demonstrated the feasability of seamless handover between WiFi and UMTS, and Nokia and Ericsson work on it. some US R&D lab has UMTS (TDD version) interoperating with WiFi right now.
most
so, there is a spot for WiFi / mobile phone card - that will come as soon as the operators find how to sell them.
I'm pretty sure that the switch couldn't care less what the IMEI is ('cuz you bill on the IMSI), so the call records that come off the switch don't have that informtation. I work for a cellular billing vendor, but admittedly, the batch/switch/OSS stuff ain't my particular area of expertise (or GSM for that matter), so I could be wrong...
It's ridiculos how the providers are charging you for GPRS traffic. The amount of traffic a MB of data creates just doesn't justify a cost of around $3 no matter how you look at it. If a network has got GPRS coverage the network radio stations will be able to handle both voice and data so there is no additional cost for the providers when it comes to data, still they are so stubborn trying to make loads of many out it even though no one wants to use it.
the service providers guarantee a certain speed, but should you be near a tower, they can often get better transfer rates. verizon has two services: one mobile ip which is 19k or so, and two express network, which can burst up to 144k (http://www.verizonwireless.com/express_network/in dex.html). i was told by a verizon person, though i doubt his tech skills, that the mobile ip will also burst to nearly the same speed. read the fine print!
GSM Triband, GPRS, Bluetooth, infrared access. And a nice tiny colour screen.
I use ICQ, web, email, connecting to it thru a bluetooth memory stick and a sony clié. I also have a bluetooth dongle on the PC. Folks, it's really nice to access the Net using the GPRS modem. It's not for everyday use, but if my ISDN link goes down, now I have a backup.
For now speed is below 56K, but it will increase (we hope so).
Cost? For free until Jan 1st. After that, people are talking about R$0,40/MB. Since the Dollar is around R$3,70, it will be really cheap.
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
I've had this card for a month now. Pretty neat stuff though.
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
I have a T68 which IS already a TRIBAND. To use
it as a modem, I hook it to a laptop or use a blue tooth card. No need for a separate modem.
And I don't need to ask for permission from stinking Microsoft to run this.
Why buy a modem card? Why not a cell phone and a cable or Bluetooth? It's almost as convenient and much more multi-purpose.
6310i is tri-band, has GPRS, Bluetooth, and all the standard phone stuff. And works perfecly with Linux. I'm quite happy with it, except when I have to reboot it occasionally to get the GPRS working.
With Bluetooth, any Bluetooth-cabable system can use the cell phone as a GPRS modem right from your pocket. For example, I have a Sony TRV-50 video camera that has Bluetooth, web browser, and e-mail client. Theoretically, I could use my cell phone as a modem for the camera. Ok, not in practice, I haven't gotten it to work yet.
Just aboun the price... I have flat rate from Vodafon in Hungary for 3200 HUF per month! Thats ~15 USD (1 USD = 240 HUF =)
O! And roming SUCKS!!! 10000 HUF per day!
(Its fun to read slashdot at 70 Km/h =)
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Flat rate for about 15 USD per month with Vodafon! =)
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Flat rate for 15$ PER MONTH !!! (in hungary) O and i got the first 3 months free....
Vodafon!
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
http://www.vodafone.hu/szolgaltatasok/gprs_3_eng.h tml
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Go over your allotted data and you're looking at $0.03/KB. If you are able to get that 57.6 Kbps out of this modem, that's about 7KB/s, or $0.21/s.
Want to download a 5MB MP3? $153.6 please.
I don't understand how they expect people to use this service, given the alternatives.
Its sad, but it seems you're right about DECT being a threat to mobile vendors - I spoke to a SAGEM rep (here in Australia) a few months ago on sourcing a DECT+GSM module. He said SAGEM did sell dual mode DECT+GSM phones abroad but that they were "definitely not" (he was quite vehement here) introducing them to Australia. He didn't help much with sourcing the module either. I eventually gave up.
DECT is great for voice: nodes can be configured in ad-hoc networks easily (in under 2-3 seconds), voice quality is superb (better than GSM or 802.11b streaming), it scales well, and has the largest installed base of digital cordless voice phones (not in the US though).
There was some talk about a GSM cordless technology called CTS -- supposed to be a "DECT-killer" -- but no one seems to be using it.
... have you seen the antenna anywhere?
Hi - the updated link is here: http://www.shoppingpda.com/catalog/product_info.ph p?products_id=33
This is a pretty good deal - US$235. I'm surprised they got it into this form factor!
Wow, that would rock. Vodafon is one of the biggies here too, I'm on Comviq instead at the moment but I should check if they offer that here, I'll switch it a heartbeat for reasonable unlimited GPRS... 3200 forint is 122 kronor... damn that would rock. Thanks for the tip.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
HA!!!!! Hey stay with Comviq they are much cheper than telia... is it still 40 ore per minut ?
=)
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)"
series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets
and deliver this message of joy to the masses.
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
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