Text 61085, 70 rader
Skriven 2010-06-04 11:04:15 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.0)
  Kommentar till text 61078 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: AT&T new data plans
===========================
 ml> did they retro-actively terminate everyone who was on that plan 
 ml> when they terminated it or are those folk still on that plan and 
 ml> must keep it paid up to date to remain on it?

 AZ> People who were already signed onto the US$30 unlimited plan remain
 AZ> on it (if they wish)... though if there intention was to cancel it
 AZ> when not used and activate it when needed (travelling, etc), it's
 AZ> not clear whether they can re-activate to the unlimited plan - I
 AZ> suspect not.

yeah... that's their gotcha...

[trim]

 ml> yeah, our old phones were 10 years old :) they worked perfectly fine for
 ml> what a phone is used for... telephone calls... with a dozen machines at
 ml> home, why would we want internet on our phones?? :rolleyes: :lol: the
 ml> main reason we needed new phones was because the plastic/rubber stuff
 ml> used to make the buttons disintegrated due to the oils and sweat from
 ml> our hands...

 AZ> A decade ago, mobile phones were analog devices; about that time,
 AZ> the providers switched to several different digital networks - this

yep... my first cell phone was with bellsouth... they spun it off to become
cingular... we were using GSM with the SIM cards... digital and analogue but i
only ever saw analogue when i was on the hiway roaming... 

 AZ> saved them bandwidth per phone (and allowed them to market
 AZ> additional services, like data). For a number of years, they
 AZ> continued to offer both digital and analog networks - but they
 AZ> wanted to phase out the analog networks as soon as the customer
 AZ> base allowed. I suspect that's what you bumped into.

actually, not in this case... when we went with sprint for our cell service, a
few years after i stopped using BS/Cingular, sprint was all digital but the
T1000 phones still had digital and analogue capabilities, IIRC... texting was
just barely getting started and the only "web access" was black and white (no
color screen) and very low resolution... nothing at all like today's stuff...

 AZ> But why did you pay - for years - for service that you weren't
 AZ> using? 

but we were using the service... all the time... that's why the phone's buttons
deteriorated so badly... we just never tried to update our plan because what we
had was more than enough for our needs... at $35US a month per phone, it was
also _all_ we were going to pay for phone service... anything more is a rip and
texting without an unlimited plan is definitely a rip... even with unlimited
texting, it is still a rip... especially when you look at how it is done and
realize that you're paying upwards of 5x, 10x or more to send something via
text than you would if you just said it via voice...

HINT: text travels on the "back" or "control" channel... that's the channel
that the telcos have to have set up and in place for the phone to communicate
with the telco... this "back" channel is what let's the telco know that your
phone is turned on and it is what carries the comms back and forth that tell
you when you have a message waiting, incoming call, ect... since they already
have this channel in place for basic ops, how can they charge 5 cents per text
(one standard rate for non-unlimited texting) for something they have to
already have in place?? even moreso when you consider that you can vocally say
the same thing, likely faster than you can type it, for less than 1/4th of a
cent...

something to think about... fer sure... but i don't think the "kids" of today
will... nor to i believe that they'll understand the actual details of the
what's and whyfores... but oh well...

)\/(ark

 * Origin:  (1:3634/12)