August 29, 2003
att wireless claims EDGE will be 110-130Kbps
In an email sent out to registered developers with att wireless, the company claims "The AT&T Wireless EDGE network promises to be the fastest, national wireless data network. With average data speeds of 110-130 Kbps, it will be twice as fast as any other national wireless data network", which is footnoted by saying those speeds will be for PC Card EDGE modems.
Cingular launched EDGE service in June only in indianapolis on one handset. I hope that att looks at a wider launch, given the small footprint of their GPRS service. since EDGE is an upgrade path from tdma, of which att has a pervasive footprint, it certainly seems possible.
i expect a similar announcement from t-mobile coming soon.
August 28, 2003
wi-fi for laundromats: do we really need specialized offerings for this?
wi-fi planet is reporting that a company called Serynade is marketing wi-fi kits directly to laundromats (story). wi-fi in laundromats is a great idea, but there's about 20 other places that are a good idea as well, and is a laundromat so different from say, a coffee house, that they would go to a specialized company that has done dozens of other laundromats? perhaps if the billing system takes quarters.
T-Mobile, Verizon, and SBC need to get on the ball and start offering connection kits wherever they can in a seamless manner. you figure SBC could package this as an easy add on to their DSL blitz. maybe they do, but i haven't seen it!
August 26, 2003
first impressions of Microsoft Smartphone 2002
in the battle for the smartphone market, one thing microsoft seems to understand is that one size does not fit all. they see that some of their users prefer a full featured pda that also doubles as a voice and wireless data phone, and other users prefer a full featured phone that has aspects of being a pda. this suite of operating systems, now being pre-marketed as "windows mobile 2003" in the past has consisted of "pocket pc phone edition 2002" and "smartphone 2002" respectively. The pocket pc phone edition has been seen in north america on the t-mobile pocket pc, the samsung i700 sold by verizon, and the hitachi sh-g1000 communicator sold by sprint pcs - and in europe as the t-mobile mda and the o2 xda. the smartphone os, however, until very recently was only seen on the orange spv in europe and the uk, and now as HDC tanager via other channels.
i've been carrying around a pre-production developer version of a smartphone 2002 device provided by everlink wireless which has been labeled as the "red e sc100 smartphone". as it is a pre-production device, i will try to keep my comments on the smartphone os itself, and not on the device itself. there definitely were many times i had to reboot the device because of errors, and there were times i could not tell where to place the blame for errors and glitches, but suffice it to say the phone itself has been more than functional for my needs, exceeding expectations in some areas, although also dissapointing me in others. I tested using t-mobile us GSM service, with a GPRS connection provisioned on their internet3.voicestream.com gateway which allows outgoing access on all ports.
to those who are familiar with the pocket pc, or the pcoket pc phone edition, the smartphone will make them feel right at home. the home screen that exists on the other devices also appears here, but in smaller fashion. the icon bar fits 5 application icons, containing the most recently launched items, and appointment, message status, and profile all can be viewed, selected used to launch their associated application. the status bar shows the same message and GPRS indicators, as exist on the phone edition, which i had used before, so i already knew the meaning they brought to bear as the icons appeared and reappeared as i performed actions on the phone.
my use consisted of setting up an email account that would be accessed via GPRS, daily browsing, texting (SMS), making phone calls, and attempting to play games and MP3s. here's my observations with these activities:
email task:
for my use, i need my phone to connect to a non-microsoft-exchange email account to retreive my mail on a timely basis, preferably before i would have to "pull" it. in short, the blackberry sets a pretty high bar for email, and i would like to get as close to that experience as possible (can't wait to try the nokia 6800 with blackberry integration!).
evaluation:
as existed in the pocket pc phone edition, the smartphone os can't deal well with an imap server that isn't exchange based. mine is linux based running sendmail and u-dub imap, and the smartphone hangs trying to download all the other stuff in my home folder that isn't my mail, and there aren't any options to prevent this. so as with ppcpe, i was resricted to using POP. that aside, the email experience on the os is strong.you can view about 5 subjects at a time with the sender, and i say it's about 50% better than you can do on the sony ericsson t68 or t610. you can choose what to download, and reading and writing mail using the keypad is functional. the user can set the email client to autosynchronize from frequent as every fifteen minutes to once a day or never - which worked better than i have seen it on some other devices.
browsing task:
browse this weblog, along with mobile content provided by microsoft, and i few others
evaluation:
as far as the "mobile internet" goes - this is the best i have seen on a phone profile. the smartphone version of IE advertises itself as windows CE IE 3.x compatible, which is enough to browse many places without a problem. it has a "fit to screen" mode which does a fantastic job of rendering many sites readable without having to scroll to the right. mobile browser developers, take note - this is the right way to do it. if this isn't enough to convince the masses that WAP is dead, i don't know what is. the bookmark capability is easy, but the one thing that was a little annoying is that the "back" button tended to always reload the page from the network instead of cache. with a 256 MB SD card, i have plenty of room to cache some of the sites i browse often.
texting task:
text a contact, receive a response, and text again
evaluation:
this phone/os combo has t9, which i personally think is much more efficient than the pen based interface of the pocket pc phone edition. i found it curious that you could fill in a subject and body in your SMS, although you can send to multiple recipients, including SMS and email users in the same message. smartphone uses the "one inbox" approach to messaging. all email, sms, and mms (seen from demos) appear in one inbox. for some reason, this feels natural on the blackberry, but still a little unnatural on the phone. it didn't help that the incoming sms i received got sorted below the email i was receiving because of time differences on the source servers. either way, i think the messaging being agnostic to the bearing channel is an interesting approach we'll see more and more of, but i know i've certainly been trained by other phones to look in differnt inboxes for different media.
making a phone call task:
make a call! simple enough?
evaluation:
i like it when i get wowed with a usability feature. just start typing a name OR a number from the home screen and the smartphone starts presenting you with a subset of your contacts that match. as you keep typing, the list gets smaller but rarely does this require more than 2 keystrokes. everyone should emulate this. also, you can go to the calendar, notes etc while on the phone. speakerphone is supported, and worked well on this model.
gameplay task:
play solitaire and mini-jetfight
evaluation:
some innovation here. the platform does a great job of supporting keyboard based games by labelling all buttons with a keypad number shortcut. so instead of having to use the joystick to move around, they keypad can easily be used. for instance, in playing solitare, to move a card from one stack to another, you might press 6 then 5. mini-jetfight is a graphic intensive flying game that seems to support multiplayer server based play. i only tried the one player game, but although the game took forever to load, the results were pretty spectacular for a phone. almost as good as a sega genesis on a phone. it's not quite up to par with the 3d libraries supported on the sony ericsson p800, but it was a heck of a lot easier to play with a joystick than a pen!
task:
listen to an mp3
evaluation:
this particular phone comes with an SD media slot, so it was pretty easy to load up a bunch of mp3s onto the card and put it in the phone. smartphone 2002 comes with windows media player as you might expect, capable of playing music and video. as far as playing mp3s...not so good here. i'm not sure if it was the phone or the os, but the VBR ripped MP3s i took right off my music server were unplayable. the processor tried to keep up, but could not buffer enough to play them at all. stutter, stop. stutter, stop. i probably could have ripped them at a lower bit rate and been fine, but i'd never do that. i want the mp3s that play on my ipod to play here as well. i'd like to see how some other phones fared on this task.
future potential:
this particular phone provider didn't supply an MMS client, but i would expect the resolution of images and media play to be supported in an above average manner. i also didn't see bluetooth support but i'm sure thats coming down the pike. one thing that was encouraging was the SDIO slot that seems to be supported on all the smartphone devices. this is encouraging because it would seem to be a clear path to a combo wi-fi/GPRS phone using a card such as the
sandisk sdwifi card or a similar one made by Socket and the smartphone os does seem to support peripherals such as this...that is, networking is not tied to WAP/GPRS.
microsoft still has a long way to go to fend off symbian. verizon will soon be launching a motorola smartphone with a clamshell design in the US where symbian doesn't have an overwhelming foothold, but even in europe where smartphones have been released at multiple operators, the numbers pale in comparison to sales of devices running symbian. microsoft also has to address the younger market somehow to gain market share, which i don't see happening without a rebranding and repackaging. perhaps some cool games will do the trick.
my general impressions are very positive. the one negative i see is battery consumption, as i think is also a problem with pocket pcs i have used. microsoft states in their FAQ that the average battery life should be 2 days with constant use. in my tests where the email client was grabbing mail every 30 minutes, the battery lasted 8 hours tops, again under the caveat of beta hardware.
the bottom line is there are some impressive capabilities provided by the operating system, that if used right could gain a share of the expanding smartphone market for the business user.
August 22, 2003
interesting 802.11g vs b findings
matthew gast, who wrote the great o'reilly book on 802.11 has done some tests on 802.11g,b, and a - and interestingly, 802.11g is only 5 times as fast as b when the entire network is running g, and backwards compatibility is turned off. otherwise, it only is about twice as fast. this is a little bit disappointing for me, because i don't see anyone being able to run a homogeneous 802.11g network for quite some time, as the devices with built in b are just starting to appear.
read about it here.
August 18, 2003
review: rim blackberry 7230
a few years ago i was in waterloo, ontario in a meeting with the blackberry product manager. one of the bonehead "salesguys" i was with piped in and said "you know, you really need to make your devices look cooler. the graphics look terrible compared to a palm or pocket pc, and you have to have color". i remember thinking " i'd trade it all as long as i can keep my week long battery life! email and battery life." today i hold in my hand the blackberry 7230, the first color model to appear in the US. the graphics do look cool, and well, so far the battery is holding up. let's face it, monochrome screens are a thing of the past. in a year owning a monochrome phone will be a bit like owning a black and white tv, especially in the PDA world.
the blackberry (aka the "crackberry") is perhaps the most addictive piece of gadgetry out there, to the extent that the CEO of RIM and his wife have to lock their devices in a safe over dinner so that they do not respond to incoming emails. for receiving and responding to emails on the go, there is no equal. i've been a "user" since the first iterations, and have owned the mobitex, ineternet, enterprise, GPRS, and even the AOL versions at one point or another in my career. i must admit lately i've been getting by with email retreived via GPRS on various smartphones, and have relished not being tied to this device, but with the release of the 7230, it was definitely time for a relapse.
the form factor of the 7230 is a little smaller on the length and width than previous generations, but a little thicker in the depth depth, probably to accomodate the on board phone. the custom roller-escape button combination is still there and rim has added a quick access phone button on the top. the phone is now tri-band 900/1800/1900 so you no longer have to leave your RIM at home when you go transcontinental (although with GPRS, you have to leave it at home if you go to rural america).
side by side:
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thickness:
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browsing to cnn:
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rim doesn't claim to market the 7230 and its ilk as a replacement phone, but it's there if you need it - which is probably a good move given the device's profile. that said i think there will be times where this is the only device i carry, with my primary number forwarded to the rim. despite what i've seen in some other articles about the 7230, the rim phone does not require the use of an earbud, you can put the device right up to your cheek and use it like a phone, which doesn't look as awkward as one might think. one cool feature the phone has is "smart dialing" which gives you the ability to put extensions in your phone book, and insert necessary pauses. if this exists on other phones, i haven't seen it - but then again, i never read phone manuals. i expect them to just be naturally usable. c'mon, it's just a phone, right?
using the embedded browser/gateway combo provided by t-mobile, wap sites are fast and easy to read (they still put the same old t-zones wap stack on this device) and most HTML sites are transcoded in a way that makes them usable and readable, just by using the scroll wheel.
as far as mobile email, RIM has gotten rid of the "internet" and "enterprise" versions, bundling capabilities of both onto one device. you can setup up to 10 external email accounts to be polled and pushed onto the device every 15 minutes or forward your mail directly to the device. you get an email address for the device ( userid@tmo.blackberry.net ) but you can set the "From" address to anything you want using the blackberry.net website, so no one ever knows you are using your blackberry. i personally use procmail on unix to forward my mail to my RIM so i receive mail immediately, but your IT department may or maynot be willing to do this.
you can now view .doc, .ppt, .xls, and .pdf files out of the box, which in itself is a huge improvement over the older versions i owned. i was especially impressed by the PDF viewer, but disappointed there are no image viewers. after all, i have a color screen now! in general, GPRS mail delivery seems a lot faster than on previous versions (but then again, tmobile's GPRS just seems a lot faster in general lately).
Also included is a "BrickBreaker" game which is a breakout clone that shows off the color and works pretty well with the scroll bar.
the SMS version of aol instant messenger worked great on this device, and of course texting is extremely easy. unfortunately, there is no MMS client so the picture messages i get (i'm getting more and more these days) will just go into the bit bucket. please, someone write an MMS client for this device. pretty please.
the biggest problem for rim is still the lack of third party applications that will help them breakout of the corporate marketplace. even after making the device able to run J2ME apps, we have not seen the plethora of commercial apps that have sprung up for say, symbian devices (i'd say palm, but palm had a huge head start). it will be interesting to see what happens once palm and nokia integrate the blackberry email capability into their devices. if it works well enough, will anyone purchase one of these? i don't know how many time's i've heard "if only i could get blackberry email on my palm". i'm sure RIM is well aware of this, as they don't sell that many devices. it's probably the software that gets them the real margins. actually, i don't think palm has announced integrating the email capability, just the keyboard, but we'll see what they do.
i did receive a few java stack trace exceptions while using the browser (most of you call these bugs) but the device didn't crash and second tries usually got past these.
so if you are already a blackberry addict - i do recommend the 3230 as an upgrade, and if you ever wanted a blackberry, this is a good place to start. the color screen does make the device more enjoyable to use, believe it or not, although with the supplied apps, it practically won't make that much of a difference. battery life with color doesn't seem to be an issue, and it's even less of an issue since it now comes with a USB charger out of the box. if you are already travelling with a laptop, all you need to carry is one lightweight cable. of course, hopefully there will be a few trips where i can only carry this device, and leave my laptop at home.
if you occasionally need a phone, but rely heavily on your email and texting, this might be the best device for you.
cost
t-mobile us sells for $399 USD. unlimited email service is $39.99/month.
ratings
phone: 7
texting: 10
mms: 0
email: 9 (missing image viewers)
browser: 7
camera: 0
battery: 7
usability: 7
durability: 5
stability: 5
gameplay potential: 6
third party apps: 4
fashion: 6
out-of-box accessories: 10
legend:
0 = nonexistent
3 = below average
5 = average
7= above average
10 = the best i've seen
att wireless wifi pricing
wow. a colleague just pointed out att wireless' GoPort pricing. it's the prepaid cellular model applied to wifi. you buy packages of connect sessions, that they hope you probably never use, and the unlimited monthly package is amazingly expensive given the few places you can use it.
most business travellers who can expense this type of thing will probably pay for it anyway, and i would expect there to be a lot of one-shot purchases from people stuck in an airports, but this will have to gravitate toward being free. in some airport lounges wifi is already free (such as the star alliance lounge in toronto) - now if only they would install more power outlets in airports.
August 16, 2003
truckstop wi-fi = truckstop porn, rv wi-fi = ?
a few years ago an entrepreneur i know had the idea to install "truckstop porn feeds" at truckstops across the US and Canada. sounded like a goldmine to me. operators were receptive to the idea as well. after all, i've had MNO employees tell me that over 80% of their mobile browsing traffic over 2.5G networks is illicit content, and i have definitely seen marketing plans that aren't shy about how to raise their ARPU.
that was before wi-fi. i am actually a little surprised where greenfield wi-fi operators are starting to run backhauls to. places i wouldn't have expected. truckstops and RV parks just to name a few.
i suppose there is a market here. if indeed 20% of truckers are carrying around a laptop, it makes sense for them to park, jack-in (i said in), send email or IM to their families, browse, and hit the trucker chat rooms. RV parks seem to hit a separate demographic. are there really that many people waiting to get connectivity to their RV while parked? i'm not opposed to the idea but i'd really like to see someone solve the problem of urban WIMAX and Wi-Fi handoffs in dense areas where there seems to be a lot more opportunity.
the truckstop model states we'd be looking at a monthly fee of $30-$35 to support the service. i'd like to see the percentage of truckers that carry mobile phones ( to they still use CBs good buddy? ) and have to ask why mobile operators aren't tackling this as well. either there's bigger fish to fry, or the greenfield operators are just a temporary stopgap until they can sell roaming agreements to the bigger fish, just like what happened in 1G and 2G cellular. seems like a safe bet either way for the little guy, as long as they can make the economics work during the gap.
August 15, 2003
verizon rolls out push-to-talk
there are a lot of things i like about nextel. first things first: they are profitable. second, they're phones seem to work places no other phones can reach. if you are going on a boat a mile offshore, bring a nextel phone. third, they know their market.
part of knowing their market is push-to-talk (PTT). you can always count on a building contractor or an IT technician to be carrying a nextel phone. small groups that need to communicate with the push of a button for a very fragmented, asynchronous conversation. PTT is a replacement for texting for professions where working with your hands is necessary, and you just need to get your boss or employee on the phone with the push of a button.
being proprietary works for nextel. if you want to be in the loop, you gotta have a nextel phone. this reduces their churn and allows them to charge much higher rates than most other operators. other MNOs want to change this by building their own loyalty groups, and churning users away from nextel to a network that "offers more".
verizon today announced this capability making them the first north american operator other than nextel to do so.
i predict that verizon, sprint and others will not enjoy similar success as nextel with PTT. nextel has spent years cultivating the market of PTT users, and their implementation is built into the hardware, software, and protocols used on the network. although verizon is using motorola's CDMA PTT infrastructure, i don't expect the implementations from other carriers to be as slick. i've heard that sprint's implementation is much more just like an always on IM buddy list that will dial quickly in the background. i don't think it will feel the same, and although the marketing will try to convince the public otherwise, i don't think consumers will be fooled. we aren't going to see lots of nextel subs churning to other networks because PTT on competing networks.
cable modem vs dsl - my story
there's been a long going media war about which is better: cable modems or DSL? i have followed the arguments over time, but until recently i was not fortunate enough to have a choice. Three years ago AT&T@Home brought cable modems to my neighborhood, but i was "too far from the central office" to get DSL. So i subscribed to cable modem and endured the transfer from @Home to AT&T and then endured the transfer to Comcast, while everyone else raved about their DSL lines.
DSL supporters warned that cable modems shared bandwidth with others in the neighborhood, and my speed would soon eek to a crawl, but this never happened. AT&T et al seemed to expand the network as needed to keep the bandwidth at way over acceptable levels, so i was a pretty happy customer. i did experience occaisonal outtages, for an hour at the most.
The problem came when i needed to have a static IP address at home. A static IP address in the home is useful for a lot of things...not only hosting a website, a home email server, or family photo album, but also for setting up VPN access to corporations who have IT departments that only allow incoming traffic from known, static IPs.
I had gotten by in the past by keeping a DHCP lease open on the cable modem so that my IP address never got reset. the few power outtages we had reset this, so i had to update DNS on a few occaisions. when comcast took over from AT&T, however, is where things went awry. comcast started to force expiration of the DHCP least every 3 days, probably to keep people like me from doing what i was doing!
A few calls around comcast revealed no knowledge of such a static IP product, nor plans to do so. In fact, their agreements prohibit users from running servers of any kind.
at the same time, yahoo/SBC started marketing DSL in my area, so i said what the heck, i'll try it.
now, anyone who dealt with SBC's predecessor in this area, Ameritech, should remember what may have possibly been the worst customer service ever, with installation technicians that may or may not have shown up let alone complete an installation correctly. SBC brought some southern hospitality to the customer service, but this is clearly the same Ameritech underneath.
as a preface, before we moved into my house, the city changed the street name. it exists on the platte of survey under one name, and with the post office under another name. although SBC had in one database that i was eligible for DSL with my correct address, they still had the old address in the DSL database, and could not relate them. ( where's all those "connect legacy systems together" companies when you need them? hey webmethods, go talk to SBC! can't you just "throw in" one of those "enterprise busses" and fix this? ) long story short, the customer service rep said "well you are definitely able to get DSL, but i can't put an order in for you, so sorry. i can put it down in my notebook to call you if this ever gets corrected". yeah right.
so i moved on to another choice, speakeasy.net who i had heard good things about and said they were able to sell me DSL. they resold Covad in my area, and although they were twice the price of Yahoo/SBC, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - so i placed an order for a 1.5 MB down/384 up conenction with a static IP address. three days later, i get a call from speakeasy that the technician will be there for an install.
now who shows up, of course, but an SBC technician, because SBC owns the copper from the box to my house. so i relayed the story to him about trying to buy DSL from SBC expecting an explanation but he wasn't surprised one bit. he ( an ex ameritech technician, of course ) said something to the effect of "those f!#kheads in the front office will never get it right". at any rate, he hooked up my DSL, i installed my filters and DSL modem and i was open for bizness!
suddenly i felt the pain. what had i done. my snappy connection was now to be described as "sluggish" compared to the cable modem. a few tests using the tools at dsl reports reported that my connection was getting near what was advertised, but yet it still was not as snappy as my cable modem. I called speakeasy, and they were receptive to the problem, but i am not sure what ever happened.
but the story is not over yet. suddenly, a week or two after the install, my DSL modem started to lock up on a daily basis, with no pattern. all the lights were on, yet no packets were getting out. resetting the modem would always cure the problem, but this wasn't an acceptable solution when i was travelling and needed to get at my email server.
another call to speakeasy. "outtages are hard to diagnose. we can oly diagnose while it's down". so i wait until the next day, and call again. "yes, it's hung. reset the modem. okay, good. well, we have no idea, we'll have to call covad to come out to the house."
three days later a covad technician ( another ex-ameritechee) does stop by, listens to my problem, and goes to the telecom box outside. "ah here's your problem, pointing to a broken wire in my phone box". turns out the brittle half of a twisted pair was broken, but somtimes making contact. his explanation was the cable modem would fill up with errors, and when the modem fills up, it shuts down. resetting the modem clears the buffer. well there you go.
so here i am with what's now reliable DSL. it's still sluggish compared to my cable modem but i'll live. i'm investigating setting up a router that would use the cable modem for all outgoing connections and the DSL for all inbound connections but i'm just not sure it's worth it. i know there are DNS/DHCP solutions, but i manage multiple domains, and this just seems to complicated for what i need.
why comcast can't get their act together and offer static IPs is beyond me. i'm sure they are worried about one person hosting a server and slowing down the neighborhood, but i just never experienced this as a problem.
other articles in:
August 11, 2003
Nokia Observation Camera
the nokia observation camera is a creative use of MMS. this essentially makes it pretty easy, albeit expensive, to setup a webcam. just put in a sim and have it send pictures to a phone or email address...or a moblog.
it can snap pictures based on time, movement, or changes in temperature. and a remote user can monitor the temperature or contol it by sending it SMS commands. it does one way audio as well, so you can call it and hear what is going on in the room.
nokia says it can be used for "innovative advertising" with a couple good ideas...customers can check out how busy a restaurant is or weather at a resort.
i can see some telematic uses as well. it can be mounted in a vehicle with an external antenna. want to see where your truck is? send it an sms.
anyone else have any other creative ideas?
it seems to be going for about $380 USD.
August 10, 2003
sprint pcs vision phone catches alleged abductor
well, anyone that saw csi miami last week should be encouraged by this.
Teen turns phonecam on stranger trying to lure him into car
i know many people buy mobile phones just for security. stuff like this will provide additional reason to upgrade. peace of mind.
August 07, 2003
i want bluetooth on my iPod !
i've owned a lot of handheld devices that can play mp3s ( i can count 7) and the only 2 i really use for this have become the frontier labs nex and the apple iPod. the whole mystique of the iPod in itself eeks coolness battery life and ease of use, combined with great sound quality is what really wins it for me. I would exclusively use the iPod if i could run with it, but i digress.
the one thing i would really like to see in the next iteration of iPod is bluetooth and here's why:
- it's clear the iPod is becoming more and more like a PDA allowing you to sync contacts, your calendar, and now even news and weather thanks to pod2go. although it doubles as a charger, i hate carrying around the firewire cable when i just want to do a few things with it. syncing information doesn't require firewire.
- this would drive the market for bluetooth headphones. i'm sick of having my iPod fall out because the headphone cords get tangled. there are a few of these coming on the market - but i'd really like to see apple's take at this. i think they'd do it right.
- this would drive better car audio solutions. some of the newer cars from BMW and acura all have bluetooth hooked into the audio system for taking phone calls. seems like it wouldn't be a quantum leap to drop my iPod into a slot in the car and have it transfer the audio file wirelessly. perhaps apple and VW can work on that.
i worry about battery drain, so put a switch right on the iPod. bluetooth on/off. don't make me navigate the menus via software to do this like on mobile phones.
August 06, 2003
text messaging and IP data on collision course
i'm starting to see more and more applications using IP over GPRS or 1X as the bearer for messaging applications. a lot of these are doing more than just text messaging, including full fledged IM, chat, push-to-talk and what's equivalent to P2P MMS. the marketing behind this is clear..."hey! it's a lot cheaper to do this over GPRS than it is to use messaging!" When you compare the 5 cents/SMS and up to 50 cents/MMS to the 1 cent/K for GPRS data, it's easy to see why there's a plethora of startups trying to close this gap. A good example i've seen lateley is coojo which allows IM, chat, and sending pictures between symbian series 60 phones, with more phone support to come. They support yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, and ICQ - which is orthoganal to the private IM messaging offerings we are seeing by some operators (e.g. Vodafone Messenger).
i imagine that once such things start to become OEM packaged onto devices this will accelerate even more. The point being, if operators are going to continue to bank on SMS and MMS messaging revenues they might paint themselves into a corner.
That said, as a subscriber - i couldn't be more in favor of all-you-can-eat GPRS pricing such as what's offered by T-Mobile in the US (incidentally, they offer unlimited text messaging as well). i want to treat my GPRS connection like any other internet connection, such as my DSL connection. The biggest improvement in the mobile model over the ISP model is being able to charge purchases to my mobile phone bill. I like not having to enter a credit card...so i think this is the right model. Make GPRS free, take a piece of the transactions i charge to my bill. just don't charge me for the bandwidth to download as well.
August 01, 2003
direct p2p for phones
i like things like the webgate CoMobi which is a client that facilitates direct connection between two mobile devices, not unlike what an IM client might do. things like this are becoming the backbone of push to talk on GSM networks but it can be used for so much more. of course, all this could be done with messaging, but i can see the possibilities here.