Re: Any options to high monthly cell/pda bills?

At 08 Feb 2008 10:35:34 -0600 Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev] wrote:
>> Just curious, Bev, are you using a PPC phone, or tethering a PPC to a
phone via IR or BT?. <<

PPC phone... I no longer travel with a laptop ;-)


Nor do I- I can massage my HTC Wizard into doing most of what a laptop
does, and remote cdesktop access (via LogMeIn.com's free service) seems to
handle the rest.

And, at my age along with the fact that most of my peers are non
techies, I have so little use for a cellphone that I can get away with
a cingular "pay as you go" account using the minimum ($8.33/mo) and
the minutes still roll over ;-)


"Little use for a cellphone?" I thought you were married! ;-) I think my
wife sees cellphones as a stopgap-measure until technology makes husband-
tracking devices affordable.


Got a trip coming up which will consume some of the accumulated
minutes... probably half and half talk vs data, but, on this one,
expect the need to look at current weather radar while on the road
will be important.

My wife and I use our phones little enough for voice thart I could get by
with prepaid (and did for quite awhile) but ubiquitous connectivity is a
powerful drug. (Yes, I DO need to get out more!) ;-)


>> and that includes unlimited WiFi access at T-Mo's "Hotspots" in
airports, Starbucks, Kinkos, bookstores, etc. <<

Good to know... however, gave up on TMobile and other pay for use
hotspots a few years ago... esp since their daily charges were high
to say the least, but, also, I found that when traveling, getting
through their logons managed to consume too much of the time I
ended up staying in a coverage zone... perhaps I should start
drinking coffee ;-)


Agreed- I only mentioned it because it's included at no extra charge in
their smartphone data package. I actually don't have it myself, because I
use T-Mo's "dumbphone" dataplan (a port-limited unlimited e-mail and web-
browsing service, but no streaming audio/video or file downloads > 1MB for
$6/month.) So far, T-Mo has been more than willing to look the other way
concerning smartphones using "dumbphone" plans.


>> T-Mo still supports CSD, (9.6k dialup) so you
could actually use data for "free" (albeit slowly) out of your voice
minutes (or free nights/weekends) without a data plan. <<

It may be coming back ;-) Seems Cingular now offers it as well for a fee...
not sure if it's a onetime or monthly.

<http://www.aximsite.com/boards/wi-fi-talk/131786-cingular-now-does-
csd.html>


Yeah, it's a real YMMV proposition on AT&T- supposedly only old customers
who had it are "grandfathered" and new accounts are disallowed. Just as
with T-Mo, it's for postpaid (monthly) customers only. (T-Mo also
provisions it for free, rather than the $4/month Cingular used to charge me
for it! However, Cingular acted as an ISP- the $4 included access, where T-
Mo doesn't act as a provider- you need to bring your own dialup ISP to the
table.)


Related to this, Time Warner has (at least "had") a dialup option...
essentially, you downloaded a dun with a login script which was
specific to your broadband account... been a while since I did so, but,
would relate only to accounts with a high number of free minutes,
which mine is not...

It wouldn't work for you anyway- prepaid accounts are barred from
connection via dialup.

[Long story short- digital cellphones don't actually have "modems" in them-
they just have a method to send/receive data packets to/from the cellular
carrier who makes the actual modem connection for you with a bank of modems
purposed for that at their HQ. That's essentially what CSD, or "Circuit
Switch Data" is- no CSD feature provisioned on the account means no dialup,
and AT&T or T-Mo prepaid accounts don't/can't get CSD.]

For my CSD connections I use a free ISP out of New England (freedialup.org)
since my broadband provider (Qwest) doesn't offer a dialup service for
"roaming." (Ironically Qwest is my local phone company and offers a
perfectly good dialup service, but won't let their DSL customers access it!)


the $10/mb is actually a bargain on a pay as you
go account.

A "bargain" in the sense that there's no other practical option for prepaid
users, yes!
I'll do you one better, though, if you have a few bucks to spend foolishly
on eBay. There's a mom-n-pop MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) called
Page Plus Cellular (www.pagepluscellular.com) that resells Verizon service
cheap. ($0.12/min, $10 cards last 120 days, so refilling costs $2.50/month
compared to your $8 on AT&T.) They sell phones but they'll activate any
old Verizon phone you can scrounge up.

Here's the fun part- while they don't offer data yet (it's been "coming
soon" since last fall) a little loophole in Verizon's network has been
preventing CSD calls from being charged to prepaid customers for probably a
year now. This hole hasn't, apparently, been much of a concern for Verizon
to bother to plug, probably since 99% of Verizon phones sold in the last
four or five years can't do CSD anymore, and the few that can, generally
have no e-mail client and have "crippled" browsers that only navigate
Verizon's "walled garden" of preselected WAP pages.

The "trick" is finding a good, cheap, old Verizon phone that does CSD and
has a good browser, and you guessed it, Windows Mobile to the rescue!
Verizon-branded Samsung i600s (non-touchscreen WM2002/2003 Smartphones) can
be had on eBay for $20-30 shipped, and a PagePlus "activation card" with
100 minutes of airtime are about $4-5 on eBay. (Or $8 from www.uglyeric.com.
Good, helpful chap, so I'll give him a plug- he sells them slightly
cheaper on eBay as well.)

I'd never owned a smartphone before (just PPCs and PPC phones) and I
figured $30 was reasonable for a new toy even if the data loophole gets
plugged soon (besides, I wanted a Verizon-based backup phone for the
glovebox- T-Mo's network isn't the most expansive, and PagePlus is one of
the few prepaids that will roam on ANY compatible network, albeit for an
extra charge. Even without data, the ability to easily sync my contacts to
it gives a WM phone an edge over a garden-variety dumbphone. Plus with
TCPMP installed and a 1GB SD card, it's yet another "It'sNotAPod" device to
keep the kids entertained on long trips.)

If $30 is burning a hole in your backpocketand you decide to take the plunge,
make sure the i600 you buy is a WM2003 model (it was apparently originally
released as a WM2002, then was later upgraded during production without a
model change, like the Dell Axim X5 was. Like most old WM upgrades,
apparently the i600's no longer available anywhere for any cost.)

I've been playing with my i600 since I bought it in November- it syncs with
my free mail2web.com Exchange account, handles my various IMAP accounts
(autosynching ever couple of hours,) runs TCPMP darn well, and runs the
Windows Live Search navigation program to grab directions well (something
you wouldn't want to do at $10/MB!) And, three months later, still has 80-
odd of the original 100 minutes (PagePlus deducts a $0.50/month
"maintainance fee" each month that's eroded 13 minutes of my initial 100
minute balance.)

I figured if nothing else, I needed some WM Smartphone experience to expand
my WM knowledge and MVP-Mobile Devices "street-cred."


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