(keitai-l) Re: Roaming Abroad

I was recently surprised to discover on a trip to Hong Kong that there
antennas not only in every subway station, but in every tunnel too. It
appears talking on the subway there is not taboo, there are always
people chatting away throughout their entire ride.

Darren 

-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net] On Behalf Of
martyn_williams@idg.com
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 9:03 AM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: Roaming Abroad

Nik,

>    - There ARE antennaes in Tokyo subway stations. I know for a fact
that
>    Vodafone had 100% coverage for 2G, and nearly that for 3G almost
two
years
>    ago. I believe that au and DoCoMo also have coverage. Just
> because there are
>    all sorts saying 'don't talk on the train' doesn't mean you can't
talk
on
>    the platform, and in fact it is a very popular thing to do: "Honey,
I
will
>    be home at 2 am, drunk as a skunk and frisky, so..." Subway tunnels
are a
>    different matter. Until the preference for deathly silence of
100sardines,
>    uhmm, I mean commuters, packed into a square metre is swapped for
the
>    annoying sound of human speech, there isn't much to be done. The BS
about
>    pacemakers ruins it for people who just want to send e-mails.
Actually,
>    mini-cells aren't very expensive, so I am guessing it is just Tokyo
Metro
>    trying to squeeze more out of the carriers.

Right. I was talking about the tunnels. It's incredibly annoying to be
surfing the Web but only able to download pages in a station. Then when
you've read the page have to wait until the next station to get the next
page.

I don't think people would talk on the phone in the subway. Take a JR
train, where there is coverage, and everyone is emailing and surfing. No
one, well maybe I see one person a week, talks on the phone. A year or
so
ago the Asahi or Nikkei had a story pointing out that no transport
operator
could point to a single incident in which a cell phone was implicated in
any sort of problem with a pacemaker.

I think you're spot on about them wanting more money from the carriers
but
a bit dissapointing that Toei, which we all pay for through our taxes,
doesn't start doing this!

Martyn


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