If I hear someone say EVDO again, I'm going to scream. I don't know any other country in the world which uses this 2.5g mobile data connetion? Except maybe Canada? Oh and Latin America? don't think so, but maybe someone could confirm this. I'm very sure its not used anywhere else including Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Eastern Asia or the Asia Pacific area. it seems to have been made by American mobile carrier to allow them to offer mobile internet type solutions without paying the stupid prices of 3G licences. Ok, Fair enough but now theres a split between the smartphones coming out (IMHO).
Theres a whole range which support GPRS, EDGE and UMTS (3G) which all seem to work together nicely. You can even go from one country to another with these phones and it works. Believe it or not I was able to get GPRS out of my SPV E200 when I last went to the midwest of America in 2004 thanks to Tmobile and AT&T. Then you got the rouge phones which only support EVDO. This would be fine but the rouge ones tend to be the Microsoft PocketPC or Windows Mobile 2005 devices. The type of device I've been looking forward to having one day soon. Thanks EVDO carriers for this split. Thank you very much. I can't really blame Microsoft because America is a bigger market when it comes to Mobile Data it would seem. I'm not only pointing the finger at American Carriers like Cingular but also much closer to home like my own which is Orange. If Orange would provide a more American like data tariff of 20 pounds for 100meg of Mobile data a month we may start to see more mobile data use and that would in turn attract Microsoft and others.
It must be killing Orange and other mobile operators over here that they paid such stupid prices for 3G and its actually better and quicker technology that EVDO but the customers are not using it much. They quote huge take ups of 3G phones but how many of those people actually regularly use 3G and how much data do they transfer? I bet the percentage of data per person is very low. And you can't be suprised when most operators are charging about 1 pound per meg if you don't buy in advance with a bundle. (This post could/should simply be about this really.) I do care that I can't get a 3G phone which runs Windows mobile 2005 in a smaller size than my ipaq. But also mobile data costs in the UK and Europe is stupidly priced and I would have thought in 2006 we would be moving away from these crazy prices. I mean can you blame me for waiting for a phone which supports Wifi? Roll on the Nokia N80 soon please Nokia.
