The Sun BabelFish Blog

Why I have not had a cell phone for over three years

I keep waiting for 3G to improve, prices to become reasonable and cell phones to contain the features I am looking for. And until now I have not managed to find anything close to what I needed. I was in Paris yesterday and walked into a fnac store where the Nokia E61 immediately cought my eye. It has most things: good looks, wide keyboard, large screen, wifi, 3G, edge, umts, etc..., but as I did not have all the paperwork, I had to leave empty handed. I took the time to educate myself on it a little more. Here are some good reviews:

• James Mc Murry on how he got it to work with OSX.
• A very detailed technical review

But the time I had to think also was time for my doubts to grow. Was a phone, even this nice, worth buying? The most important thing for me is to be able to connect my laptop from wherever I am to the network. Being able to go to a café and be able to work would be something worth paying for. So I have been thinking for over a year of buying specialised 3G PCMCIA card to do this, but now that I want to upgrade to the new apple laptops pretty soon and as they have replaced PCMCIA with ExpressCard, it does not seem like quite the right time. I would even be willing to pay the €80 a month for so called "unlimited" coverage, if it were really unlimited. But of course it is not. Here is some fine print in French:

L’accès Data mobile illimités est strictement réservé à l’utilisation d'une personne physique. Toute association de la carte avec un équipement de type routeur, à des fins de partage de l’accès Data Haut Débit Illimité entre plusieurs utilisateurs est interdite. Les usages de type streaming, voix sur IP, Peer to Peer, sont prohibés.

Which in english can be translated roughtly as

you can not allow others to share your network, and not use it for any streaming type data, voice over IP, or P2P.

So what's the point of unlimited if you have all kinds of restrictions? Especially at that price! Hey in France for €24 you can get Gigabit ADSL, television, and free telephone! I'd be paying 4 times as much, and they want to limit what I can do on the network? Is this not also a clear violation of the net neutrality principle?

Ayway the E61 can serve as a 3G modem, so it has the required functionality, and it looks good. Perhaps with a limited number of wifi hours I could get it at a reasonble price, I thought. But the price one has to pay per month is just as offputting! It costs €30 for a few hours of talk time per month and another €30 at least to get 6 hours or 150MB of download. €60 a month. Now six hours or 150MB go really quickly in my work.

All in all I'd have to pay over €60 a month for a few hours of mobile connectivity. But with my laptops I am pretty well connected anyhow. I use iChat and Adium as chat clients, irc for group conversation, e-mail, and skype for voice calls. I can roam across coutries really well with it, and don't even have to change number. I really don't really need a mobile phone that bad come to think of it. Most places have wifi or ADSL. And if I am really in a bind I can put a few € for a special connection. But that happens relatively rarely. I have done without a mobile/cellular for over three years, without trouble. Sure sometimes it could be handy to be able to call someone when away, but then again it can be quite nice to have some quiet periods. Most of the time I am too well connected.

So what are these service providers thinking by charging so much? Does anyone really need mobile that bad?

Posted at 01:18PM Jun 22, 2006 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in General  |  Comments[2]