'Flat Rate' GPRS in the states? Why not here O?

[Guest TooMuch2AM]

Taken from this article on the P800:

http://212.100.234.54/content/5/29455.html

"The real utility of the device is as an always-on connected Net terminal. In the US, all SIMs are GPRS-enabled on the AT&T Wireless network. And the pricing plans are flat rate in all but name. (I pay something like 6 cents for every Megabyte over the set monthly limit). You really, really do want a P800 with the GPRS SIM. It's a great 2G phone of course, but to get the full value, you want packet data."

6 cents per meg? are you listening orange???

M

[Guest Yousaf]

you can get flat rate GPRS but only for WAP at the moment (orange access pack)

10Mb per month for £4 and if u register before march theres three months free

however if you are a business custemer i think theres full blown flast rate GPRS but its a bit pricey @ £30-£40 per month :shock:

[Guest ajb3000]

and I thought Europe were supposed to be ahead of the USA in terms of mobile phones.

[Guest TooMuch2AM]

What orange are trying to do is recoup the cost of the 3G licenses as soon as possible, and the obvious source of income for this? GPRS of course!

What they fail to see is the potential for the widescale adoption of GPRS for communication and to a greater extent; entertainment.

Right now, Orange are pricing a lot of potential GPRS customers out of the market. Imagine if all those teenagers sending 50 texts a day were connected up on MSN Messenger? That's a HUGE user base...

... but your average 12-18 year old can't afford £40 a month for flat rate GPRS!

M

[Guest fraser]

TooMuch2AM, you just answered the question yourself!

The mobile tecos don't want people using GPRS much on the current networks. That's less potential 3G customers when the time comes.

They also would not want them using MSN Messenger. They make a fortune out of shifting minute packets of data in the form of SMS. Think about it, an SMS is what, about 1 kbyte of data, charged at roughly 10p. Then think how much you can get out of the same data transfers on GPRS.

SMS makes the telcos a fortune for providing next to nothing. They love it! Any move to replace that with MSN Messenger is not in their favor, other than attracting new customers.

[Guest revolution.cx]

AFAIK ATT does not offer flat rate data, nor does any other GSM/GPRS provider in the US. It appears that only Sprint has flat rate data for $10 month on their high speed network - but they are CDMA only.