Sony Ericsson Makes a tri-band GPRS modem

prostoalex writes "Sony Ericsson announced their new PCMCIA GPRS wireless modem, capable of delivering 57.6 Kbps. It is tri-band and works in 900/1800/1900 MHz range, which led Sony Ericsson to imply that the card will work in 160 countries, providing an always-on Internet connection. Currently only Microsoft operating systems (starting at Windows 98) are supported. No exact price information on official site, but the PC Pro article above quotes 200 UK pounds. The manufacturer also runs a contest for those who would rather get one for free."

One more thing...

[natron 2.0]

What si the security like with this thing, it works in the 900Mhz range, I know alot of 900Mhz phones that are easily tapped with cheap equiptment. I hope Sony has thought this through.

Re:But why..

[jeremyacole]

Heh. Either you're trolling, or you completely miss the point. Try taking your cable modem to another country... or even accross town. Try using it from the local coffee shop. Nope. Didn't think so.

This is seriosly cool stuff. I wish (WISH!) that GPRS (or even good GSM coverage) was available in the USA at large. I'm still stuck with my TDMA phone until they get better coverage.

Why arn't we using Bluetooth

[The Evil Twin]

So I've been reading about how in the UK everyone is using bluetooth enabled devices. This device becomes a perfect example of a "why do we need this?" product.

The way things should be:
- Most notebooks come with bluetooth.
- you have a Bluetooth enabled GPRS phone.

Done.. there is your internet connection.
Intead, for us stuck here in North America. We get CDMA, and no bluetooth to speak of (except as an option on some high end notebooks). Sure we can buy an adapter for the notebook. But no phones.

So What?

[kitsook]

why not just buy a gprs phone? then use infra-red to connect your notebook/ppc to the phone?

Re:Anonymous Surfing?

[gl4ss]

you could always do this.. of course you can switch the sim card on the modem, how else were you going to get your sim card in it? and being what it is(basically a gprs phone without phone look options). and this is hardly the first one of these to hit the market even, several solutions exist yet, but they dont do triband afaik like this.

provider/phonenumber locking per phone is medieval, something you hear horrorstories from nmt days.

and gprs doesnt do anything 'new' to this, not in this modem or anything. you could always use the 'data' mode of the gsm phone to post things with these. for hmm, 9 years already?

and as somebody mentioned, very few of these precharged providers provide gprs, but that is non issue anyways as long they provide some way to make data calls.

they could use the wap/gprs-modem portions of the phone itself even if the sim card was epoxied in every phone.

In praise of smarter markets

[smittyoneeach]

We must quietly respect the gentle extension of market share on the part of the Big Guy. No whining, no complaints, no trolls: manufacturers are flooding the market with products that are only going to work with the Master System.
The reasonable thing to do is refuse to purchase these products until a reasonable selection of drivers is available for them.
Also, try not to by new boxes incorporating inflexible hardware.
Smarter markets are the key to a better future.

Re:so when

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily mobile phone manufactures makes phones to the end users instead of service providers.

Option 1 will happen in the future, it's just takes a while before 802.11b implementation is small and cheap enough for mobile phones.

Re:so when

[Ford Fulkerson]

Which does a service provider make more money on?

How is this relevant, Sony/Ericsson is a mobile phone manufacturer. They don't provide the network access. All theyr'e interested in is makeing a modem that you'll rather but than whatever Nokia is shipping. Putting this kind of functionality into the modem will definetely make that happen.

Also, I know for a fact that Ericsson have done a lot of reseash into mobile phones that automatically use normal digital DECT wireless phone networks available in many workplaces, when available. So no conspiracy with the service providers here.

Re:so when

[dago]

maybe ericsson is also a big mobile network equipment supplier ?

for the DECT+GSM, they were one of the few (with SAGEM) to make a dual standard phone. Unfortunately, both discontinued their product some years ago.

in fact, DECT could be far worse for mobile phone operators than 802.11. It's quite easy to make an ad-hoc network of dect phones ... do you really thing that any supplier or service provider wants that ?