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I’ve always been attracted to different mobile devices. I can’t carry many with me, because my pockets are only so big, and my wallet only so fat. It always confused me why certain phones would only work on certain networks… especially when the network would be compatible with other phones.

I received the following email from a community member.

My name is Oskar and I’m from Estonia, I have been a member of your chat room for a week or so by now. I have to tell you that I really like what you are doing and your opinion is very good most of the time. You want to help others and that is good. We could always say that “this rules and that sucks”, but you don´t. Even if Microsoft made a BIG mistake with Vista you still wanted to help them to make it good. Also you help other users, most cases they are geeks and power users but also you help these home users, who just want to know witch OS tho choose or something else like that.

Well I wrote this letter to discuss the wireless topic you talked about. I wanted to know your opinions about mobile networks. What if the networks went international as well as they are national. You see, almost every mobile network, if not all, charge you more for making an international call. I think that this is wrong, because we are living in an age where families and friends live far away. I’m not talking about cheap calls or anything, I just think that there should be an mobile network or something that does these five things:

• They charge every call the same, no matter if its video call or just an ordinary one.
• The network is everywhere. This is important because this is the only way this whole thing could work. Mobile network for everyone, to call everywhere with the same price. And also this means that it wouldn’t be like its with the AT&T and iphone today. Everyone, no matter where they live could use premium services on this network.
• Every country gets the same network, the same services and all that the company can offer with the same price and quality.
• Tries to make a contract with all mobile companies to work on their network.
• And the last thing they should do is learn from their community.

Maybe this does not make any sense, but I’m really waiting for a mobile network that would treat the whole world the same and would listen to the community.

So what are your thoughts about this Chris?

Thank you from reading and hopefully replying to this.
Oskar.

Wow Oskar, thanks for your email. Even though you’ve only been around a week, you certainly have me nailed. I’m all about helping people. I’m behind you 110% on what you’re proposing here. The problem, though, is politics. When you bring it to an International market, politics get deeper by far. That being said, a lot of devices come with Wi-Fi. And the Internet is pretty ubiquitous.

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Wireless Carrier Wish List

Adam Wolf had a response to / correction for the tech terms video we recorded the other day:

Love your work… I’ve worked in “wireless” for about 20 years and just wanted to leave you a quick note about the term “Cell phones” – actually we are ALL still using them. The term comes from the honeycomb like “cells” each service area is divided into. The coverage area is divided into cells in which (originally 1, now perhaps more) a tower was placed to provide coverage and service.

Of course, as the population of users increased, these cells became more divided and specialized, but like cutting up a pie, no matter how small the slice, it’s still a pie.

Yes and no… the technology has changed – the old “analog” system has obviously been replaced by digital (mostly GSM or CDMA here in the US)…. however, while the tech has changed (the phones, the radio systems in the base stations/towers and the switches). the towers remain (for the most part) and so do (all) the original “cells”… with so many more people using the system (when I started in the NYC market, a great day was 100 new customers!) the “cells”/areas have been split and in many cases multiple towers are in the same cell to handle capacity.

They also directionalized the towers. The original one’s were mostly designed to broadcast in ~360 degrees around the tower. Today they are mostly used to broadcast in 1 direction and there are multiple antennae on a tower pointed in different directions – but that’s another story!

Are Cell Phones Still Cellular?