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Wireless access for PDAs

 
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Hello all,
As you may know I live in Australia, where the dominant wireless technologies are quickly becoming GPRS for wide area roaming, and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) for intra-building roaming. There are wireless ISPs using Wi-Fi about the place, but they don't appear to be becoming mainstream yet. So, to me, the perfect PDA has Wi-Fi and GPRS, with the ability to roam seamlessly between the two.
If I read the US situation correctly though, GPRS appears to be not so common, but instead wide area Wi-Fi seems to be more common. Is that the case? And for those of you also not living in the US, what are the dominant wireless technologies in your country?
Regards,
Daryl.
 
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Well, where I live (Baltimore, MD, USA), there are very few hotspots still. I can find a few - there's a brewpub chain (DuClaws) that seems to have open nodes, and most Starbucks are hooked up to T-Mobile's grid - but it's uncommon.
It's more a matter of customer demand here - when my girlfriend and I go out, she's more than content to use the WAP browser on her phone and look things up through simple-dialup, which is far more prevelant. While she likes my wi-fi PDA, she doesn't know she'd want to haul around something that size (her phone is tiny). Most folks don't want to pay the exhorbitant fees for commercial hotspots, and are content to use very basic features through their wireless companies.
The Baltimore (City) Police, actually, are in the midst of doing a GPRS/Wi-Fi network for their squad cars to allow better access to information from the cars. (I think it's GPRS, at least. They're being rather secretive.)
 
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I live in Finland and the dominant techs are GPRS and WLAN. Practically all new phones being sold around here support GPRS and the corporate world is into WLAN (personal WLAN networks are still very rare).
 
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what are the dominant wireless technologies in your country?
I live in Hong Kong,I think Hong Kong is not country
yes,Hong Kong contains many service providers that provide wireless service.
The speed of the transfer rite is dependent on the service provider(more $$ higher speed)
Many Euro companies,US companies and Asia companies develop a market in Hong Kong to sell the latest products.(May be except for Japan,because latest products in Japan may not export to oversea)
Ar...
My mobile phone support that service but I do not try the wireless web service,because it needs $$.(I am a poor)
 
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I'm in Canada, and from what I am aware of, we've only recently begun having options for our wireless devices.
We have 4 major wireless providers, and 2 of the 4 provide GSM/GPRS service, while the others are on CDMA/TDMA.
As for speed, I'm not too sure myself, although I know that the rates are NOT attractive at all. I guess with it being a new technology available here, they have to inflate the prices (especially for the early adopters).
Myself, I've only recently transferred over to a GSM plan (just over a year), and have not really explored the options available to me (again, they're just not feasible).
I've been told that there are certain hotspots available through the city (in some StarBucks and other cafe's), but my PDA doesn't support WiFi (iPAQ 1910)... So I haven't had the chance to experiment with it.
It's still fairly new here... I am looking to upgrade my phone, and hopefully will be able to play around with some of the options available to me. For starters, I'm going to need a phone that supports MIDP!
Any Canadians on the board? If so, what J2ME-enabled phone(s) would you recommend?
 
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