After posting earlier about AT&T’s discriminatory practice of only giving pre-paid subscribers a subset of the coverage area that their contracted mobile customers get, I thought I’d expand on the topic. As a participant in the Nokia Blogger Relations program, periodically I receive phones to trial and review. Thus, I’ve looked for GSM providers in…
On a recent trip to Central Oregon and specifically Bend, Oregon, I was perplexed as to why my Nokia E71 would not come out of ‘Offline’ mode. Thinking it was an issue with the phone or my account, I looked into when I returned home. After looking at the coverage map for the Bend area…
The new E71 I just received is the North American version, meaning it supports 3G speeds on AT&T’s network. Up until now, I’ve been on T-Mobile for my US GSM needs, which means I’ve been using EDGE for my data access. Well now that I have a 3G capable phone, it might just mean I…
United States broadband customers have long had the luxury of flat-rate broadband pricing. One monthly fee got you unlimited bandwidth, sparing us from having to count megabits up and down. But now, broadband carriers are either implementing tiered pricing (such as BendBroadband) or considering it (Comcast and others) in response to bandwidth intensive usage models…
The cost of sending and receiving SMS, also called text messages, is getting obsurd. As Marguerite Reardon of Cnet points out: since 2005, the cost of SMS has doubled on all four major US telcos from 10 cents to 20 cents per message. Why are the mobile phone service providers charging this much to send…
For a while now the big 4 US mobile operators T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have been offering unlimited mobile plans. Typically, these include a flat rate of $99 for unlimited calling to the United States. Virgin Mobile has just entered the fray and raised (lowered) the bar by granting us a $79.99/month unlimited plan…
One factor that prohibits me from adopting SMS is the fact that it, as a data medium, is so expensive to use. Twenty cents to send 160 characters to someone? That seems outrageous. However, in Europe and Asia, where voice calling is expensive due to voice tariffs, SMS is popular because in these areas it…
The news broke recently that German T-Mobile customers will be able to buy the iPhone 3G for 1 Euro in Germany, with one caveat. Those who wish to buy the iPhone at this ridiculously cheap price will have to sign up for T-Mobile Germany’s highest monthly data plan. This tactic is a stark reminder of…
T-Mobile customers have been waiting for what seems like years for the cell service provider to give us a 3G data network. Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and AT&T have had 3G networks for quite some time, giving us mobile broadband access to the Internet. T-Mobile has finally started the rollout of the 3G network, starting with…
After being a huge fan of the Nokia Nseries, I wanted to change gears and evaluate Nokia’s business line of phones – the E Series. For my first trial, I received a review unit of the Nokia E61i, their flagship E Series devices that features onboard Wi-Fi, a full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, and a large…