> This doesn't look anything like i-mode because it's, well, not i-mode. :-)
That's right, Curt. It's relevant only because there is a packet-based
technology in place for 53m US customers.
> This is their 3G data service, and would correspond to the FOMA
[...]
> It's not designed at all for use by phones, but rather by computers,
That's correct (hence not very similar to FOMA, sadly).
> so it's no surprise that it's connection based
It is surprising that they're billing per minute. Verizon's aimed this at
enterprises, but they're using 1G consumer-style per-minute billing. This
isn't competitive with other (GPRS) wireless data networks are billing
per-packet, as my friend Rolf recently pointed out. However, with their much
larger coverage, they may get customers who will swallow this billing model
simply because it's the only high-speed wireless network they can find.
As a consumer app developer, I'm not too concerned about their billing for
this service. I'm just glad the US's largest carrier has fast, packet-based
data coverage on 20% of their network, and looking forward to further
announcements, such as versatile billing (per-packet, billing-on-behalf, etc),
more coverage, and over-the-air app downloads.
-Josh
Received on Wed Jan 30 21:04:33 2002