.KEYWORD wireless
.FLYINGHEAD WIRELESS ANALYSIS
.TITLE Wireless service issues and handheld communication
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Chris Guella has spent some time this summer reviewing the new Treo 180 and Treo 270 communicators from Handspring. In that time, he has been bothered by a number of disturbing wireless service issues. In this article, he shares some interesting thoughts on these issues and handheld communication in general.
.AUTHOR Chris Guella
Elsewhere in this issue of PalmPower, I expanded on my review of the Treo 180 in the August issue (at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200208/treo180001.html) by discussing the color Treo 270. In this article, I’m going to address some wireless service issues that cropped up while using these devices, as well as talk about handheld communication in general terms.
.H1 General wireless service issues
My Treo devices (both the Treo 180 and Treo 270) use a data feature of the Cingular Network. For some reason it works intermittently. In particular, when I need it the most (when I travel) it works the least. On three successive trips to New York it could not regularly connect to the data network, so I could not receive email. I never had this problem with Research In Motion’s Blackberry.
Basically, the Treo Mail function is useless if it doesn’t work on the road. I tried, on each trip, to correct the problem with Cingular. In each attempt, I failed. I also logged hours of time on the phone with Cingular support to try and resolve the problem, my Treo battery dying along the way.
At the time of this writing I am in New York and can not get the data service to work. I have no email and no more patience to wait on hold only to speak to someone unable to resolve the problem. T-Mobile/Voicestream is the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) roaming provider in New York, and Cingular has since set up a retail presence there. The reason I point this out it is that I never had any problem even close to this with the Blackberry. I’m not sure if I should blame or try to get help from T-Mobile (the roaming provider), Earthlink (my Internet Service Provider), or Handspring (the makers of Treo Mail).
This is basically the dark side of having different providers for different features in the early stages of the wireless revolution. Sprint sells the Treo 300 and all of the data services, so it may be easier to manage and troubleshoot for this product. I have heard good things about Sprint’s Treo release, and the infamous Walter Mossberg reviewed the Treo 300 in the Wall Street Journal last week, giving it words of praise such as, "The Treo 300 isn’t for everybody. But if you’re looking for the ideal combination of a phone, organizer and email device, it’s the best choice out there." This comes from Mossberg’s article, "Sprint’s Speedy Treo Features Better Emailing, Service Area".
The bottom line is, if you can live with Sprint as a mobile provider, you might want to consider the Treo 300 over the Treo 180 or Treo 270 just to simplify your already complex life. I have not used the Treo 300 yet, but I did see it at CompUSA and it looked and felt the same as the Treo 270. However, it’s supposed to be part of the Sprint PCS Vision 3G network.
.H1 The Handheld communication revolution
Headlines in technology appear to center around the PC market. At the same time there is a product and lifestyle revolution going on. From Asia to Europe and on to the U.S., the use of new devices centered around communication is taking hold. Docomo and other services that bring applications to the handheld device are taking off. And the devices are rapidly improving along with the underlying services. In the last month, Sprint introduced PCS Vision, their 3G network. The applications for that service are endless, and we’re only at the beginning of seeing the benefits of a ubiquitous data/voice network that can handle a wide array of functions. Think about what the Internet did to the PC. Other carriers talk about a data network upgrade that is always just a few months or years off.
The reason this is important is that the U.S. lacks common standards for the infrastructure to support a wider range of functions. As opposed to Europe and Asia, the U.S. got involved in building multiple networks to support similar functions. I was interested in the recent announcement that T-Mobile and Cingular might merge.
Forgetting the owners of Cingular and T-Mobile and my customer service issues for just a second, a national GSM network, created by this merger, should benefit the consumer giving us a network compatible with Europe, Asia, and Canada. Nationally, we’re paying to develop at least five separate wireless networks, and they’re all limited in some way. Sprint, Nextel, AT&T, Verizon, Cingular/T-Mobile, and others are using a mix of TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), and GSM and on different frequencies.
There’s also a long list of regional players. We have been paying for them all in the form of higher fees brought on by the "successful" auctions, which are actually more like a tax, and in the resultant poor service quality. For example, we need quad mode phones to roam, solving the problem at the handset versus the underlying system. It simply costs more to effectively deploy five cell towers than one. For example, in New York one landlord can collect five checks for five separate towers on his roof. In rural areas, five towers can require leasing fees to five farmers. In the end we pay for all of those and what it costs to install, run, maintain, and upgrade them.
We would benefit from a ubiquitous wireless network built on an internationally accepted standard. If this was done at the onset we would all be experiencing GPRS and/or G3 over GSM allowing for advanced phone and network features talked about for so many years. These have been unattainable as the bloated cost and network structures need to be supported through higher user fees, all to support the debt and equity associated with frequency auctions, consumer marketing, and five networks of hardware.
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I am anti-big-government, but in this case we could have done a better job mandating a one or two network build using two standards (e.g. GSM and CDMA), and over time the consumer could have picked the carriers that met their needs best instead of switching rapidly between five providers, none of which meet needs very well at all.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For the article, "A Blackberry loyalist’s three months with the Treo 180," by Chris Guella in the August issue of PalmPower, visit http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200208/treo180001.html.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
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.BIO
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