GPRS still SUCKS
To:Maurice Winn who started this subject
From: S100
Friday, May 18, 2001 3:24 PM
View Replies (2) | Respond to of 2935
GPRS from here and there.
Thursday 19th April 2001 6:00pm
GPRS: A donkey on speed is still a donkey
Anthea Turner's biography was a flop, but at least she got it out on time and marketed it a bit. BT's consumer GPRS
service is nearly a year late, and without the coverage in Hello! it will probably sell fewer copies.
Consumer GPRS is basically WAP with wings, to start with at least. Some of us enjoyed WAP, particularly
those of us who shared our childhood with a ZX Spectrum. There was something reassuring about the clunky
user interface and the frequent crashes.
WAP over GPRS is a bit like the Spectrum Plus. The charming rubber keys are gone, the price has increased, but not
much else is different.
That's right - a donkey on speed is still a donkey. It just costs more to get it going in the morning.
BT has attempted to spice up the graphics a little with a range of pre-programmed icons. A little train to illustrate the
travel services, for example.
It's good to see they've taken at least one leaf out of the Japanese book. Japan's leading mobile network NTT-DoCoMo
and its (surprisingly successful) i-mode service has a neat little range of characters programmed into the phone so users
don't have to spend money downloading them.
The choice of a train is strangely appropriate. GPRS sounds ominously like GNER or some other privatised train
company where half the services are late and the other half cancelled.
Trying to convince the public that GPRS is anything other than the same old phone with another name and
another confusing price structure will be next to impossible.
How convenient, then, that BT isn't going to try selling it. The commercial service only has 500 users after the
network has been up for a year. The consumer phones cost a bomb, BT will spend next to nothing marketing
them and is ordering phones on a "just in time" basis. Could it be that BT doesn't want people to buy them?
It seems like they've given up before they've even started. We hope the people who lent them the money for 3G - the next
battlefield - are more impressed than us.
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Friday 18th May 2001 3:45pm
GPRS: Next generation phones hit shops
British consumers today get the first chance to buy mobile phones which incorporate the latest mobile data technology,
GPRS.
The consumer launch comes nearly a year after BT announced the world's first live GPRS network.
Since then, BT has only made the service available to businesses, amid a flurry of stories documenting the technical
problems that beset it.
GPRS is widely seen as a staging post on the way to the launch of 3G services, and many of the problems
which affected GPRS have begun to hit 3G, only more so - with problems over handsets and long delays to
launch dates.
The main difference a user will feel is considerably quicker access to WAP pages and emails. GPRS offers an "always
on" connection, so when it's working it eliminates the 30-second delay that users of WAP over ordinary GSM have to
put up with.
The service will also be cheaper than GSM for heavy mobile internet users. At £199, the handsets are expensive, and the
service comes with a monthly charge of £3.99 or £7.99. But individual WAP page views are very cheap, at around 0.4p
each (though data is charged per kilobyte, not per page).
GPRS will also improve connections for remote workers, offering cheaper and faster mobile internet access from their
laptops.
Data speeds are around 30Kbs downstream and 10Kbs upstream slower than many white papers were predicting a
year or two ago, but still appreciably faster than GSM.
BT seems to be gearing up for a slow launch of GPRS, in contrast to the massive advertising splash which accompanied
the launch of WAP last year. There has been no advertising of GPRS as yet, and the company is believed to have a
limited supply of handsets - though the official line is that they have "enough" to meet demand.
BT Cellnet's notorious ads featuring a little surfer riding on a mobile phone were widely blamed for giving people
unrealistic expectations about what WAP could deliver - and fuelling the subsequent disappointment.
GPRS access will also be hit by capacity problems on BT's network. silicon.com has documented some of the problems
early GPRS users have been experiencing with the service.
BT Cellnet can only allocate a limited amount of network capacity to GPRS, and when many users are competing for that
space, they will experience serious contention problems accessing mobile internet services.
The first GPRS handset will be Motorola's Timeport 260, initially on sale from BT's own stores and subsequently from
other outlets including Carphone Warehouse and The Link.
----
Friday, 18 May, 2001, 17:36 GMT 18:36 UK
Will you buy a GPRS phone?
The name doesn't roll off the tongue, but a GPRS phone is the latest must-have for gadget lovers.
The new mobile phone technology promises users what the much-hyped Wap failed to deliver.
Wap was once billed as the ultimate in mobile internet, but in reality pages were dull and difficult to navigate. Slow and
costly connections also discouraged emailers.
GPRS phones promise to change all that. Phones are "always on" and transmission speeds are much faster. But the
handsets are expensive, and line rental charges can be confusing.
newsvote.bbc.co.uk.
---
Thursday 19th April 2001 1:00pm
GPRS is here, but it's late and it doesn't really work
BT has set the launch date for the first mass-market phones using the new high-speed data service - GPRS - for 18 May.
The long-awaited consumer launch comes nearly a year after BT launched the world's first GPRS services for
businesses.
GPRS promised cheaper, faster and easier to use mobile data services, as a bridging technology to prepare for the launch
of 3G. The delay of the consumer launch has fuelled widespread speculation that the network is plagued with technical
problems.
Stuart Newstead, general manager for wireless data at BT Cellnet, claimed that the company had been "concentrating on
offering services to business".
However, the WAP over GPRS services available on the demonstration models did little to allay rumours that
the service doesn't work very well.
Of the six demo handsets available, only two seemed to work at any one time, and the GPRS network was
often unavailable.
When the network was functioning, it did speed up and improve the WAP experience, but the familiar WAP
problems were still there - poor graphics, small screen, and a clunky user interface.
The problems with GPRS have been well documented. BT had to replace the first batch of Motorola T7389i
handsets, which were compliant with the wrong version of the GPRS standard - a fault that made them useless
in many areas, including central London.
Tech watchers have long known that the 'theoretical' GPRS speeds will not be delivered any time soon, if ever. Speeds of
over 100kbit/s have been quoted in early analyst reports and white papers, but BT's Motorola handsets will only be
capable of a theoretical 28.8kbit/s downstream and 14.4 kbit/s upstream. Current WAP handsets offer up to 14.4kbit/s in
both directions.
However, BT is promoting GPRS on the basis of its "always on" feature. Unlike WAP over existing networks, it
shouldn't take 30 seconds to set up a WAP session. However, this feature was not in evidence in today's demonstration.
silicon.com has also documented a range of other problems, including network availability issues, coverage glitches and
billing problems.
An undisclosed number of handsets will be on sale in BT Cellnet's own shops and major retailers such as Carphone
Warehouse and the Dixons-owned The Link stores.
BT does not appear to be anticipating major demand. The handsets are priced at a not too tempting £199, and BT does
not appear to have ordered a large number for the launch. They will be supplied, said Newstead, on a "just-in-time basis".
Only 35 companies currently pay for BT's business GPRS offering, representing around 500 users, according to
Newstead.
The only handsets on offer will be the Motorola T260 - an updated version of the Timeport P7389i. Further handsets and
other devices are expected to be available "soon".
Two price structures will be available - a £3.99 monthly fee with data transmission charged at 2p per Kb, or £7.99 with a
'free' 1Mb of data and £3.99 for each subsequent Mb.
Roaming with the GPRS network of VIAG Interkom in Germany will be available at launch. Newstead said Blu's network
in Italy, Telfort in Holland and SFR in France will be added "soon".
silicon.com. |
