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TOTA Mobile/Wireless/Celluar/VOIP Thread (pg. 113)
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View this Thread in Original format
| E2EK1EL |
BlackBerry Storm rumor recap: Vodafone BES issues, software update, mass hysteria
We figured that instead of making you comb the internets trying to hunt down the latest information on the BlackBerry Storm, we’d compile a nice recap of sorts. Some of it is new exclusive information, and some of it is just other things that have been floating around. Let’s get into it…
We’ve heard that Vodafone UK has absolutely no intention of selling the Storm to BES users until 2009. We’re not exactly clear on this (since the two Vodafone Storms we have were converted to a business BES account after purchase), but we believe it means that there will be no direct-to-business sales of the handset. Not that you couldn’t as an individual purchase one and simply add a BES plan and convert it to a business account. We’re told that the reason of the hold-up is that Vodafone is worried the device, with the on-going hardware and software issues, isn’t up to snuff for their corporate users.
For more information on the issues with the Vodafone BlackBerry Storm, hit Vodafone’s forum. You’ll see an enormous amount of complaints about signal reception, buttons falling off, and software issues.
BlackBerry Storm OS 4.7.0.75 seems to be floating around in some circles. There’s been a ton of misinformation out there, but the update appears to be real, and is currently NOT — let’s stress the word, “NOT” — available to the general public. As many times as you might try to check for updates in Desktop Manager or in the Upgrade portion of Options on your device, you won’t get anything at the moment. We’ll obviously keep you updated on this, but don’t get your hopes up just yet.
Some BlackBerry Storm users have complained about the difficulty of pressing edges of the touch panel on their devices. It’s a mixed bag, and out of the five Storms we’ve had, two were perfect and three were terrible. We noted this in our review, and the remedy seems to be inserting business cards or paper (you believe this?) underneath the battery or on top of the battery under the battery door. Don’t bother. Just return them and get them swapped out. It’s not your problem, it’s their problem.
In terms of unlocking the BlackBerry Storm, you’ll have a much easier time getting the unlock code from Verizon. It’s rather simple, really. As long as you have an account that is current with no past due charges and the device on your account, you can call Verizon’s Global Support number and request an unlock code for the handset. Nine times out of ten they’ll give you the code while you are still on the phone. Easy. As. Pie. |
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| malek |
anyone out there who has the samsung jack with either Fido or Rogers, there's a windows mobile upgrade to 6.1 on samsung's website.
i'll apply the update later today and tell ya'll if my phone (hopefully) exploded or something. |
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| VERTiG0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by E2EK1EL
Rogers launches the BlackBerry Curve 8900
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Took these Friday night... SUP
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| LightsOut |
| quote: | Originally posted by VERTiG0
Took these Friday night... SUP
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Any word on when rogers is going to have stock of these? / how did you get one so soon im jealous as !?!
I spent an hour and a half on the phone with rogers yesterday, talked to 4 people (from cs to retentions), and nobody had a clue about what the deal with this phone is. They acknowledged it was in their "library", but their system was unable to process an order for me, or even tell me what my HUP price would be.......HELP!?! |
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| rabbitjoker |
| quote: | Originally posted by malek
anyone out there who has the samsung jack with either Fido or Rogers, there's a windows mobile upgrade to 6.1 on samsung's website.
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WinMo 6.1 was a great upgrade for my HTC. Good luck! |
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| VERTiG0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by LightsOut
Any word on when rogers is going to have stock of these? / how did you get one so soon im jealous as !?!
I spent an hour and a half on the phone with rogers yesterday, talked to 4 people (from cs to retentions), and nobody had a clue about what the deal with this phone is. They acknowledged it was in their "library", but their system was unable to process an order for me, or even tell me what my HUP price would be.......HELP!?! |
No idea, I don't work for Rogers. I just know friends with quite a few people that work at RIM. |
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| dEsidEL |
| quote: |
Could consumers own their internet connections?
Last Updated: Monday, December 1, 2008 | 1:27 PM ET
By Peter Nowak, CBC News
What's the best way to ensure "net neutrality?" Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor and Toronto native who first coined the term, has a simple suggestion: customer ownership of internet connections.
In a study released last Thursday, the same day the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issued a verdict allowing Bell Canada Inc. to continue slowing certain internet uses, Wu suggested an access model that would allow home owners to purchase high-speed connections rather than rent them from service providers.
Under the "homes with tails" model, customers would purchase a fibre wire connection to their home that would provide speeds far in excess of what is generally available in North America today. The fibre would be connected to existing open exchange buildings where a large number of telecommunications pipeline providers have equipment that forms the backbone of the internet.
Customers could therefore bypass cable and telephone companies, who today provide the "last mile" of connection between the exchange and the home, to access the internet and thereby video, voice and other services.
The model would also result in significant monthly cost savings because customers would only have to pay service providers for the true price of their services and not for infrastructure investment, the report said. The majority of monthly internet bills today are to help cable and phone companies recoup the costs of building their networks.
Derek Slater, a policy analyst at Google Inc. who co-authored the report with Wu, says the most important effect of fibre ownership would be that customers could pick their internet connection from more than the two choices they currently have — typically a phone and a cable company.
That increased choice at the exchange level would guarantee net neutrality because if one provider started interfering with connections, customers could switch to one that did not, he says.
"Competition would ensure that consumers were in control of what they choose to use, access and share without any undue interference," Slater says. "Competition would be a bulwark against interference by network operators."
(Although Google has an interest in increased internet usage, the company did not fund the report. Slater says he helped Wu co-author it out of his own interest.)
The idea could have specific relevance in Canada, where service providers are increasingly introducing network management measures that critics say are running afoul of net neutrality principles.
In Ontario alone, the two largest internet service providers — Bell and Rogers Communications Inc. — are both slowing peer-to-peer file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent. Last week's CRTC ruling ensured that many internet customers in the province will be unable to find unthrottled service at least until a net neutrality probe concludes a year from now.
Test project underway in Ottawa
As such, the fibre ownership idea is currently being tested in Ottawa under a pilot project headed by Bill St. Arnaud, the chief research officer for CANARIE, Canada's non-profit advanced internet research network. The Ottawa project is adding an additional incentive for consumers to buy their own fibre by tying its cost to energy usage.
Under St. Arnaud's "green broadband" plan, the cost of the fibre connection is amortized over a five-year period and added to the owner's monthly energy bill. The fibre costs the consumer two cents per kilowatt hour of electricity they use, or the equivalent amount per cubic metre of gas, whichever the case may be.
Based on typical energy expenditures in Ottawa, a consumer would rack up a fibre cost of between $200 and $300 per year, or about $1,000 to $1,500 over the five-year lifetime, he says.
The scheme would encourage lower energy consumption, St. Arnaud says, because the fibre would effectively get cheaper as the consumer used less gas or electricity.
"Owning is not going to be sufficient incentive for the customer to make that investment," he says. "If we encourage them by this attraction of reducing their energy bill, saving them money and still giving them fibre, it's a bigger inducement."
Monthly savings on internet bills would also be significant, St. Arnaud says. He estimates the true cost of service from Bell and Rogers to be between $2 and $15, with the remainder of the monthly $40-plus bill going to recouping infrastructure investment and profit.
Finally, fibre would count as an asset to a home owner. According to Wu and Slater's report, studies have found that homes with fibre connections are worth about $4,000 U.S. more than those without.
Concept faces obstacles
The idea faces a number of obstacles, however, not the least of which is convincing consumers to change their mindset toward ownership rather than rental of their internet connection.
That's not an intractable barrier, the report said, since precedents have been set. Computers, for example, were rented out to businesses before companies such as Apple introduced the idea of an owned personal computer.
"It will be strange to people at first, but the line between consumer property and businesses has changed over time," Slater says. "What may seem strange or challenging today may become much easier tomorrow or a few years from now."
Industry analysts, however, say that's not such an easy obstacle to overcome because ownership also means unwanted hassles. "I can buy a water heater for a couple hundred bucks from Home Depot but I don't want the problem of it," says telecommunications industry consultant Mark Goldberg. "If I rent it, it's not my problem."
Maintenance of the fibre connections would also be an issue. Under the current system, cable and phone companies fix any problems that occur on their networks. With the consumer-ownership model, a "condominium" system where households pay monthly maintenance fees would likely be necessary, which would cut into costs savings earned through bypassing a cable or phone provider.
"It's not a free ride after you've paid for the fibre," Goldberg says. "You need to have a fibre manager, and they're not going to do it for charity."
Incumbents likely to resist
The concept's other major problem would be getting service providers to sign on. Cable and phone companies are likely to resist getting cut out of monthly internet access revenue while the backbone service providers at the exchanges may not be willing to go into competition with those firms.
That's exactly what's happening in Ottawa, St. Arnaud says. Despite already having strung fibre, mostly from streetside poles, to about 400 households, the project has been unable to find an exchange-based service provider willing to connect customers and go up against Bell and Rogers.
"The retail internet business in Canada has been destroyed. All you've got left in Ontario is Bell and Rogers," he says. "Nobody wants to make that kind of investment."
One possible solution lays in convincing a big internet service provider from one region to expand into another. Vancouver-based Telus Corp., for example, could get into the business of selling fibre connections in Ontario, where it has no residential internet customers. The problem there for Telus, however, would be the threat of repercussions from Bell or Rogers.
"Their concern is that they'll come back and invade them on their own territory," St. Arnaud says. "They like the idea in somebody else's territory, but not their own."
Still, both Slater and St. Arnaud believe the concept can fly if only one service provider can be convinced to give it a try. The point of the report, Slater says, was to get discussion of the concept moving and to encourage more experiments like the one in Ottawa.
"It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem. How do you get the service providers in on it if they're not used to this model, and how do you get people to want to buy the fibre if there aren't service providers there to begin with?" he says. "These kinds of attitudes can change over time. It's not an insurmountable obstacle."
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source:
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/...tech-fibre.html
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| E2EK1EL |
N97 is touch screen :)
Might get this instead of the E71 |
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| Chris Allen |
| quote: | Originally posted by E2EK1EL
N97 is touch screen :)
Might get this instead of the E71 |
Was looking at this badboy this morning. Looks like a really great mobile device.
More info: Gizmodo |
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| Orko |
Really neat article! I would love to sing up for something like that, but I'm probably in the minority. I've had a hard enough time signing people up for Acanac, because they don't want to pay for a full year in advance. Sometimes people are so short sighted, it is like they want to get ed by the telcom industry.
| quote: | Originally posted by E2EK1EL
N97 is touch screen :)
Might get this instead of the E71 |
Looks like a cool device, but $700??!?! I am just amazed that people pay that much for phones. |
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| dEsidEL |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orko
Looks like a cool device, but $700??!?! I am just amazed that people pay that much for phones. |
+1
it's hard to justify that kind of cost, unless you're running your own business and need all the features to keep things going, or require it for work in which your employer would likely have already provided you with a smartphone.
but for the average consumer?? to each their own i guess..
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| VERTiG0 |
Oh my god. N97.
Load status: blown
One problem: Dual LED flash. Disappointing, and likely to keep me from buying it. |
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