GPRS practicalities

[vyv_cox]

The idea of having a GPRS connection <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.option.com/> like this</A> seems a very attractive one. I am having some difficulty in understanding exactly how it works.

It seems that the device thinks it is a telephone and is administered by telephone companies. So if I use it in another country I presumably pay through the nose, as with telephones? But the thing is sold as being the solution to international travel communications. So is this true? The option of buying local SIM cards is not particularly convenient if several countries are being visited, and I'm not even sure that a GPRS has a SIM card anyway.

Next, I want to use it for e-mail and Internet traffic when abroad. So now, another service provider enters the picture. Do I have to use an international ISP like AOL so that I can make local calls to the server? Or is there another way that the GPRS literature is not explaining sufficiently simply for me to grasp?

I would be most grateful for an explanation from someone who knows.

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[kingfisher]

Marina service opportunities

A GPRS PCMCIA card is just a GSM in a card format. So you will have to slot your sim-card in there. Then you can call an ISP and login.

If you use it in another country, and stick with your own ISP, you're making an international call, with all the cost consequences. On the other hand, if you open different acounts with (free) local ISP's, you only pay a marginaly higher rate. If you're using a UK GSM in Holland, and call a dutch number, it is considered a local call.

So: get a GPRS card, insert a SIM-card. Create an (free) account with a local ISP (Belgium: VT4.net, tiscali.be, pi.be,...). Dial-in at local rates.

GPRS is fine for e-mail, but don't expect to be able to surf content-heavy webpages. Personaly, I'm expecting that premium marina's will provide WiFi services to their customers in the near future, coupled to a broadband connection. Being able to conduct my business from the comfort of my boat would certainly be a major point in selecting my choice of port.

Wifi: Broadband, but only in marina
GPRS: smallband, but everywhere within GSM range

<hr width=100% size=1>Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[Gunfleet]

Vyv,
They've been advertising this wire free marina stuff in the UK. But £25 a month! Ouch. Then there's the £70 connection fee. I don't really understand why marinas don't get a wireless lan with a cable tv modem and put the nightly conenction fee on your nightly mooring charge. After all, they do that with electricity. As for gprs, I have one of these Orange SPV thingies. It will download my emails wherever I am and of course you pay by the Mbyte. You buy the Mbytes in bundles and of course if you go abroad you pay more. But it downloads the 1st 100 characters of a message so you can decide whether you want the message or not, and actually for emails and no surfing 10Mbyte, for example, goes a long way. You can use it without the computer for downloading emails but if you want to write them you need tiny tiny fingers and lots of patience. Oh, by the way, ISP. I use NTL, my home one. Then the SPV just logs on over the net in the normal way. The device has a form of 'Outlook' on it.

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[marcelo]

If you want to use GPRS abroad you need to “open” a GPRS account with the local mobile telephone company outside UK, or ask if your company have roaming agreements abroad, otherwise using the card as telephone you can communicate at 9600bps, low speed to e-mails and difficult to have an acceptable internet traffic. some telephone companies allow you to surf at 56.000bps, (I saw only one in Italy)
Only in this last case you need to find free internet services providers. (with GPRS account internet is included).
Saluti
marcelo



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[extravert]

Re: Marina service opportunities

There is a lot of confusion here!

> A GPRS PCMCIA card is just a GSM in a card format..

No it isn't. A GPRS PC-Card is more than a GSM PC-Card. A GPRS is a higher service than GSM. You get GSM capabilities as well as your GPRS capabilities with a GPRS PC-Card/SIM.

> If you use it in another country, and stick with your own ISP, you're making an international call, with all the cost consequences...

This is muddling things up. I'll explain the difference between GSM and GPRS

GSM was developed primarily as a voice service. You can use it for an internet connection via a modem built into your phone, same as you can use a normal voice phone line at home with a modem. Data rates are low.

GPRS is a proper data connection capability on top of GSM. With a GPRS SIM you get all the GSM capability, and a proper data connection as well. When you connect to the internet via GPRS there is no 'dialling up' and 'logging on'. You can think of it that you are always connected to the internet, like a broad-band internet connection at home.

So if you use a GPRS SIM abroad for internet access there is no dialling back to your home country. Your phone will be connected via GPRS to the internet in the foreign country. There may be a higher rate to pay for this than at home though.

> So: get a GPRS card, insert a SIM-card. Create an (free) account with a local
> ISP (Belgium: VT4.net, tiscali.be, pi.be,...). Dial-in at local rates.

Get a GPRS PC-Card, insert a GPRS SIM (either your UK one, or get a local one if it is significantly cheaper). Once you are connected to the internet it does not matter where in the world you are transferring data to or from (we don't pay more to browse a US website than we do a UK one). Therefore you do not need to set up an account with a local ISP, and as said before, with GPRS there is no dialling-in. Set up (if not already done) the PC/Phone with your normal UK based email account details, and get/send your email. You can use your normal UK based email address.

Internet access via GPRS is better than via GSM, but it's still not great, no faster than a home phone line dial-up connection. It will get better.

I'm a software developer for a well-known mobile phone manufacturer.



<hr width=100% size=1>Adventures of the <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.xrayted.fsnet.co.uk>Teddy Bear Boat</A>

 

[andy_wilson]

How it works

General Packet Radio Service allows you to connect a compatible device (phone or PC Card) to your mobile phone companies internet node on a permanent basis, a bit like broadband. Yes you need a subscription with SIM. You can use it for Voice / FAX / GPRS / Std. Data dependant on your hardware.

Unlike broadband you then pay by the Mb of data sent or received (perhaps pre-paying for a bundle each month).

Caution 1 Speed.

Each radio cell channel has 8 time slots, each capable of transferring data at approx 10kbps (this is based loosely on a standard 9.6 kbps data line but GPRS works slightly differently). GPRS can in theory give all 8 time slots to your traffic - if they are available. Conversely you may get none at any one time if other traffic is high at that time and place.

The reality with Vodafone (UK 900mHz technology) is that the network is congested and 0 - 10kbps data transfer speed is what you should bank on, with the odd burst up to 30 K. This is not a problem with an e-mail client sat idly trying to send or recieve traffic from time to time. Web browsing can prove tedious however. Orange guarantee 9.6 k minimum but I have not monitored this.

Caution 2 Cost. (Baseline UK £1.50 to 3 / Mb - tariff dependant)

The norm with UK networks is to charge a call to local number at an international tariff which bears no relationship to the cost of a local call. How this works with GPRS - the connection code is the same *99* or whatever, and the call is routed internationally, so try these for size (only Orange have been able to supply these costs without escalation).

Zone Cost/mb
ROI £8
EU £10
US £20
Rest £25

Worth it?

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[timchapman]

I am am established user of most wireless technologies, (including 3G) and can only conclude that use of a mobile abroad for data is so expensive as to be not worth it. For use in the UK the Orange High Speed Data Network connects at 22,8kbs and is regularly faster than GPRS. I don't believe there is a premium to pay for this service, just an Orange account. The difference is that with Orange you pay per minute whereas with GPRS you can stay connected as long as you want, (and still receive calls) but you pay per MegaByte.
see http://www.orange.co.uk/services/orange_high_speed.html.
If you've got a little extra to spend get the Nokia Card phone for your laptop. Very convenient

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[HaraldS]

When I first tried GPRS some two years ago, I gave up on it very quickly as it was very unreliable and astronomically expensive. Today it is a lot different and it changes as we speak.

The differnce between, good old dial up data service on GSM and GPRS is significant. With dial up you essentially get a full 10k-bit time slot for you, to do what you want with it and you pay for the time you have it. Billing is like a regular phone call. You need to call a provider, which means you first have to have one and as you probably expirenced, an expensive minute is easily gone before you are connected.

With GPRS you share a bunch of these 10k-slots with others. In theory you could use up to 8 of these at one time. You usually get less, but it's always better than the dial-up speed. I found it 'feels' comparable to a 56k modem connection.

One consequence now is that you can stay connected as long as you like, as you are charged by the amount of data, not the time. Another one is that you don't need an internet provider, as the only option of your data connection is, to put you onto the internet.

So this step actually was bigger, then the next which will be to the much talked about UMTS. It will behave the same way, just be faster und hopefully cheaper.

I found GPRS prices are dropping several times a year. The other good news with GPRS is that there are now roaming agreements in place with most countries, so that it really works for the traveller. The cost also seems to be easier to figure out, than with the regular GSM roaming. So far my provider gives me a price for a country category, and regarless of what provider you use there, that's what you will be charged.

I have a regular cell-phone contract with T-Mobile in Germany, and the GPRS-PRO option for €9/month. With that I pay the following when roaming:
42 Euro Cents, per day of using the service. (no matter how often you show up at the same provider during the same day)
Euro 1.29 per 250kb in group 1 (like UK)
Euro 2.15 per 250kb in group 2 (like Spain)
Euro 3.44 per 250kb in group 3 (like Portugal)
at home 1.68 per MB, one MB free per month.
Billing granularity is 1kb.

The 'at home' price shows that, like with phones, roaming is expensive. That suggests that buying a local SIM with GPRS service may be cheaper.

Unfortunately, Pre-Paid cards don't seem to include GPRS, but I might have missed something, or that fact may change in the near future.

In Portugal I'm currently using a pre-paid card, but have never seen GPRS work with it. The only card I found there that didn't require making a call every once and so often, to keep your charge, was from Vodafone. And I have not seen GPRS work at all at Vodafone in Portugal. So maybe it'll work when they have GPRS.

That gets us to the next problem: Coverage is very unkown.

In Madeira I checked this February and found that none of the four providers was supporting GPRS yet.

In Lagos in March I found that of the four providers only Optimus had GPRS service.

While Skying this winter (january) I had good supply from Switzerland (at least 3 carriers) and Austria (at least two carriers), but when I moved to Carinthia, the southeastern part of Austria, I had none.

So while there are roaming agreements in place, it seems to remain unclear as to where it actually works.

Finally: You don't need the PCMCIA-card to have GPRS, many cell phones support it and you can connect your laptop to the phone as usual. (Data cable, Infrared or Bluetooth).

One more thing worth mentioning as it may seem confusing is that the phone itself may use GPRS for the infamous WAP services. You know the infinitely slow information services on the phone, used to also use a dial-up connection underneath, they are now more usable and cheaper, though they charge you more per kb than with raw GPRS.





<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.taniwani.de>http://www.taniwani.de</A>

 

[vyv_cox]

Thanks for all the input - much appreciated. I visited the KPN mobile phone shop last night and they provided price lists and some more info. I will be able to run it from a mobile phone with infra-red connection to laptop but my present mobile phone is probably too elderly. Costs seem considerably less than the UK ones quoted, and even lower than Harald's German ones. I leave Netherlands at the end of this year so the question is whether I can continue to own a Dutch phone without a Dutch address.

I intend to sign on and will advise my experiences.

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