I agree with Andrew on this. Being able to send a short message from just a
phone number is great. It's especially useful in countries like Taiwan
where everyone has their cell phone number on their business card. I've
tried a few times in Japan and sometimes you're lucky and hit someone with
the same carrier but more often than not it bounces back. A few years ago
this was possible on 2G phones although I remember you had to pay a few
hundred yen extra per month for "mail plus" or something and send via a
special route. I wonder why the are against SMS?
On the roaming, Korea does indeed have WCDMA now and the network is pretty
well built out in major cities. If you want to be sure of coverage then
rent a CDMA phone at the airport. They have CDMA models that accept
GSM/WCDMA SIM cards so you're on your own number. The handset costs $1/day
to rent.
And while we're complaining about Japanese carriers and South Korea has
come up, when will we see coverage in the subway tunnels in Tokyo? I
suppose it could be resistance from Tokyo Metro and fears about people
talking on the phone on the train but one look at JR trains tells you
people just surf the web and do email when traveling.
Martyn
keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net wrote on 07/19/2007 11:07:35 AM:
> I can send and receive SMS to/from DoCoMo in Japan using a Dopod 838 Pro
(
> http://www.dopodasia.com/Dopod/Singapore/En/Products/PDAPhone/838Pro/
> ) with a DoCoMo SIM. I'm almost 100% sure that I can't send to AU
> and Softbank.
> Although there are a lot of good things about mobile in Japan, I
> really resent the fact they have basically neutered SMS. Being able
> to send a text message to anyone without knowing their mobile email
> address is surprisingly useful. Because it's never been here though,
> no-one misses it.
>
> Andrew
> www.winmojo.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> On Jul 19, 2007, at 10:03, Arnold P. Siboro wrote:
>
> >
> >> - Can the UMTS2100 send/receive SMS across operators in Japan?
> >
> > I guess yes, never tried though. It can send/receive to operators
> > abroad,
> > but not very reliable (sometimes SMS do not arrive).
>
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Received on Thu Jul 19 05:18:32 2007