I just returned from 5 weeks traveling overseas. I took two cell phones
with me. My Nokia is [a toy] triband with 1800MHz service; the Samsung
hand-me-down has 900MHz. Some day I'll find a simple quadband WiFi candy
bar or slider phone that I like for a good price. The iPhone is a bar
phone, but it's too big, and needs to be hacked to use with my T-Mobile
service.
The surprising thing about mobile phone service where we were, mostly on
Crete and in Portugal, was the strength of signals no matter how obscure
our location. On deserted beaches, miles down dirt roads I had 4+ bars.
High in the mountains, far from towns and villages, where mountain goats
hover on 4" wide ledges, I also had good reception. At home, reception
is awful except near a window or outside. Why go outside with the
smokers to use a phone? [Verizon has good reception indoors, but CDMA
doesn't work in Europe. ATT has good reception, but costs more for
service and international roaming than T-Mobile.]
T-Mobile has a new service that combines WiFi and cellular service,
http://tinyurl.com/2rx7h5, includes HotSpot @Home service, and use of
T-mobile hotspots, mostly at Starbucks and Borders. These services are
getting better, however they're soooooooooo expensive. I hate using flip
phones [they're cumbersome and pointless], and it's a Moto flip phone.
I also want a phone that switches from cellular to WiFi on any hotspot,
not just TMo. I can do that on a laptop with Skype, but it hardly fits
in my pocket.
I picked up a magazine [for the enclosed free bikini] at the airport
last week and saw a deal from Orange in the UK. It's £35 per month for
mobile service--600 minutes, unlimited texts, free Sony Ericsson K810i,
http://tinyurl.com/384aor, or Nokia N73, http://tinyurl.com/33mr2y,
phone and free speakers, PLUS free home 2Mbps broadband, with an 18
month contract. Those are quadband and triband phones that can get good
reception almost anywhere in Europe, including remote locations and
indoors. Many phones are sold unlocked, too. BTW, 8Mbps broadband is
£19.95/mo.
The US cellular and broadband companies are far behind in service and
innovation compared to European, Japanese and Korean companies--both in
price and features, http://tinyurl.com/yr82oc. As of July 1, Euro
roaming charges from one country to another will be significantly
reduced, too.
Constance, does the highway project have anything to do with the ICC
project?
Betty
Constance Warner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escribió:
Thanks for the interest in my story, but it was actually pretty
boring. Cellphones receive on a couple of different frequencies
[digital], plus analog. Depending on what your phone has got, and
what the cell-tower has got (however the phone company has adjusted
it), you may or may not get the service you're paying for.
In my case, the cell-tower was "adjusted" by a bolt of lightning, and
my cellphone--though thoroughly digital--is very old. The cellphone
will have to be fixed or replaced, since the phone company is happy
with the tower in its present condition. (The new phones will
receive in the areas where I need service--I checked with another
subscriber to verify the reception. The company, incidentally, is
Sprint, which we'll probably stick with, because we have a
month-to-month plan; i.e. no two-year contracts with hefty penalty
clauses.)
It took numerous trips to the Web and phone calls to find all this
out. You know the drill: call, wade through several layers of
automatic telephone crap ("If you need your bill adjusted, say 'Bill
adjustment.' If you have another problem, say 'Other problem.'").
Then you get another person who doesn't have a clue. Then you do it
again. And again. I was just lucky to get the guy in the Silver
Spring repair facility who sounds as though he knows what he's
talking about.
Moral of the story, of POSSIBLE GENERAL INTEREST to this list: there
are websites which register consumers' reports on cellphone companies
in this area [Washington, DC, and environs], along with complaints of
lack of reception in different places. If anyone is considering
signing up for cellphone service or any kind of wireless service,
it's probably a good idea to google "Sprint reception" or "DC
cellphone reception" or the like. Especially since (another common
complaint) it's nearly impossible to get out of a contract, even if
you don't get any reception at all.
Now, if you want stories: a more interesting story is the highway
traffic management project I'm trying to get changed, the project
that's so hazardous that there were three accidents the first day it
was put in place. After what seemed like years in phonemail hell and
the labyrinth of the Web, I finally got through to the right contact
person, who promised to get back to me and of course didn't, so I
marched into the fire station with a report on the project, only to
find that the firemen agreed with me, so I decided to....but that is
a story for another day.
--Constance Warner
On Jul 9, 2007, at 6:28 PM, Tom Piwowar wrote:
EXAMPLE: I've spent many, many hours on websites and the phone
lately, trying to track down, among other things, the answer to
why my cellphone suddenly stopped working in critical parts of
town.
What to share what sounds like a very interesting story?
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