2
Two new cellphone services, from Rogers/Fido and Bell Mobility, might not give you much of a break on your monthly data charges, but will certainly make calling a little more flexible.
Phones equipped with Rogers/Fido's new service, called Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), will switch to any handy Wi-Fi network, which can handle data and voice. In other words, the phone can switch from hotspot to hotspot as you meander, and when out of range of any hotspot, the phone will switch automatically — and without interruption — back to Rogers and Fido's GSM network.
Rogers and Fido offer the service to work with just about any wireless router, or with a router specifically dedicated for UMA use. It also works with WiMax, the wireless broadband system designed to extend low-power Wi-Fi networks across greater distances, and is a better voice and high-speed data alternative to Wi-Fi. Of course, setting up a WiMax box in your home or office involves a whole other set of expenses.
UMA is a confusing acronym because it refers to the Wi-Fi 2.4 gigahertz radio frequency, which is an unlicensed band, and is meaningless to end users. The GSM network, however, is licensed (you pay for access). Still, UMA requires your handset to be authenticated by the UMA service.
UMA is the generic name for the technology; Rogers calls its version the Wireless Home Calling Zone. Fido is offering the same service, but calls it UNO.
This is transitional technology, meant to help subscribers migrate from land-line phones to cellphones. Since many people now have Wi-Fi networks at home (you also need a broadband connection), they can use a UMA-enabled cellphone at home without having to worry about the rates they pay for their voice plan over the GSM network. The attractiveness lies in being able to use one phone for the home and for portability, with one phone number.
The cost? UMA is an add-on service, so it needs a separate plan that can be added to your existing cellphone plan. Rogers' UMA service is available for the Nokia 6086 handset, priced at $24.99 on a three-year contract or $169.99 with no contract. It offers unlimited local phone calls for $15 a month or unlimited calls to anywhere in Canada for $20 a month on top of your regular call plan.
Fido's UNO service is available with the Nokia 6301 handset, which sells for $50 with a three-year contract or $300 with no contract and offers local calling for $15 a month and $20 for calls across the country. Fido adds two “couples” plans, for two users, with $25 for local calls and $35 for Canada-wide calls. As well, all these are on top of your voice-call plan.
Rogers and Fido will be adding more UMA-enabled phones in the future.
How Rogers figures UMA to be a cost-cutting feature is difficult to fathom; If you have a phone with Wi-Fi and no UMA, you can still make calls using Skype, which is dirt cheap. I suspect that if you're not guessing your needs correctly, you might end up paying more for the service than you bargained for. How much you'll pay depends heavily on how often you're near a hotspot and how many calls you make. And how this works when you're travelling in the handful of countries where the service has been activated — including France, Italy and the United States — is a deeper mystery. First there are roaming chargers and then there is the matter of how many Wi-Fi spots you can find in a strange land without the phone alerting you.
The seamlessness of the transition between Wi-Fi and GSM is definitely a nice feature, but it has a darker side: You can't tell when you're on one network or the other, unless you're fixed at a certain location (such as home or the office) in Wi-Fi range. So there is no real way to measure your savings. And it still goes against human nature to believe you're saving more when you're actually paying more — all you see is the bill you get at the end of the month.
Although the new Unite service from Research in Motion – and deployed by Bell Mobility – is not designed to save money, it is designed to make it easy to co-ordinate life in a small office or large family.
Essentially, Unite is a software server package that is a scaled-down version of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which large corporations install to run their fleet of BlackBerry smartphones. Unite limits its accounts to five users.
A free download, Unite installs on a desktop PC, effectively making that PC a server for the BlackBerry micro-network. Before getting into details, it's worth warning that the Unite-loaded computer must be up and running, and not in sleep mode or turned off, to keep its members on the network. So if you're in the habit of turning off your computer when not working on it, don't bother with Unite.
It might be a good idea to recycle an old computer dedicated to Unite, which will run on Windows XP SP2 (or Vista) on a processor as old as a Pentium III.
The Unite server's main purpose is for a small office to have mobile access to e-mail, Web browsing, a shared calendar and shared contacts, but it can also be a server for documents and pictures and other desktop content.
The e-mail feature offers more than the standard BlackBerry can offer; it allows up to 10 e-mail accounts per user. The shared contacts call allow co-workers access to the small-office database of contacts, and the shared calendar can co-ordinate family members of workers on a single calendar. All are accessible and modifiable from the handheld. Inexplicably, Unite does not handle tasks or notes for Outlook users.
Users can also download to their handheld any files, such as documents, music or pictures. What immediately comes to mind here is a family that is constantly on the move or an office with real-estate sales representatives. Being able to show clients pictures of other houses without going back to the office or loading them all into the smartphone would be a great benefit to them.
The best part of the Unite Service is that it offers tight security — the home Unite server can enforce password protection for a remote user, and can wirelessly delete all content on a lost or stolen smartphone. Along the same lines, all the content on the BlackBerry network can be backed up wirelessly to the Unite server.
It can also be configured to limit the way BlackBerry users can behave. The Unite operator can restrict individual users from making long-distance calls to certain area codes, or cut off their Internet access. This seems like a wise idea when used by a family with children, but it might make a control-freak boss awfully unpopular with co-workers.
There have been reports that once installed on a BlackBerry, Unite requires radical surgery to remove it — nothing short of a “hard reset,” which involves erasing all the data. The workaround is to back up the entire BlackBerry before resetting it, a good idea to begin with. Other reports say Unite will not install properly on machines pre-loaded with Microsoft's SQL server; the trick is to uninstall SQL — servers don't like to share machines.
One bit of good news is that Unite is not tied to any single carrier; it can be used with any wireless provider, except that the software is available only from Bell. There is no carrier activation as well. It is, however, a little more difficult to configure the e-mail server if your home Internet account is anything other than Sympatico.
On the surface, neither service is designed to save you real money. Perhaps it will even cost you a little more. You have to calculate very carefully whether either of these systems is good for you.
Hey, it's your call.
