Friday, March 28, 2003
Fido and GPRS Goodness...Ruff Ruff!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 09:10 AM
I've been meaning to write up my experiences using GPRS with Fido for a while, but I just never quite got around to it. It's a slow night here as I procrastinate on a review, so I figured this would be a good time to talk about it.
Late last year, the fine folks at Fido/Microcell Communications hooked me up with a voice & data account to take for a spin. I had contacted them because I heard about their awesome GPRS flat-rate plan that seemed to be light years beyond what my friends in the US were paying. $50 CND is about $35 US, and for that fee I could get unlimited data. Flat-rate, unlimited plans are really what will drive wireless use - when you're measuring your KB consumption on a daily basis, you're more worried about keeping to the absolute essentials rather than exploring new uses for wireless data.
I had never used a GSM phone before, so when I started using the XDA as my phone and data device, it was an interesting departure from my CDMA phone. Believe it or not, I had never really gone wireless before Fido came calling! :oops: I know, I know, positively shameful. Telus was so incredibly frustrating - the extent of my "wireless abilities" while using my CDMA phone was browsing their feeble WAP portal (where I could only get restaurant listings for cities other than the one I was in), and receiving SMS messages...but I couldn't send them. CDMA phones were at a dead-end for a long time - while everyone was raving about GPRS data services, SMS, funky ring-tones, and all these other cool things, I was still asking when Telus would offer their first Bluetooth phone. You'd think I was asking for a phone made of solid gold the way they'd look at me!
My Kingdom for a Phone!
When my XDA broke, I was quite traumatised, but due to the generosity of a kind Thoughts reader, I was hooked up with a T68i phone in fairly short order (this is after ordering a T68m off eBay that I ended up not being able to use), and once I connected a Socket Bluetooth card, I was laughing! That was truly my first positive Bluetooth experience - the Socket implementation and instructions are amazingly simple, and I was up and running in a few minutes. At first I was frustrated with the slowness of GPRS - whoever dubbed it "high speed wireless" should be flogged.
I've been on broadband for eight years now, so it was a painful adjustment to GPRS speeds where, if you're very lucky, you'll get a 6 KB/s connection. After some adjustments in my approach, however, I'm quite happy with it now. GPRS speeds are great for checking email, you just have to train yourself to hit "connect" and then purposefully distract yourself with something else on the Pocket PC while it downloads the email. Web browsing is passable as long as they're mobile sites - full-blown sites are slow to download, but even slower to navigate (a problem compounded by the sluggish Pocket Internet Explorer). And, yes, this means that I share your pain of not having mobile forums here. :roll:
Familiarity Breeds Contempt?
It's funny, I had never truly understood the limitations in Pocket Inbox until I started using it daily, and within a few weeks the nice people at Microsoft were getting email messages from me where I frequently asked the question "Why the heck does it do THAT?". I look forward to the evolution of @mail, because the Pocket Inbox client we have now is a little too anemic for my tastes. I also keep wishing for enhancements for Pocket Internet Explorer - not being able to do a VIEW SOURCE on a page just kills me...I was out with a friend who was complaining that his Web site graphics weren't loading, and without being able to view the page source I wasn't able to diagnose the problems until I got home to my "real" computer. Instant broken mobile scenario, but I'd have a hard time convincing someone at Microsoft that "view source" is a much needed addition when they don't even allow image saving or multiple windows. But I digress...
Fido Gets a Thumbs Up! :way to go:
I've been really happy with Fido's service level, so much so that I cancelled my Telus cell number that I've had for five years (I needed to get those business cards reprinted anyway after moving). I've found that inside the city I always have signal strength, and it's only very rarely that I run into an issue of not having GPRS coverage, and I've found that by moving a few feet in either direction I can get service. Most days the service connects at around 25 to 35 Kbps (measured using GPRS Monitor), but quite often I see a full 50 Kbps connection.
When I was with Telus I was always worried about getting a roaming signal, and so far my trips to the US while on Fido have been uneventful - even when it comes to data roaming! I'm interested to see how well things will work when I travel to Paris and St. Petersburg next week. Fido boasts service roaming agreements in 120 countries, so it should be hiccup-free. I'll let you know! All in all, I feel Fido offers excellent value, and with their flat-rate data plan, if you're a heavy data user, you just might want to check out their offering.
Late last year, the fine folks at Fido/Microcell Communications hooked me up with a voice & data account to take for a spin. I had contacted them because I heard about their awesome GPRS flat-rate plan that seemed to be light years beyond what my friends in the US were paying. $50 CND is about $35 US, and for that fee I could get unlimited data. Flat-rate, unlimited plans are really what will drive wireless use - when you're measuring your KB consumption on a daily basis, you're more worried about keeping to the absolute essentials rather than exploring new uses for wireless data.
I had never used a GSM phone before, so when I started using the XDA as my phone and data device, it was an interesting departure from my CDMA phone. Believe it or not, I had never really gone wireless before Fido came calling! :oops: I know, I know, positively shameful. Telus was so incredibly frustrating - the extent of my "wireless abilities" while using my CDMA phone was browsing their feeble WAP portal (where I could only get restaurant listings for cities other than the one I was in), and receiving SMS messages...but I couldn't send them. CDMA phones were at a dead-end for a long time - while everyone was raving about GPRS data services, SMS, funky ring-tones, and all these other cool things, I was still asking when Telus would offer their first Bluetooth phone. You'd think I was asking for a phone made of solid gold the way they'd look at me!
My Kingdom for a Phone!
When my XDA broke, I was quite traumatised, but due to the generosity of a kind Thoughts reader, I was hooked up with a T68i phone in fairly short order (this is after ordering a T68m off eBay that I ended up not being able to use), and once I connected a Socket Bluetooth card, I was laughing! That was truly my first positive Bluetooth experience - the Socket implementation and instructions are amazingly simple, and I was up and running in a few minutes. At first I was frustrated with the slowness of GPRS - whoever dubbed it "high speed wireless" should be flogged.
I've been on broadband for eight years now, so it was a painful adjustment to GPRS speeds where, if you're very lucky, you'll get a 6 KB/s connection. After some adjustments in my approach, however, I'm quite happy with it now. GPRS speeds are great for checking email, you just have to train yourself to hit "connect" and then purposefully distract yourself with something else on the Pocket PC while it downloads the email. Web browsing is passable as long as they're mobile sites - full-blown sites are slow to download, but even slower to navigate (a problem compounded by the sluggish Pocket Internet Explorer). And, yes, this means that I share your pain of not having mobile forums here. :roll:
Familiarity Breeds Contempt?
It's funny, I had never truly understood the limitations in Pocket Inbox until I started using it daily, and within a few weeks the nice people at Microsoft were getting email messages from me where I frequently asked the question "Why the heck does it do THAT?". I look forward to the evolution of @mail, because the Pocket Inbox client we have now is a little too anemic for my tastes. I also keep wishing for enhancements for Pocket Internet Explorer - not being able to do a VIEW SOURCE on a page just kills me...I was out with a friend who was complaining that his Web site graphics weren't loading, and without being able to view the page source I wasn't able to diagnose the problems until I got home to my "real" computer. Instant broken mobile scenario, but I'd have a hard time convincing someone at Microsoft that "view source" is a much needed addition when they don't even allow image saving or multiple windows. But I digress...
Fido Gets a Thumbs Up! :way to go:
I've been really happy with Fido's service level, so much so that I cancelled my Telus cell number that I've had for five years (I needed to get those business cards reprinted anyway after moving). I've found that inside the city I always have signal strength, and it's only very rarely that I run into an issue of not having GPRS coverage, and I've found that by moving a few feet in either direction I can get service. Most days the service connects at around 25 to 35 Kbps (measured using GPRS Monitor), but quite often I see a full 50 Kbps connection.
When I was with Telus I was always worried about getting a roaming signal, and so far my trips to the US while on Fido have been uneventful - even when it comes to data roaming! I'm interested to see how well things will work when I travel to Paris and St. Petersburg next week. Fido boasts service roaming agreements in 120 countries, so it should be hiccup-free. I'll let you know! All in all, I feel Fido offers excellent value, and with their flat-rate data plan, if you're a heavy data user, you just might want to check out their offering.
