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Cell phone in a bottleMy primary mobile phone for quite some time has been the Handspring Treo 600 with Sprint PCS as the service provider (operator). The Treo is a really terrific device with many great features. There are just two problems. First, Sprint PCS does not support GSM (the protocol used in most of the world) and since I travel quite a bit outside of America, I have had to travel often carrying two mobile phones. The second phone (a Motorola service has been provided by T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telecom), a major provider of GSM in America (and many other parts of the world). I have had T-Mobile service for a long time but, unfortunately, their coverage in the part of New England where I live is very poor. Having to manage two mobile phone accounts and two mobile phone numbers has been a pain for quite some time.
The second problem with the Sprint/Treo combination has been that the TREO, which operates on the Palm platform, does not support the Opera browser. Since I am an enthusiastic user and supporter of Opera (and member of the board of Opera Software ASA), I have been looking for a mobile phone and mobile operator with which I can use Opera. Needless to say, my colleagues at Opera Software were very sympathetic toward this objective and during my visit to Oslo, Norway for a board meeting in June, I acquired a Sony Ericsson P900. The P900 is quite an extraordinary device. In many ways it is similar to the Treo, but in other ways it is superior. The P900 uses the Symbian operating system. It is not Palm nor Windows, but it has some amazing features.
The P900 has many useful features, including a Sony memory stick for auxiliary storage, a flip-down keyboard, large color touch screen with handwriting recognition, and Bluetooth radio technology (stay tuned for more about Bluetooth). Using Bluetooth I have been able to add a Jabra FreeSpeak Bluetooth headset. The Jabra device is very compact – fits nicely over your ear with no dangling wires. The fidelity is quite good. The P900 also has a "jog dial". This clever innovation allows for one-handed operation of the phone and most all of the features. The dial can be rolled up and down, pressed in or rocked from front to back — five degrees of freedom in all. So far, I am more than happy with the P900 as a device. To make it be a real phone, however, requires a service provider — one that can provide worldwide GSM coverage or partnering for coverage.
Sprint has good coverage where I live but no GSM coverage anywhere. T-Mobile has good coverage in most parts of the world but not where I live. Both companies have assured me that coverage would be getting better "soon". I have heard that before. I decided to give Cingular a try. It was a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride, so off I went to the Cingular store. Having checked out their web site and knowing they had coverage in the general area of where I live I decided to sign up for a fourteen day trial, put one of their SIM chips in my P900, ride back home, and test out the coverage. The first of many hurdles was to convince the people in the store that Cingular might work with my phone. They looked at the P900 and asked what kind it was. I said it is a Sony Ericsson P900. "No, we mean what kind is it"? Who do you use it with now"? "Currently", I explained, "I am using it with T-Mobile but the coverage where I live is not good and I want to try Cingular". "Our service doesn’t work on a T-Mobile phone", they insisted. I explained that I had gotten the phone in Europe and that over there people buy whatever kind of phone they want and then they select a service provider based on where they live, get a SIM card, put it in the phone, and it works. I got puzzled looks. "Since Cingular is a GSM provider and since you provide SIM cards for your phones, all you have to do is give me a Cingular chip card and I will put it in my phone". They insisted it would not work. This is the American way. If the phone doesn’t say Cingular on it, it won’t work with Cingular. I pleaded with them — "Can’t we just try it"?.
The sales person was very nice. She captured all my information – name and address, ssn, driver’s license number, date of birth, etc. — using an online application. I was impressed (except for them insisting on so much personal information). I thought we were ready to insert the chip card , but then out came the paperwork. I had to fill out an application form with all the same information that they had already captured in their system! Go figure. At last, they brought out the SIM card. I put the card in the phone, powered it up, "Cingular" appeared on the screen, I dialed the store number, and to their amazement, it rang. I was a happy camper. One phone, one service, worldwide. Then I got home and found there was absolutely no signal.
I had not considered AT&T Wireless because they have such a terrible reputation for customer service. However, I was getting desperate. I really really wanted one phone, one service, worldwide. I called the AT&T Wireless store and talked to Greg. He was very nice. The store turns out to be 100 yarrds away from Cingular in the same mall. It was a sunny day so I didn’t mind another thirty mile roundtrip motorcycle ride. Greg said he couldn’t say much about the overall reputation of AT&T Wireless, but if you come to "his" store you get great customer service. He was right. I signed up for the voice and data services, put the AT&T Wireless chip card in the P900, turned it on and made a test call. Greg had told me exactly where the nearest tower to my home was. On the way to the Mall I went directly by the tower and noted the distance on the Garmin StreetPilot GPS — 1.2 miles from my house. I got back home and sure enough, the P900 came to life. I was a really happy camper this time.
Unfortunately, Greg doesn’t run attwireless.com. Like all the wireless carrier websites, it is focused on selling services, is very hard to learn much about mobile phones, and is generally not user friendly. I hate to make a generalization, but having spent considerable time on the websites lately, I sadly report that it is true. AT&T takes the cake though. When signing up for an online account for bill payment, etc. the site offered a drop down box for a password hint. Many sites are now doing this. They ask for your mother’s maiden name, your dog’s name, where you were born, etc. These are really lame methods of authentication. In addition to being generally weak forms of authentication, none of them that I have seen specify how to enter the data. For example, is where you were born to be entered as town, state? Upper or lower case? Does it matter? Answer is it doesn’t matter how you enter it, but six months later when you need to re-enter it to reset your password, it has to be the same as you entered it before. No hint about what format to use. What could they be thinking when they implement such a process? I have to conclude they were not thinking. But, here comes the icing on the cake. I picked "What is your favorite color"? I then entered "blue". The site returned an error. "Input must be a minimum of five characters"! Can you believe it? Too bad if your favorite color is red or blue.
Now comes the fun part — number portability. I was so happy with the P900 – AT&T Wireless combo that I decided to transfer my Sprint PCS mobile number to AT&T. This was unheard of in the past but in November 2003, new FCC regulations now require the carriers to offer the transfers. I scoured the AT&T Wireless website for information on how to transfer a number to them. No luck. Perhaps some carriers don’t want to make it easy to transfer numbers — especially transfers out. I called customer service who transferred me to technical support who transferred me to the number portability department. They required a lot of information including the password to my Sprint PCS account but, much to my surprise and delight, just under four hours later the transfer had become effective. Although a lot of time on the phone to get it going, in hindsight, it was a smooth process. The only glitch I am aware of is that my SMS messages go out using the original AT&T phone number as the "from" address.
The real joy of the P900 is using the Opera browser. More on that (and Bluetooth) in coming stories.