Tero,
I guess there's no sense to argue about this if you refuse to compare models from different standards. But that won't stop the consumers from doing so.
Ok, suppose I am about to get a new wireless phone. Since there is a pay-phone on every block where I live, there is not much use for a wireless phone to make one phone call / month.
Suppose I am one of the nut-cases who walk on the streets talking on their mobile phone. I am a heavy user.
Suppose I know I want to use the phone 30 minutes / day or 900 minutes / month.
The first thing I would do is to find out who the providers are in my area. We have Sprint (CDMA), Bell Atlantic (CDMA) and Omnipoint (GSM).
Sprint service would cost me $99/month and I would get 1000 minutes, and I could call anywhere in the US (no long distance charges). Also, there is no need to sign long term contract. Their promotion now is to get 500 additional minutes / months free for period of 1 year.
sprintpcs.com
Omnipoint prices depend on when you make your phone call, when you call. They actually had to write a calculator on their web site to figure out how much you would pay. The rate for 900 minutes ranges from $193 (all calls local off-peak) to $476 / month if you call long distance. To match sprint offer of 1000 minutes anywhere + 500 off-peak, Omnipoint would charge their subscriber $625/month
omnipoint.com
According to a friend who had Omnipoint, you have to sign a contract. They have to resort to the use of these contracts probably because the the GSM phones need to be subsidized in order to get people to actually buy them.
Bell Atlantic is somewhere in between, but a closer to Sprint. Their site is bam.com, but it's down at the moment.
SO the "privilage" of using GSM is going to cost you somewhere between $94/month to $526 / month.
Ok, you say that you would rather be walking around with "a runaway hit" Ericsson 788. Omnipoint will sell it to you for $199. You will get a light, 4.7 oz handset with talk time of 200 minutes, 45 to 60 hrs standby. You only get 1 line of text display.
If you really want small and light weight, Sprint can offer you the Z phone, slightly smaller, slightly heavier: 5.3 oz with talk time of 150 minutes, standby of 24 hours.
Is this the big deal you are talking about? The differences are hardly worth mentioning.
SO again, for extra $94/month to $526 / month, or $1,128 to $6,312 / year, you will have the luxury of not having to recharge your phone 3 out of every 4 days (Hmm, what is easier to remember, that you have to recharge the phone every night, or to remember if how many days it has been since the last recharging).
But wait, if you recharge your phone only every 4 days, you will get to use only 50 talk time / day. Scratch that advantage.
You will still get to carry .6oz less. Big deal.
Now to the last point, the extra 50 minutes of talk time per charge. At the rates I listed, you really don't want to spend a lot of time talking on the GSM phone.
Now let me tell you how your typical (non-geeky) american really selects a phone: They look at the service plans, pick one they like, and get the cheapest phone required for the service plan.
Joe |
