Re: OT: Cellular telephone service

Dylan - I'm a little confused. You're positioning CDMA as a
decade-and-a-half outdated technology (note : CDMA 3G and 3.5G
technology is infact so current and effective that TDMA/GSM carriers
have adopted and adapted it for their own wireless data services) yet
you're recommending Telus - who will have the same CDMA hardware
limitations as Sasktel.

Personally - I'd avoid recommending Telus to anyone who lives in SK
and plans on travelling outside of Saskatoon or Regina - at all.
Telus only leases digital service in the two major centers, so the
rest of the province would be analogue (which is being turned down
over the coming years, but not immediately).

Also - dual-nam CDMA hardware (2x ESN as Dylan had mentioned) is not
as cloneable as Dylan makes it appear. Older analogue (10+ year
outdated hardware) models are, of course, prone to it - but the newer
digital handsets are uniquely keyed (private) between the handset and
the server that provisions anything but voice capabilities. Yes, it's
still possible to clone a phone for voice functionality - but it
wouldn't last 30 seconds before the network itself locked it out (two
identical ESN's showing on the network is a dead give-away).

Long story short - don't let someone rabid distaste for Sasktel as a
Telco discourage you from investigate Sasktel as a wireless provider.
It's not a fair comparison - and you're doing yourself a disservice by
letting Dylan browbeat you into not even comparing it against Rogers
or Telus. Ultimately for casual city-only use, Rogers is likely going
to be the better bet - but still be aware of the other options.

On 9/2/06, Dylan Griffiths <dylang@thock.com> wrote:
> Dylan Griffiths wrote:
> > The trick to getting better Rogers rates is to call up and demand a
> > lower rate (they will ask you to renew for a contract, usually 3 years),
> > to switch over to a promo plan during a promo plan period (every few
> > months they rotate promotions), or get in on a corporate plan (if you
> > work as the U of S, you get a discount; if you work at Starbucks, you
> > get a better discount -- confirmation is usually an employee # they
> > can't easily verify, verbally given).
>
> Note that Telus plans are pretty close to what Rogers plans are, without
> the fancy haggling and mussing around I mentioned above. The trouble is
> that all cellphone companies seem to be interested is getting you on
> their service with fancy deals, but they don't really give a hoot if
> you're on their service (or have been for years).
>
> Don't forget to give Telus a go. Chris at London Drugs on 8th street
> was the nice gentleman who helped my friend get a cellphone plan
> comparable to my haggle-ridden plan, but without any messing around,
> within an hour of walking in the door (although it took over 24 hours to
> work as a phone, compared to my Rogers phone which worked within 30
> minutes [6 years ago]).
>
>
> --
> "Well, there's SPAM, egg, sausage, and SPAM. That's not got MUCH SPAM in it."
>
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Received on Sat Sep 2 06:52:26 2006