Fido and GPRS Goodness...Ruff Ruff!

[Jason Dunn]

I've been meaning to write up my experiences using GPRS with <a href="http://www.fido.ca">Fido</a> for a while, but I just never quite got around to it. It's a slow night here as I procrastinate on a review, so I figured this would be a good time to talk about it.<br /><br />Late last year, the fine folks at <a href="http://www.fido.ca">Fido/Microcell Communications</a> hooked me up with a voice &amp; data account to take for a spin. I had contacted them because I heard about their <a href="http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/bizpackages/datapackages.shtml#package1">awesome GPRS flat-rate plan</a> that seemed to be light years beyond what my friends in the US were paying. $50 CND is about $35 US, and for that fee I could get unlimited data. Flat-rate, unlimited plans are really what will drive wireless use - when you're measuring your KB consumption on a daily basis, you're more worried about keeping to the absolute essentials rather than exploring new uses for wireless data.<!><br /><br />I had never used a GSM phone before, so when I started using the XDA as my phone and data device, it was an interesting departure from my CDMA phone. Believe it or not, I had never really gone wireless before Fido came calling! :oops: I know, I know, positively shameful. Telus was so incredibly frustrating - the extent of my "wireless abilities" while using my CDMA phone was browsing their feeble WAP portal (where I could only get restaurant listings for cities other than the one I was in), and receiving SMS messages...but I couldn't send them. CDMA phones were at a dead-end for a long time - while everyone was raving about GPRS data services, SMS, funky ring-tones, and all these other cool things, I was still asking when Telus would offer their first Bluetooth phone. You'd think I was asking for a phone made of solid gold the way they'd look at me!<br /><br /><b><span>My Kingdom for a Phone!</span></b><br />When my XDA broke, I was quite traumatised, but due to the generosity of a kind Thoughts reader, I was hooked up with a T68i phone in fairly short order (this is after ordering a T68m off eBay that I ended up not being able to use), and once I connected a <a href="http://www.socketcom.com">Socket Bluetooth card</a>, I was laughing! That was truly my first positive Bluetooth experience - the Socket implementation and instructions are amazingly simple, and I was up and running in a few minutes. At first I was frustrated with the slowness of GPRS - whoever dubbed it "high speed wireless" should be flogged. <br /><br />I've been on broadband for eight years now, so it was a painful adjustment to GPRS speeds where, if you're very lucky, you'll get a 6 KB/s connection. After some adjustments in my approach, however, I'm quite happy with it now. GPRS speeds are great for checking email, you just have to train yourself to hit "connect" and then purposefully distract yourself with something else on the Pocket PC while it downloads the email. Web browsing is passable as long as they're mobile sites - full-blown sites are slow to download, but even slower to navigate (a problem compounded by the sluggish Pocket Internet Explorer). And, yes, this means that I share your pain of not having mobile forums here. :roll:<br /><br /><b><span>Familiarity Breeds Contempt?</span></b><br />It's funny, I had never truly understood the limitations in Pocket Inbox until I started using it daily, and within a few weeks the nice people at Microsoft were getting email messages from me where I frequently asked the question "Why the heck does it do THAT?". I look forward to the evolution of <a href="http://www.webis.com">@mail</a>, because the Pocket Inbox client we have now is a little too anemic for my tastes. I also keep wishing for enhancements for Pocket Internet Explorer - not being able to do a VIEW SOURCE on a page just kills me...I was out with a friend who was complaining that his Web site graphics weren't loading, and without being able to view the page source I wasn't able to diagnose the problems until I got home to my "real" computer. Instant broken mobile scenario, but I'd have a hard time convincing someone at Microsoft that "view source" is a much needed addition when they don't even allow image saving or multiple windows. But I digress...<br /><br /><b><span>Fido Gets a Thumbs Up! :way to go:</span></b><br />I've been really happy with Fido's service level, so much so that I cancelled my Telus cell number that I've had for five years (I needed to get those business cards reprinted anyway after moving). I've found that inside the city I always have signal strength, and it's only very rarely that I run into an issue of not having GPRS coverage, and I've found that by moving a few feet in either direction I can get service. Most days the service connects at around 25 to 35 Kbps (measured using <a href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com">GPRS Monitor</a>), but quite often I see a full 50 Kbps connection.<br /><br />When I was with Telus I was always worried about getting a roaming signal, and so far my trips to the US while on Fido have been uneventful - even when it comes to data roaming! I'm interested to see how well things will work when I travel to Paris and St. Petersburg next week. Fido boasts service roaming agreements in 120 countries, so it should be hiccup-free. I'll let you know! All in all, I feel Fido offers excellent value, and with their flat-rate data plan, if you're a heavy data user, you just might want to <a href="http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/bizpackages/datapackages.shtml#package1">check out their offering</a>.

[Paragon]

I've been using Fido as well. I have actually given Rogers, and Fido both a very good spin. Fido's $50.00 CAD a month for unlimited use is a very good deal. It started out being offered for a limited time (12 months) but that limited time seems to have disappeared. Rogers have the same deal for six months. After six months Rogers do NOT continue with that offer. They flip you to $30.00 CAD for 2MB.

Coverage....Fido is very solid in metro areas, but if you get more that a few short miles out of a city or off a major highway you will not get coverage. Rogers coverage is much, much wider. There are some holes in their coverage though. It can be a bit "swiss cheese"

Dave

[Jason Dunn]

Coverage....Fido is very solid in metro areas, but if you get more that a few short miles out of a city or off a major highway you will not get coverage. Rogers coverage is much, much wider. There are some holes in their coverage though. It can be a bit "swiss cheese"

True. I very rarely leave the metro area though, so I've only ran into this issue once when I was out in some small Alberta town, and I didn't expect my cell phone to work anyway. :lol: Still, more coverage would be nice, that's for sure!

[Hank Scorpio]

Hey Jason in your post you said you "if you're very lucky, you'll get a 6 KB/s connection" but then you say "Most days the service connects at around 25 to 35 Kbps (measured using GPRS Monitor), but quite often I see a full 50 Kbps connection. " I think GPRS is not what they sorta make it out to be, it's never been "always on" and I turn of the graphics in PIE just to give me the illusion of speed. Maybe I'll get GPRS monitor and see whay my speed is, cause it sure doesn't feel like 50 kbps.

[Paragon]

It would be nice to see a bit wider coverage from Fido, but I doubt we will see it very soon. They need some financing. The two providers have taken very different approaches to their coverage. Fido gives very solid coverage in populated areas, whereas Rogers has a very wide coverage area but it is a bit flakey. There are very good reasons for this difference in approaches. Rogers built their GSM/GPRS system on their existing TDMA towers. TDMA apparently has a stronger signal so the towers can be a bit further apart. So, now that they have switched to GSM, the signal doesn't always make it to the next tower, giving it the swiss cheese effect I mentioned. Fido have built their system form the beginning as a GSM network so they don't have the holes in the coverage.

What would be very cool is to see BellMobility, or Telus pickup one of the new 1x devices from Samsung, or Hitachi!!

Dave

[GregWard]

Be careful when you're using data services when you're in Europe. If you're used to unlimited usage you could get a very nasty surprise when you see your roaming data bill!!!!

[Jason Dunn]

Hey Jason in your post you said you "if you're very lucky, you'll get a 6 KB/s connection" but then you say "Most days the service connects at around 25 to 35 Kbps (measured using GPRS Monitor), but quite often I see a full 50 Kbps connection. "

Yup. Notice the Kb and KB - big "B" means BYTES, small "b" means bits. Take 50 Kbps and divide it by eight, and you'll get the measurement in kiloBYTES. That 1.5 Mbps high-speed DSL like? It's really only 187.5 KB/s. It's all marketing hype...

Regarding GPRS being "always on", the problem is really with the Pocket PC OS - when you make a GPRS connection it SHOULD always stay connected, but the Pocket PC 2002 OS is stupid in that it kills connections when it goes into suspend mode.

[Ben]

A bit of a side note but be careful you know what your going to be paying for GPRS when roaming - I'm travelling to Hong Kong quite soon and my Service Provider (Orange UK) have quoted on their website £25 a meg for GPRS when roaming in Hong Kong (thats about $40 USD a meg!!!).

[midtoad]

I've been using Fido GPRS with a Palm Tungsten and an Ericsson R520 (my old Compaq Aero doesn't have Bluetooth - hmm, maybe I could connect with IR?). I've been satisfied with the speed for e-mail connection.

Now I no longer have to choose between going to my girlfriend's house (which has NO internet) or going home to check my mail. I can do it wirelessly. that makes me happy.

I've avoided doing much web browsing because at $0.03/kb, the costs can add up quickly. I know I would use the service more if I had the $50/month unlimited plan (and it IS a good deal), but I'm not sure I will consistently spend more than $50/mo. on the per-use plan.

BTW, I sent an e-mail to Rogers asking them about their data plans and they never responded. That was over 10 days ago. Sure doesn't say much for their customer service or their interest in wireless data! I've also heard that they charge you airtime if you call their 1-800 tech support line to resolve wireless data issues. With Fido, all calls to tech support (via *611) are airtime-free.

[rubberdemon]

I just signed on with Fido's $50 unlimited plan this week on a very reasonably priced XDA I bought from the States - I figured I'd see how much I used it and then decide whether I might want the cheaper $25 2MB plan. Well, 6MB in 3 days later, I know that I'll be sticking to the $50 plan.

Just like Jason I am also with Telus, but on a contract, so I'll be a two phone guy for a while. I'm still hoping they might bring out the Samsung or Hitachi PPCPE, since I like their coverage, but given that Telus's data plan pricing sucks ($100 for 'unlimited' that is capped at 100MB), and they seem to be very conservative about bringing on new phones - they just launched the Thera, for Pete's sake.

The XDA is fabulous, by the way. I'm really pleased with the feel of it, the phone ability and the overall coolness of being able to check email, websites, have IM conversations, FTP files to a server, etc. from wherever I am. It is truly liberating.

[Birdman]

O.k., I will weigh in. I have been on Telus for the past 5 years and for the past year I have been using my ipaq connected to my Telus phone with a cel phone cable to grab email and do some lite surfing. Speeds were, of course, slow, but fine for my purposes.

After much debate and hand wringing I took the plunge and bought an XDA from someone in the states. In terms of phone and PDA integration, I am very happy. It is a great solid little unit (although at first, the smaller screen size did take some getting used to).

I debated long and hard between Fido and Rogers. I know that Fido has better data operations but even though I spend 95% of my time in Toronto and both Fido and Rogers have fine coverage, I know that the few times a year I am either up in Collingwood or on the highway somewhere and my Fido has no coverage I will be pissed. So I went with Rogers. Voice coverage has been fine, data coverage has been abysmal. Sometimes it connects right away, other times it takes a long time. Text pages like Mobile CNN and Canada.com come in fine but anything with graphics usually causes it to disconnect. I have never seen speeds higher than 5 kbs.

I have spent lots of time on the phone with customer service and all they say is that it is a non-supported device and from their end, the connections look fine.

I am also having problems getting my work email because since I can't go through the RAS through dial-up, I need to VPN in over the Rogers GPRS connection and while the PPC has a VPN client, at work we are using IntelNetStructure VPN (or Citrix) and I need a "certificate" client on my PPC. So far, no luck.

I have been trying Rogers Mobile Desktop which, when my unit connects, works very well, but it requires my desktop computer to be logged in. Again, less than perfect. There must be away to VPN in using the XDA. Any suggestions.

Overall though, I use it for voice and PDA much more than for data so I am overall, extremely pleased. It is a great little unit. (Although I am tempted to run to Fido!)

[kettle]

There is just nothing like unlimited data. I pay 10$ a month for unlimited data with Sprint, and it's like an awakening once you realize all the things you can do suddenly. Checking traffic reports, directions, and email are just some of the things I do all the time now. Now I just can't wait for the new Pocket PC CDMA phones to be released.

[Martin I Pettinger]

Hi

These posts make me green with envy. Data calls in the UK from what I can see are very expensive - circa 5 pence per minute - equates to 8 US cents per minute. Meanwhile GPRS is something like £3 per mB. 10$ for unlimited data with Sprint - why of why is the UK so expensive for mobile data. Sigh :?

Martin

[Deralict]

Yet more weighing in on Fido's service...I too bought an XDA from the 'States (brilliant device, except for the random resetting problem that has started since installing the ROM update...another story) that I use with Fido, including the unlimited GPRS plan. I used Rogers for 2 years, and was always disappointed with the service--would rarely get more than 1 bar on the signal metre, and voice quality was awful, with frequently dropped calls. Despite Fido's less national coverage, the signal quality within population centres is 1000% better than Rogers...I reasoned, how often will I really leave a population centre? It turns out that it's hardly ever. With GPRS I usually get about 45kbps, although in monitoring the data flow in GPRS monitor, only about 30% of all data packets actually make it through successfully (that's a limitation of IP protocol I'm told, not Fido). Anyway, Fido rocks, the XDA rocks (except for the aforementioned annoying random reset problem), that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[ChuckyRose]

Well, I've been doing some research lately here in Japan on 3G plans and it looks exciting. The only problem is that no one(at least as far as I can tell) offers an "Unlimited" data plan. So far the best I've found seems to be about 50 Megs for about US$65 with every meg after that being about US$1.20. Seems kinda steep to me. Any people in parts of the world with 3G seen any pricing plans?

[kfluet]

Thanks, Jason, for the Fido info.

I'm in Edmonton and already using Fido for voice and was wondering what their data service was like.

It is pretty obvious that their unlimited plan is the only way to go. I wasn't sure how much data I would use, and if Fido's 2MB for $25 per month would be enough. I downloaded the SPB GPRS Monitor demo, told it to monitor my Bluetooth link (just to my dongle equipped gateway machine) and saw myself use the 2MB in less than 2 days. Ouch!

Jason, about your original T68: I assume you couldn't get it to work because it was locked to another network. Did you not try one of the various unlock services (kind of a moral grey area if you ask me)? Or was it some other reason that stopped it from working with Fido? I ask because I'm bidding on T68's on eBay right now and would hate to waste time on a phone that won't let me connect to Fido for some unforseen reason.

[Hank Scorpio]

I'm sold, I just tried out gprs monitor, and it is a great app! is there a way to buy it through pocket pc thoughts? give you a bonus?

[GregWard]

Any people in parts of the world with 3G seen any pricing plans?

Check out http://www.three.co.uk/explore/howmuch/detail.omp if you're interested. Early days for 3 though - we'll have to see how it pans out.

[vabiro]

I am also having problems getting my work email because since I can't go through the RAS through dial-up, I need to VPN in over the Rogers GPRS connection and while the PPC has a VPN client, at work we are using IntelNetStructure VPN (or Citrix) and I need a "certificate" client on my PPC. So far, no luck.

Again, less than perfect. There must be away to VPN in using the XDA. Any suggestions.

Overall though, I use it for voice and PDA much more than for data so I am overall, extremely pleased. It is a great little unit. (Although I am tempted to run to Fido!)

I thought I'd weigh in with some of my experiences vis-a-vis GPRS, VPN and dial-up service on Rogers and FIDO.

Regarding the use of VPN on your XDA, I believe the VPN client that comes with PPC is only capable of using the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) which is a Microsoft-based standard. Most VPNs are IPSec-based and will require a separate client. The one that leaps to mind is by Movian ( http://www.certicom.com/products/movian_prod.html) It should work with your certificate requirement.

One of the problems with Rogers is that they don't support Circuit-Switched Data (CSD), aka dial-up connections. Fido does for now. GSM and CDMA is different from analogue cellular, because the phone acts as the modem in concert with equipment on the switch. If Rogers didn't implement this switch-side equipment when they turned up GSM service, then CSD will not work.

Fido, on the other hand has had the CSD service up and running for a while, and also supports a number of other neat things like faxing from your PPC.

One thing I would recommend for those thinking about GPRS service is to start with FIDO, and if the coverage doesn't work for you, then switch to Rogers. This is because Fido doesn't have a contract, where as if you start out on Rogers you could find yourself locked into a service that is useless.

On an other note, some of the people here have mentioned the poor perceived speed on GPRS, dispite showing dial-up like speeds. This is because of the TCP/IP latency over any of the 2.5G (1x and GPRS) protocols. If you use FIDO use the compression proxy on FIDO (set the proxy server settings in Pocket IE to rapido.fido.ca and port 8080). This should significantly help the web browsing experience.

Victor

[Birdman]

I agree with everything except contrary to popular belief, if you bring your own unit to Rogers and just purchase a SIM card and a data plan, you do not need to lock into a contract but you can go month to month. (You can actually do this for both voice plans and data plans on Rogers but the better pricing comes with 24 month activations.)

For example, I started off on Rogers with the $50 unltd. data plan and a $30 monthly voice plan. No contract, I could cancel any time. I then noticed a promotion that if I switch to a 24 month activation I would get (i) a much better voice plan for LESS money than I was paying month-month; and (ii) a FREE PHONE. Once I satisfied myself that the XDA was working o.k. on Rogers and that the Desktop Wireless worked actually very well, I committed to a 24 month activation. I then got the Motorola C333 which is a very cool VERY small GSM phone for free.

Now, I take my XDA with me 99% of the time, but for those few times when I need something really small, I pop the SIM out of the XDA and put it in the little Motorola phone. Presto, new phone for no money. It works really well.

(True, the Rogers Wireless Desktop is $5 a month but for easy access to corporate email, it works like a charm. Does Fido have an equivalent?)

[koro]

Would those using Fido's GPRS service be kind enough to offer some advice?

I've just signed up to Fido's service, and their customer service department has been a bit thin on the advice front. :cry: The guy I spoke to said "It's really hard to configure a PocketPC". Now surely that can't be so!

Im trying to access the Internet using my 4150 and Sony Ericsson T68i. I've managed to pair the device, no problem.

The issue is in the GPRS configuration...

What is the correct APN for Fido - is it GPRS.FIDO.CA?
Do you need a dial-up number? And what is the IP gateway?

any help appreciated... :D

[Paragon]

Here are the settings you should need:

APN: internet.fido.ca
username: fido
password: fido

You don't need any dialup or gateway numbers. For a modem select Cellular Line (GPRS)

Dave

[koro]

You don't need any dialup or gateway numbers. For a modem select Cellular Line (GPRS)


Whereabouts do you set this modem type - I can't find it...

[koro]

Aarrrgh :!:

Really tearing my hair out over this one...

The 4150 can't detect any cellular modem - it keeps asking for a number to dial.

Selecting "Bluetooth" from the modem menu returns "No Bluetooth Hardware forund on this device" :evil:

[Paragon]

You have the devices paired so we don't need to worry about that end of it.

Step by step....go to: Start menu/settings/connections/connections/add a new modem connection. Pick a name for it. Choose "Cellular Line (GPRS)" from the dropdown box...next...enter internet.fido.ca in the access point name box....next...Username is fido.....password is fido....finish.

Post if you have any other problems

[koro]

GOT IT :!:

Thanks to Geekzone's guide (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=809), I needed a profile number "*99***X#" in the bluetooth modem dialup number...

Thanks Geekzone! :D

[Paragon]

I'm sorry I somehow had it in my mind that you had that.....my bad!