Nik,
> - There ARE antennaes in Tokyo subway stations. I know for a fact that
> Vodafone had 100% coverage for 2G, and nearly that for 3G almost two
years
> ago. I believe that au and DoCoMo also have coverage. Just
> because there are
> all sorts saying 'don't talk on the train' doesn't mean you can't talk
on
> the platform, and in fact it is a very popular thing to do: "Honey, I
will
> be home at 2 am, drunk as a skunk and frisky, so..." Subway tunnels
are a
> different matter. Until the preference for deathly silence of
100sardines,
> uhmm, I mean commuters, packed into a square metre is swapped for the
> annoying sound of human speech, there isn't much to be done. The BS
about
> pacemakers ruins it for people who just want to send e-mails.
Actually,
> mini-cells aren't very expensive, so I am guessing it is just Tokyo
Metro
> trying to squeeze more out of the carriers.
Right. I was talking about the tunnels. It's incredibly annoying to be
surfing the Web but only able to download pages in a station. Then when
you've read the page have to wait until the next station to get the next
page.
I don't think people would talk on the phone in the subway. Take a JR
train, where there is coverage, and everyone is emailing and surfing. No
one, well maybe I see one person a week, talks on the phone. A year or so
ago the Asahi or Nikkei had a story pointing out that no transport operator
could point to a single incident in which a cell phone was implicated in
any sort of problem with a pacemaker.
I think you're spot on about them wanting more money from the carriers but
a bit dissapointing that Toei, which we all pay for through our taxes,
doesn't start doing this!
Martyn
Received on Fri Jul 20 03:03:39 2007