My Digital Life

If Verizon was getting the iPhone; why are They Bashing It?

Via Macworld;

Verizon placed a full page ad in the New York Times this week with the following copy:

"And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make calls."

I agree with Macworld assertion that even though "all's fair in love and advertising", why would Apple provide their device to a company making disparaging public comments about the device they would sell if they could.

Android 2.1 Finally Makes It to My Droid Eris (update)

Back in February rumors about the coming Android 2.1 update for the Verizon Droid Eris by HTC were fairly rampant, however after weeks of checking my upgrade status page, I got tired of looking and set my Eris aside. Let's face it Android 1.5 was not very exciting and the responsiveness touch was frustrating and just led me back to my iPhone.

Last week I decided to check once more and I was happy to see that the update was available for my device. The upgrade experience was excellent and fairly seamless. There was no need to connect the Eris to a PC, the process was performed over the air and I used Verizon's 3G network. It took two steps, download, and then confirm reboot/upgrade. I did lose my Exchange ActiveSync settings and icon/page customizations.

I am now using the Verizon Eris again and love the integration between the calendar, Google maps on the PC and Android's Google Maps/Navigation. The navigation works very well. I would say that it is one of the killer out of the box functions in Android. No wonder rumors that Jobs and Ballmer may announce Bing as the default search/map engine for the iPhone at WWDC may actually be true. Update: The rumor that Ballmer would be showing up at WWDC seem to be false, however the switch from Google to Bing still has legs (Gizmodo).

It is too bad that this is probably the end of the road for updates on the Eris.

AT&T “Mark The Spot” App is Brilliant

Yesterday, AT&T released (or should I say Apple) a customer service application for the iPhone called "Mark The Spot". It is brilliant on several levels.

• It allows frustrated customers to easily vent
• It provides AT&T network engineers with additional data to map issues
• It shows leadership in utilizing crowd sourcing to gather customer service data
• It shows its customers that it is trying to listen, the next step fix the iPhone (new chipset!) and network

From my experience in Washington, DC the AT&T 3G network has gotten better and better (the new cell tower down my street clearly helps), but when I was in midtown Manhattan last weekend I can vouch that 3G data sucked (awful latency) on both the iPhone and the Verizon HTC Eris.

The Mark the Spot app is available in the App store for free.

3G Coverage by Population

After the Verizon ad attack against AT&T 3G footprint, I thought it would be interesting to find out what the four major carriers 3G coverage is by population.

1. Verizon Wireless 284 million (source: mocoNews.net)
2. AT&T Wireless 233 million (source: AT&T)
3. T-Mobile USA UMTS/HSPA 200 million by the end of 2009 (source: Business Wire)
4. Sprint EVDO Rev A/0 170 million (source: Sprint)

The Sprint number seems low but it came from their web site, and the reference to 2006 looks like this page has not been updated for a while. I guess that is par for the course for Sprint…

Verizon Has a Point with Their 3G Ads

I have been travelling this weekend and had the opportunity to borrow (not from Verizon) a Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200. The drive south from Washington, DC on I95 shows how far AT&T has to go before they provide the level of 3G coverage Verizon currently has. That said it does not mean that AT&T does not have coverage, they do but at the slower EDGE speed. This is where the Verizon ads are slightly misleading; I think most individuals don't make or understand the distinction between 2G and 3G. AT&T 2G coverage is as good as Verizon's.

I have no issues when I am in Washington, DC with AT&T, I love my iPhone and 3G speeds are good. Although I do have the occasional dropped call, overall the service has been getting better and better. My biggest issue is in my home office, my 3G signal is lousy and I have to manually switch to 2G. After talking to friends who have seen results of carrier network performance tests, they are convinced there are two major issues with the iPhone. First the chip set that Apple uses is just not very good and the AT&T base station configurations do not handle data bursts very well. The base stations are designed to provide high quality real time voice processing; data packets seem to arrive in burst and overload the base stations causing dropped calls. The bottom line is that there is plenty of blame to go around between Apple and AT&T. The iPhone issues are not AT&T's alone as many pundits claim, the problem are shared between Apple and AT&T; that is clear to me when my iPhone does not switch between 3G and 2G in my house. Apple controls the network programming on the iPhone and AT&T controls the network. Both have to work well together to provide a good user experience.

What is great about the MIFI 2200 is that I can use it with my iPhone on Verizon's 3G network even if I am in an AT&T 2G EDGE area.

The Verizon MIFI 2200 unit on my dashboard.

The Verizon MIFI speed test result via a WIFI connection on the iPhone in South Carolina.

A speed test result on AT&T EDGE network in the same Hilton Head Island, South Carolina area.

The bottom line; if you need 3G outside of major metropolitan areas then Verizon is currently the way to go, and for iPhone users a MiFi 2200 may be an excellent option. If you need only occasional 3G access Verizon has a day pass for $15; however you do have to purchase the MiFi at the full price of $269.99 vs. $79.99 with a 2 year commitment with a minimum $39.99 per month plan.

Apple – Another Quarter, another Blowout!

Apple and the iPhone just keep trucking along with a record quarterly sale of 7.4 million iPhones and 440,000 Macs. The only disappointing news was slightly lower iPod sales, but Apple still holds 70%+ of the MP3 player market. Maybe the Zune HD is having an effect! (I had to say it)…

The interesting tidbit in all of this is that smartphone competitors are throwing everything they have at the iPhone and are barely dinging it. It seems that even the mighty Verizon is growing concerned and have now started to attack the iPhone with the Motorola Droid TV ad.

 That said Apple still has a formidable opponent; Research In Motion's BlackBerry holds 51% of the smartphone market (IDC), while the iPhones is at less than half with 22%. The basic reason is that Apple has neglected corporate functionality especially on the email front (when do we see full Exchange ActiveSync functionality?). Tim Cook's (Apple COO) response is that iPhone is being piloted or deployed in 50% of Fortune 100 companies and he is very pleased. From my contacts in the Federal government and corporations, IT is begrudgingly allowing the iPhone but they are not supporting it. This means users are on their own, which is very problematic for most users. Until Apple can show they are serious about corporate requirements they won't make a real dent in RIM's lead.

My International Roaming Experience – Today’s Cruise Ship = Connected for a Price

I have taken 2 cruises in the last 3 years, one to Alaska and this recent one in the Mediterranean. The cruise in Alaska was on Holland America, a cruise line owned by Carnival Corp. and this recent cruise was on Regent Seven Seas owned by the Apollo Group. Both cruise ships had internet and cell phone service. Both services are offered via a satellite link provided by SeaMobile, although the cellular service (Cellular@Sea) is managed by a subsidiary called Wireless Maritime Services which is joint venture with AT&T Mobility.

The cellular functionality on Regent's Seven Seas Navigator provided GSM/GPRS and CDMA/1XRTT voice/data services. As I remember it the Holland America ship only had GSM service, but by now it probably has been upgraded to handle CDMA traffic as well. The ship's cell site only operates when the ship is out of range of local cellular service. It is a roaming service where your cellular carrier bills you for all voice and data. The costs seem to be fixed across all US carriers at $2.49 per minute for voice calls, $.50 to send an SMS, $1.30 to send an MMS, and $.0195 per KB for data. The fact that all carriers are charging the same seems like price collusion but who am I to say. The Bottom line it is expensive, but much cheaper than using the wired phone in the cabin at $6.95 per minute. Also carriers offer data plans which can be very beneficial for heavy email users, Verizon offers a global unlimited email plan for $69.99 per month and includes cruise ships. AT&T International Data plans do not include cruise ships which is a real shame. I talked to both AT&T and Verizon customer service before I left. They gave me detailed information, provided me with alternatives and more than once warned me about the costs. Given the articles that have surfaced about surprise bills (especially with the iPhone); it is clear that carriers are going out of their way to educate consumers. The catch you have to call them. Even if you think you understand it all, I strongly urge everyone to call their carriers before leaving on trip abroad. AT&T emailed me an FAQ about the iPhone, and Verizon emailed a detailed rate chart with the list of countries I planned to visit.

On the internet front, both cruise ships I have been on had Internet cafes with workstations, the Regent Seven Seas Navigator even had WIFI throughout the ship. The service is run by another arm of SeaMobile called MTN Satellite Services. They charge by the minute and the cruise line can offer several different plans to its guests. On the Seven Seas Navigator I had the option of 250 and 500 minutes. As part of Regent's loyalty program, after you cruise 21 nights you get free internet which is a very nice benefit. The 250 minute plan was $87.99 with a first time registration of $3.50. The 500 minute plan was about double. Additional minutes on the 250 minutes plan were $.35 and $.25 on the 500 minute plan. I find it interesting that they charge by the minute rather than the Kilobyte, but given all the activity I saw in the Internet Café I can understand why; minutes should get people off of the workstations faster but I was amazed how many people seemed oblivious and where typing email tomes in web based editors. I was told by the Internet Café manager that the average speed is about 65Kbps per user. Unfortunately I neglected to run a speed test, but from an end user perspective it was not broadband but response times where decent. If you want to see the world and have some IT skill they are looking for people, here is the job description.

I ended up purchasing the 250 minute plan which over 11 days gave us about 22 minutes a day. Since I had problems with my Sony VAIO P's wireless drivers, my wife and I ended up using our iPhones. We would connect to download email, disconnect, respond off line, then connect again to send. One of my major pet peeves with the iPhone's email application (ActiveSync/Hosted Exchange) is its inability to deal with deletions offline (you get an error message). I would love to know how Apple thought that was a good idea…Anyway, the plan worked out well and I even had some minutes left over to go to the Internet Café to check in with United Airlines online and print our boarding passes. I also tried Skype on the iPhone using the $2.95 per month unlimited subscription plan to call phones in the US and Canada. It worked well, the person on the other end heard a little breakup (I would expect that with constrained satellite uplink speeds), but we heard them very clearly. This made calling much cheaper ($.35 per minute on our plan) than using the in cabin wired phone or on board cell system, but still more expensive than the calling card (although you need a dry land wired phone!). During the entire 12 day trip we only had a couple hours one evening where we could not get connected. The default web page told us that interference was blocking the satellite signal.

I think bringing your own computing device makes a lot sense so you can perform tasks off line to save your minutes, and then connect for data transmission. I saw a couple of Dell Mini notebooks, and a Mac book. On the mobile device front, the BlackBerry was king (looked like mostly corporate types), although iPhones were around. I did see one bulky satellite phone (it reminded me of early cell phones), why someone would think you need one on today's cruise ship intrigued me, maybe they owned it or their company wanted them to have failsafe communication. The gentleman had to stand outside on the pool deck to make a call. I also thought that newer satellite phones could switch between cell and satellite.

The bottom line is that staying connected on a cruise today is possible and easy. You just have to do a little research on plan options with your cell phone carrier or purchasing an on board internet plan (I suggest bringing your WIFI enabled smartphone or netbook) make to cost manageable if you need to stay connected without needing to be online 24/7…

My International Roaming Experience - What I Took With Me

My goal when traveling is to minimize what electronics I need to take with me to ensure some level of connectivity for voice and data. Since this trip was a vacation my computing requirements where email, basic multimedia entertainment (no HIDEF video playback required), basic photo editing (EXIF tag management), surfing, and flash media backup/storage. I also brought a Verizon HTC Ozone (thanks to the folks at Verizon Wireless for providing me the device and service) to test international roaming for an upcoming pocketnow.com article on how well you can travel with a Verizon Windows Mobile device.

Here is what I decided to pack:

1. Sony VAIO P 1.6GHZ Atom/128GB SSD. My experience was disappointing. For some reason the network drivers failed early on and I could only get connected in safe mode. I tried using a restore point but that did not work. I ended up just using it as my flash media backup and EXIF editor. I am now rebuilding it. I will be very happy to get the production Windows 7 drivers from Sony (hopefully they will release them on 10/22).
2. PowerBright XR100/12 mini power inverter. I have never been a big fan of power inverters, I would rather purchase the correct power supply for the job, but Sony does not seem to care about providing traveling power chargers for its notebooks so I was forced to purchase one. That said I actually used it more as a USB charger for my iPhone in a rental car (used Navigon) and on the United (EmPower plug required) flight back home. On our Lufthansa flight over to Europe we had 110V plugs (very nice touch).
3. iPhone 3GS 32MB
4. Jawbone BT headset. I never used it but it was good to have and small enough to carry just in case.
5. iPWR battery backup iPhone charger. This battery backup has been a life saver in the past but with email push turned off on this trip, I never used it but it is small enough to carry as insurance.
6. Griffin PowerBlock Dual Universal Charger. I bought this at BestBuy for $20. It is small and charges 2 USB devices at once. It worked great and worth $20.
7. Sony HDR-CX12 HD Flash based video/still camera. I love this camera for the good quality 1920 HD video, the 10.2MP still pictures, the great 12x optical zoom and its diminutive weight in my hand.
8. And of course the Verizon Wireless HTC Ozone CDMA/GSM Worldphone.

The one item I did not bring and missed was my old D-Link Travel Hotspot device. Our hotel in Athens (AVA Hotel, by the way it was very nice) had wired internet and all my devices were WIFI only. Our remaining accommodations had WIFI.

On the services sides I signed up for the following before I left:

1. Boingo Mobile $7.95 per month. This was a total bust, never found a Boingo HotSpot I could use. I cancelled the service since with my Verizon FIOS WIFI feature (Verizon/Boingo relationship) and the iPhone's AT&T data plan I get plenty of WIFI coverage in the US. Bottom line check locations before leaving and look into iPass, I think they are more popular in Europe.
2. Skype Unlimited US/Canada landline/cell calling plan for $2.95 a month. It worked well (more on that later).
3. Verizon/Costco $30 international calling card. Worked well when we had access to a land line.
4. AT&T 50MB international data plan. I used the same iPhone strategy I posted about before and it worked well for me. I think this strategy along with Skype is a winner for getting around high roaming fees. I will update my post.
5. Verizon International plans (article on pocketnow.com coming soon).

The only connectivity service I purchased while on the trip was 250 minutes of Internet on our Regent cruise ship (more on that tomorrow).

Back After a Two Week Hiatus

I am back at work after a two week whirlwind vacation around Greek, Egyptian, and Roman sites in the Mediterranean. I am still getting over jet lag and a cold I must have caught on the flight back. I have a lot of material to write about international digital roaming, how Verizon makes it work well with its dual standard (CDMA/GSM) Worldphones (I used an HTC Ozone), and managing the high cost of being connected.

The Pyramid of Khafre. It is too bad about the parking lot, but tourism is Egypt's second largest source of foreign income after the Suez Canal fees (according to our guide).

AT&T 3G network not good enough for iPhone SlingPlayer

The saga of bringing SlingPlayer to the iPhone has been a real soap opera, but the release of the application even though crippled by the lack of 3G functionality is still a milestone. Sling Media confirmed it was building a SlingPlayer for the iPhone last March, a year later they submitted the application to Apple. Since then it seems that AT&T, Apple and Sling Media have been in a tussle over whether to allow the Sling Player to stream over the 3G network. AT&T even modified its Terms of Service to block Sling Player type applications to use its network, and then rescinded the change. Last week they reinstated the ban on with this language: "Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service". They equate the iPhone to a personal computer.

With the release of SlingPlayer, according to engadget, last night AT&T felt compelled to issue a statement on the subject (I could not find the official statement), but engadget published this:

"Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.

That said, we don't restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.

The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That's good news for AT&T's iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi."

It almost sounds like AT&T is apologizing for the inability of its network to handle the potential load. You could view this as a brave move on their part, essentially admitting to capacity weaknesses in their network and it the end saving them from more network performance issues which have plagued them since the release of the iPhone. Maybe Verizon should promote the fact that their Terms of Service does not block this functionality; under their Permitted Uses section they state that "(iv) uploading, downloading and streaming of audio, video and games;" is permitted.

As everyone in the blogosphere is pointing it out, there is no mention that the 3G functionality is available on the version of SlingPlayer for Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices, although I think the Terms of Service also covers those devices, so I guess I can longer use my Windows Mobile SlingPlayer on their 3G network.

Although the SlingPlayer for iPhone lack 3G connectivity, it is priced at $29.99 in the App Store the same price as for other mobile platform with 3G support. I went ahead and purchased it and I have to say that the user interface is pretty cool. Hopefully with their planned network upgrades, AT&T will allow 3G functionally sometime in the near future.

Watching the Today Show on my Directv DVR.