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Best Cell Phone Service for GPRS?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-the-right-provider dept.

hojo asks: "I have a Palm Tungsten T and I'd like to start using it for (limited) wireless web browsing. It has Bluetooth support and will work with GPRS cell service. Alltel, my current cell provider, doesn't support GPRS so I want to switch to another plan. What cell phone service plans are there that you have used or know about that will work to allow me to use my Palm and preferably a Bluetooth phone for some on-the-road lookup? My only other issue is I'm trying to keep the cost less than $100/month."

3 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Most any European operator by adelton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most any European operator will provide you with reasonable GPRS plan.

    Oh wait, you're not in Europe but in Singapore? Or Angola? Well, then bad luck, I have no idea, you should have stated _where_ you were.

    Administrators, could we just skip this kind of submissions that somehow forget that there's world behind borders on poster's Iowa house?

  2. Traffic by fm6 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The whole point of GPRS is that you pay for the traffic you use (rather than connect time)...
    That's the theory. And it does appear that nobody's charging for GPRS connect time. (I'm not even sure it's possible.) But the big GSM/GPRS provider in my area (TMobile, California) seems to have had trouble selling GPRS on per-packet basis, and now offers a monthly rate with unlimited usage. I suspect people found the per-packet plan too expensive. Might be different in the U.S. than in countries where almost everybody uses GSM (such as Australia), and they can recover their capital costs from a larger consumer base.

    Here's a little background for people in GSM-only land. Outside the U.S. In the U.S., providers refused to standardize their technology, claiming that GSM wasted too much bandwidth. If I remember correctly, CDMA is the leading technology, with TDMA second, and various forms of GSM (not all of them compatibile with international GSM systems) a distant third.

  3. Tungsten W and AT&T by MrIcee · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I just picked up a Tungsten W after learning that AT&T wireless now offers GPRS here on the Big Island of Hawaii. Up until now only verison had wireless internet, but it wasn't GPRS.

    The AT&T service is fine - though not all the transmitters here have GPRS. AT&T let me keep my non-GPRS cell phone as well (you have to maintain a voice plan along with the data plan). The nice thing is... I've now got 2 cell numbers (one for the non-gprs phone and one for the tunsten w). The non-gprs phone works pretty much everywhere on the island (except places where all cell service is blacked out due to mountains) and the tunsten works many, but not all places (e.g., it doesn't work up on the active volcano - whereas my cell phone has excellant reception there).

    AT&T plans start around $20 and go up to around $79 or so... at the $70ish range they do offer an unlimited bandwidth plan.