Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 12:32:23 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@peorth.iteration.net>, Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Mobile phone coverage (was: VCD (was Re: cvs commit: src/sys/dev/ata atapi-cd.c)) Message-ID: <20010122123223.K3066@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <v04220825b6912c57be5b@[10.0.1.2]>; from brad.knowles@skynet.be on Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 01:29:13AM %2B0100 References: <200101211447.f0LElEk04073@mobile.wemm.org> <KAECKEJJOLGHAFGGNIKMAELICAAA.res02jw5@gte.net> <20010121145018.A73989@citusc17.usc.edu> <20010121165422.A44505@peorth.iteration.net> <v04220821b691222656eb@[10.0.1.2]> <20010121181251.B44819@peorth.iteration.net> <v04220825b6912c57be5b@[10.0.1.2]>
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On Monday, 22 January 2001 at 1:29:13 +0100, Brad Knowles wrote: > At 6:12 PM -0600 2001/1/21, Michael C . Wu wrote: > >> Hmm? I can do that in Asia. But then there is no need to do so, >> since Asian countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan cover >> every inch of their territories. (Benefit of a small country.) > > Do they cover all the mountainous areas? What about all rivers > and caves? Can you be 100% guaranteed that no matter where you were > to hike, camp, or do white-water rafting, you could always get full > and complete coverage with all of the carriers in the country? Of course! Even in bank vaults. > You certainly can't get those kinds of guarantees over here, > not even in a country like Belgium that has about the same land mass > as the state of Maryland (one of the smaller states in the US), and > with less population than the combined Washington, D.C. and > Baltimore metropolitan areas (fifteen million people, total). A more obvious comparison would be between the USA and Australia. I've noticed significantly worse GSM coverage in Silicon Valley than in Adelaide SA. >> Switch a SIM card? > > Do you really want to carry around three SIM cards, three > phone numbers, It's a question of flexibility. The phone numbers are on the cards, and you don't "constantly" switch phones. My scenario was when moving from one country to another. CDMA works in Korea, Israel and Australia; how would you get local access rates there with your CDMA phone and American NAMs? > and have to be constantly switching between them to get coverage? I haven't seen a necessity to switch at all in a single country. I know Belgium's not very big, but it still takes over an hour to drive through from North to South. > You might as well have three cheap phones, one on each network, and > be done with it. Well, do the arithmetic. > Did you know that you can't use any SMS gateway I know of to > send SMS messages to customers that are not on the same carrier as > the gateway? It works in Australia. But SMS is a toy. > I've never, ever had a problem roaming on another network if that > is what it took to get signal coverage, even if I was in an area that > was supposedly covered by my carrier. Earlier you said: > If you are in Belgium and a Proximus customer, and you're in > an area where Proximus doesn't have coverage but Mobistar or KPN > Orange do, you are screwed. If you're a Belgian customer of > Proximus and you're roaming outside the country, that's no problem > -- so long as you're not on a "Pay and go" prepaid card (they never > work outside the country of their issue). >> Bottom line, I like GSM for being the lesser evil. > > I'll take CDMA, any day. None of your arguments relate to the technical differences. > Fortunately, I won't have to wait too long before everything over > here will be CDMA, You must know something that I don't. I asked you before for details. > and by then, maybe all the stupid little national carriers will have > been consolidated into a small number of continental carriers that > are all forced to have roaming arrangements with each other, and > then we won't have any more of this incredibly stupid crap. By then, all these stupid little national carriers will have been bought out by multinational companies who will decide on roaming arrangements based only on their guesses of commercial viability. You even have that now in a country the size of Belgium. That's what you're really complaining about, after all. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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