|
Originally posted by NYMaestro
Oh yes, and the GPRS upgrade is not yet official in the US on T-Mobile. Is this a Handspring issue, or a T-Mobile issue? Either way, it is a business decision that involves marketing, revenue and profitability. It is likely that T-Mobile would like to hold on to the exclusivity of its GPRS/PDA on WindowsCE for a while before it allows the market to get more cluttered.
I could be wrong, but I don't think that any of the cellular companies give a rat's hind-end about what device consumers use to utilize their service. They already practically give away nice phones to get you signed up. It's the monthly fees they they make their money on. The sooner they can get everyone on GPRS and start billing them $5 per MB for usage, the better for them.
So the question still remains, what's the hold-up? I suggest that it's a bandwidth thing. There are already times when I'll get a "system busy" message when trying to make a phone call. Usually it clears up in a few minutes, but it still happens. Consider that GPRS is an "always on" connection, and you start to see the potential for a real bottleneck in service usage.
Now, before all you techno-weenies who admittedly know a lot more about cellular and GPRS technology start jumping all over me about how voice and data are two separate channels or whatever, I know that. I'm NOT saying that the two problems will compound each other. I'm saying that the current issues experienced with voice "overusage" will happen more easily with data usage. Sure, I make calls, but I don't call to check on sports scores, movie times, stock quotes, reading the news, or other data things that I do with my "illegally" upgraded Treo 270.
|
|
|