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2.5G Services Start Trial Run In Seattle 112

Posted by timothy from the not-perfect-but-a-start dept.
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?
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2.5G Services Start Trial Run In Seattle More

2.5G Services Start Trial Run In Seattle

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  • Unlikely - unmetered data or open portals (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work for a huge mobile cellular infrastructure company and get lots of feedback from our customers. It is unlikely that there will ever be unmetered data or allow open portals (i.e. surf anywhere) on mobile systems. Sure folks say "look now, it eventually became available on wireline!", but here is the reality of the situation.

    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.

  • 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'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.
  • I agree about data always being metered (although there may be cheaper bundled plans in the future), but in the UK we already have WAP over GSM with open portals. In fact there was a legal ruling in France that forced France Telecom to open its portal, and I don't see that GPRS will make things go back to the closed model.

    Operators do really need to make money, but they'll probably do that by just making it more convenient to use the operator portal, providing really useful services, etc. However, they can still make money off traffic to third party sites.
  • 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.
  • Dont forget GPRS PCMCIA modems are coming out also. http://www.sierrawireless.com/news/jan-24a-01.html [sierrawireless.com]
    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.

  • Why does everyone think 3G is just cell phones...

    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 [ericsson.com] It works with the Erricsson CDPD ATTWS PocketNet [attws.com] 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 [sierrawireless.com]

    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. :)

    --
    No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping. Orville Wright (1871 - 1948)

  • It is here already, at Starband [starband.com]. 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).
  • Note, I never said it was cheap.


    --
    Never knock on Death's door.
    Ring the doorbell and run
    (He hates that).
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • Careful there, not all that shines is gold (Score:3)

    by kinkie ( 15482 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @12:18PM (#78796) Homepage
    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

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:50AM (#78798)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I work for a mobile operator Cellis [cellis.com.lb] 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)

  • Actually... (Score:3)

    by jfedor ( 27894 ) <jfedor@jfedor.org> on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @01:43PM (#78800) Homepage
    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.
  • 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.

    Does that mean that if there are 0 phones on the network the cell tower crashes with a Divide By Zero error?

  • An appropriately anonymous coward wrote: "'When will unmetered low-earth satellite coverage get here instead?' jesus christ, you're not willing to pay for ANYTHING, are you. No wonder Ricochet went under."

    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

  • Have to agree with you on the prices there.
    There's a variety of pricing options available here in the UK, but a fairly standard one would be £7.99 a month subscription (including 1Mb of free data transfer) + £3.99 for each additional Mb. (Guess thats around $11 subscription and $5.60 for each additional Mb).

    Even that seems a bit pricey to me!
    It wouldn't surprise me if those rates came down when the data market is a bit more mature.
  • 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.

  • Simultaneous voice and data (Score:3)

    by Cabby ( 39912 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @12:01PM (#78806) Homepage
    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 [corporate-ir.net] 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.
  • much better than 19.2 we currently see on CDPD

    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! :)

  • You were wondering why freenets will be nailed? (Score:4)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @12:24PM (#78809)

    $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.

  • 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.

  • 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 :)
  • 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.
  • kinkie! you semm knowledgable.

    What GPRS terminale are already out there ? ;^)

    bindo
  • I have a Timeport 260 and I'm quite content with it. It is a nice GSM phone, has HayesAT-cmpliant internal modem, RS 232 cable is supplied. It also talks without problems to my Palm Vx via IrDA (both GPRS and standard dialup). It also has a WAP browser

    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 [starband.com] that offers satellite internet access. Up to 500kpbs downlink, and 50-60kbps uplink. Too bad you'll have to carry a dish, though..

  • I'm in Europe, Sweden. I've got an Ericsson T39 [ericsson.com] (damn that's a phone with _everything_ in it - and small. yes, 1900 for you US guy also).

    ... and yes, I'm on GPRS. It's kinda cool. WAP finally makes sense.

    Damn I love this phone.

  • Pricey, though -- $50 covers just 1MB of data.

    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.

  • Sorry to let my patriotism show so blatantly, but Microcell has been offering GPRS on their GSM network all across Canada [microcell.ca] since April 4, 2001.

    Not only that, but they don't bend us over nearly as much: C$75 (~US$50) for 25MB [www.fido.ca] (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).

  • low-earth satellite coverage, cost (Score:4)

    by Doomdark ( 136619 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:59AM (#78824) Homepage Journal
    When will unmetered low-earth satellite coverage get here instead?

    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.

  • 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.
  • I've always heard it pronounced letter by letter (but then that was always by the Systems Engineer guy that sat in the cube next to me for a while)

    ---

  • ...being an early adopter. Wait for the service to get cheap with large amounts of users before signing, if $50/MB is too much.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • As I understand it, in many countries bandwidth is and may well remain metered. The telephone companies detest flat rate phone service and would much rather charge us by the minute for local calls. I suspect the general public might not accept pay-by-the-megabyte plans for next then cell phones, though so we may get lucky anyway.

  • 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.
  • 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.
    __
  • There are tons of GPRS phones [ebay.com] on Ebay.

    __
  • Probably not, because all those GPRS solutions tend to be behind firewall so you just dont have a real IP.
    __
  • 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.
    __
  • Ericsson R520 _does_ support simultaneous voice and data.
    __
  • Wow, $30 for an MP3? Forget that - I'm just going to go steal the CD the old-fashioned way.
  • 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.
  • But, can you make phone calls with your Ricochet? (I mean real phone calls, with guaranteed QoS.) Can you keep it in your pocket?
  • You're pretty much right here, but everyone needs to see through the press and speculation.

    Blackberries just use a quite old wireless packet data network called Mobitex (the same thing the UPS guys has on his signature pad). 3G succeeds this by several generations. You will be using your Blackberry or Palm or Agenda or Zaurus or whatever you feel most comfortable with. But it will be using 3G. Possibly via a Bluetooth connection to your 3G phone--so you can carry the phone alone if you don't think you'll want full-color browsing that afternoon.

    3G is very slowly coming. It's got the corporate weight of the entrenched network operators behind it. The dire straights that Richochet is in just point to the unfortunate economic realities of "capital-intensive" services like natiowide wireless.

  • 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...

  • talk about expensive.... (Score:3)

    by ledbetter ( 179623 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:56AM (#78840) Homepage
    Microcell Solutions [www.fido.ca] 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!
  • 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.

    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.

  • 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.

    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.

  • Still - it comes down to price. Calling Switzerland is not worth $2.50/minute to you, as you stated in your phonecard example.

    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 ?

  • I'd just a soon have a top of the line non-Cuban and a fine glass of Port.

    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...

  • 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 [glowingplate.com], if you like dubious projects.


  • Nothing like getting a $50,000 phone bill for all those Slashdot hits eh? :-)

    How about the gasoline costs of leaving the engine idling to keep that world-record uptime? Ouch.

    www.glowingplate.com [glowingplate.com]


  • I wrote a small visual basic proggy that sits in the system tray on my win98 box. When you push my doorbell (plugged into the joystick port to save serial ports) it maximixes and shows me who is at the door. I used the windows box because it is hooked to the tv and stereo for watching divx movies

    Oh, that's a really cool idea! Yeah, if you wanna send me the source, that'd be great, thank you.

    I use my Winblows 2000 box as my primary machine (mostly because PuTTY is a really good Telnet/SSH client and my *NIX boxes are headless). My video card dumps NTSC into my VCR, and from there, it goes off to my antique TV collection. It's really cool watching DVDs on a 1951 Motorola. :)

    And I thought I was high tech because my answering machine automatically e-mails me my incoming messages.

    :)

    Too much technology, too many dubious projects:

    www.glowingplate.com/bobo.shtml [glowingplate.com]

  • according to The Industry Standard. [yahoo.com] Too rich for my blood.
  • Pricey, though -- $50 covers just 1MB of data.

    Actually the $50 includes 400 minutes of voice, which makes it pretty competitive -- it's basically your first 1MB of data for free. I called them and found out that additional data is $0.0075/Kb, or $7.68/Mb. Still an order of magnitude more expensive than Microcell, but at least it's closer to reasonable.

    You can also see the original press release [attws.com] at AT&T Wireless [attws.com]. It also says that unified messaging is an available service, and that you can be notified of new email while talking.

  • Why is any cool wireless service always metered? Palm.net is the same way... I hate services where I always feel like I'm on a timer, whether it's a cellular phone, CPPD modem, or GameWorks (pay by the hour video gaming). That's one reason I liked Ricochet so much - flat rate, no cap.

    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 [aerotechnews.com]?
  • 3G wireless networks have been slower than expected [pcworld.com], 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.
  • In Mexico residential telephone services costs the equivalent of US$17 per month and you get 100 "free" local phone calls per month. After the first 100 per month, they charge you 10 cents per phone call. The only good news is that that 10 cents can buy you a call 8 hours long.

    So what I do is just hop on the Internet and camp there 8 hours (the maximum time limit until the phone system disconnects you). Then I call back. Works out to about 2 or 3 calls to conncet to Internet per day, or 60-90 calls per month. Needless to say, I generally don't ever pay for the calls to my ISP since I never have more than 100 in a single month.

    Metered phone service sucks. It'll go away in those countries that have it and won't appear in the United States. Costs are decreasing for communications worldwide; there is no justification for metering local calls, especially with phone over IP technology improving.

    Hell, I'll bet within 10 years we won't even be paying for long distance... or perhaps just a fixed "$30/month for all the long distance and local calls you need."
  • 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.

    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.

  • Yo, they are talking about _testing_ _GPRS_ - we have had working GPRS for some time here in Denmark (my boss have had a working GPRS phone for a while, the tests were probably conducted years ago).

    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 [fremontfair.com] parades [seafair.com] 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?

    • ...being an early adopter. Wait for the service to get cheap with large amounts of users before signing, if $50/MB is too much

    or, move to Sweden :)

    GPRS has been active here for quite some time now, and - you can get 1 Mb for 20 Sek ($2 US). i icq on my Palm m505 with GPRS while on the subway daily, and, it doesn't cost me a thing.. now, surfing webpages sucks down some bandwitdh - but, its cheap! my costs for Internet access over GPRS are minimal, compared to the old cost of using tghe GSM phone..

  • Excellent for PDAs (Score:4)

    by MagerValp ( 246718 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:46AM (#78861) Homepage
    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.
  • Unmetered? Never [slashdot.org].

    ---
  • People say such things about new technology the whole time, if you think about it - what the hell do you need a mobile phone for - or a phone at all for that matter - use the ould letter / pigeons / smoke signals.

    3G might take a while to come about - initial network costs are very high - but it will arrive.

    In this part of the world (Ireland), there are plenty of people addicted to sms. Who would have thought that short messages limited to 160 characters typed out on a keypad costing 10 pence a go would be so popular??

    If 3G gives you cheaper, faster wireless access to the internet, people will use it - if for nothing else than annoying messages. And that's just to each other - spam might be something else.

    Besides all that, I'm sure there are many applications of 3G that people just haven't thought about yet.

  • Re:Or... (Score:5)

    by baptiste ( 256004 ) <{su.etsitpab} {ta} {ekim}> on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @12:36PM (#78864) Homepage Journal
    I've got a DSL line at home and no cell phone. Somehow, I get by.

    No doubt - I've got friends just DROOLING over 3G till I ask them 'why?' I mean besides using your cellphone like a blackberry for email, what the hell do they need it for? I guess IMing over cellphones could be cool, but not THAT cool. Just talking on my cell costs me enough - I don't need to add wireless web costs to it to browse websites on tiny LCD screens. Sure the stuff will get bigger - but who wants that? I got my cellphone cause it was SMALL really small. I can read alert emails from my servers if necessary, but beyond that - I use it to talk - thats it. I sure as hell aren't browsing yahoo with it - don't need to.

    I honestly think 3G is gonna be a flop outside of non-stop travelers and even then - its just not gonna see that much use IMHO because it is reaching a point where folks can't justify the expense. Sure the Blackberry concept and wireless Palm devices are doing OK, but they aren't racking up huge subscriber growth. And they use a platofmr you can actually read stuff on. But at some point it loses the appeal - I mean why carry a cellphone that can receive email when teh person can just CALL if it is urgent. If you really need somethign for remote email you'll already have a blackberry and will upgrade, but I doubt you'll see folks flocking to 3G like some analysts swear will happen.

  • I can see miriads of use for a real web-enabled wireless thinghy.

    Browsing www.amazon.com to see if there is a newer edition of this OReilly book while at the bookstore. Same thing apply for every store/shop...

    Being able to actually do something to your servers while being out.

    Getting a map from Mapquest when you're lost.

    Basically complete information anywhere anytime. This is a real killer app. Wireless email is nice, but this will be the real thing.
  • >In LEO you're moving at a pretty good clip, and typically traverse the full span of the sky in a minute or two.

    Not so fast!

    LEO's sattelites (along with the space shuttle and ISS) revolves around the Earth about 16 times a day. That gives you around half an hour of usable time for one satellite.

    Actually there are several plans of LEOs "constellations" of satellites, Globalstar for example, with between 200 and 800 birds. This systems can actually give you a good wireless T1.

    BTW Iridium was a GEO system.
  • Is it just me or is the suffix "G" trying to be suggestively misleading as to represent Gig- ?
  • Oh, watch me get a jingoistic.

    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 [www.fido.ca] for the marketing junk.

    MICROCELL FIRST TO DELIVER COMMERCIAL AVAILABILITY OF 2.5G WIRELESS DATA SERVICES ACROSS CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES [microcell.ca]

    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?

  • Or you could do what i did.
    I wrote a small visual basic proggy that sits in the system tray on my win98 box.
    When you push my doorbell (plugged into the joystick port to save serial ports) it maximixes and shows me who is at the door. I used the windows box because it is hooked to the tv and stereo for watching divx movies
    .

    It also saves a snapshot(.gif) to a directory on my webserver(mandrake 8.0 on telocity dsl) and it sends me an email telling me someone just rang my doorbell.

    Now, if I only had a cellphone capable of recieving email, connecting to the web, and viewing color .gifs I could instantly see who is at my door from anywhere in the world.

    Next is VoIP so i could talk to them to.

    Let me know if you want to try this out I'll gladly send you a copy and the source.

  • 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 :)
  • 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.
  • >>USA & Israel are the big bullies in the middle east. Stop listening to your biased internal news reporting!

    Hi. I'm sick of my biased internal news reporting. Could you please point me to an non-biased news source? Or barring that, an externally biased news source. I might be cwazy (since I'm american and all), but I'm guessing everyone is biased one way or another. True objectivity is achievable perhaps only by God. Speaking of God, I was also under the impression that it's popular to hide behind him as justification for the massacre of people with differing opinions over there in the middle east. Again, if I'm wrong, please broaden my pathetically american horizons.

    Thanks =)

  • 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?
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • "Solar-powered plane passes flight test

    NASA celebrated another success, a little closer to earth. The unmanned Helios aircraft soared to a height of 76, 000 feet on its first test flight.

    Later this summer, Helios will be taken up to a height of 100, 000 feet, which is three times as high as commercial airliners fly. Helios is solar powered with 62, 000 individual solar cells. In flight, it's in continual daylight because it's high above the clouds. Future versions of the plane will carry rechargeable fuel cells, which should allow it to stay in the air indefinitely. If the remaining tests are a success, Helios could be used for long-term monitoring of the earth, or even as a mobile telecommunications station, providing the same services as a communications satellite, but at a fraction of the cost."

    This comes off of www.exn.ca and aired on the discovery channel. It may not be unmeetered, but it will be cheaper.

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