(keitai-l) Re: american 1XRTT network goes live, covers 53m users

From: Josh White <josh_at_blackbrick.com>
Date: 01/30/02
Message-ID: <POEAJLOEEODBENKJIEJOCEANCCAA.josh@blackbrick.com>
> This doesn't look anything like i-mode because it's, well, not i-mode. :-)

That's right, Curt.   It's relevant only because there is a packet-based
technology in place for 53m US customers.

> This is their 3G data service, and would correspond to the FOMA
[...]
> It's not designed at all for use by phones, but rather by computers,

That's correct (hence not very similar to FOMA, sadly).

> so it's no surprise that it's connection based

It is surprising that they're billing per minute.  Verizon's aimed this at
enterprises, but they're using 1G consumer-style per-minute billing.  This
isn't competitive with other (GPRS) wireless data networks are billing
per-packet, as my friend Rolf recently pointed out.  However, with their much
larger coverage, they may get customers who will swallow this billing model
simply because it's the only high-speed wireless network they can find.

As a consumer app developer, I'm not too concerned about their billing for
this service.  I'm just glad the US's largest carrier has fast, packet-based
data coverage on 20% of their network, and looking forward to further
announcements, such as versatile billing (per-packet, billing-on-behalf, etc),
more coverage, and over-the-air app downloads.

-Josh
Received on Wed Jan 30 21:04:33 2002