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September 30, 2004

The Ogo, High Tech Wireless Telegraphy

AT&T Wireless (external link) just introduced the Ogo, no, I don't know what that stands for, a dedicated text mobile. No voice. Still, connectivity, keeping in touch. Meant for kids, young adults, and people on a budget, the OGO provides e-mail, IM, and text messaging. It only works on AT&T's GPRS network, their medium speed data service that's now in most medium to large cities.

Less expensive than the Blackberry or Sidekick, representative competitors, I think the Ogo should do well. It's now $99 after a $30 mail-in rebate. Unlimited message plans start at $17.99 per month. The Ogo sends and receives domestic text messages to and from standard wireless phones. They charge extra for texting from outside the country.

I don't have a unit to play with or test, no company has ever sent me any hardware in nine years of running this site, but the Ogo looks like fun. It does have a USB port so perhaps some ingenious hacker can find a way to hook up a microphone and do VOIP over the Ogo. Then you'd have text and voice. I suspect many kids will keep their voice mobiles and have an Ogo at the same time.

Mobile telephones and films

Q. What Hollywood film first showed a mobile telephone?

A. From Geoff Fors (internal link)

Sabrina in 1954 is the earliest movie I am aware of which features a prop car telephone, but there could be another. Not really in the class of a movie, one of the early Superman serials with George Reeves shows a car telephone in the personal car of Perry White, newspaper editor, and that show pre-dated Sabrina by a couple of years, 1952 I think. The Superman phone was a real one which probably was pulled in from the studio parking lot. The Sabrina phone (two of them side by side, as I recall) were just prop department mock-ups. The Sabrina antenna was another prop department creation which would be more at home at a ham radio convention than on a car phone, but I guess it got the point across. There were a number of low budget early 1950's science fiction films which featured some sort of mobile radio equipment employing a conventional looking handset, but those were not, as far as I can tell, intended to portray a "car telephone."

I think someone is listening

Tom:

i asked you how you know if your phone is tapped and thank you for your reply for the past 8 months there is 2 to 3 clicks when i pick up my phone before i get a dial tone before i changed my number [both unlisted] during certain times of the day and evening i would be having a conversation and then someone would pick up my line then i would hear clicking during the conversation if the conversation wasn't interesting enough they would hang up if not after the conversation was done i would stay on the line and 15 to 30 seconds later the line would hang up sometimes giving me dead air, sometimes giving me a dial tone and at other times a busy signal i could also hang up the phone over and over until i got no dial tone and after 30 seconds to 2 min. the line would pick up hang up then pick up you could then hear a high pitch like a tape recorder running at times i would have no dial tone at all and would have to reset my line i have even started using only corded phones with the same results my phone has gone dead for 24 hours with no explanation from the phone company my voice mails have been erased and when i called into my voice mail i would get a busy signal at times when i change my number trying to fix this i was without a phone for 48 hours and as soon as the number got changed i still had the same problems except i canceled my voice mail one repair man said there was no problem at my phone box at my home or on my pole but a block down i was showing a draw from my line he said he was going to tell sbc there was a security problem this never happened my phone company still showed trouble on my line and ordered another repair the foreman from sbc canceled the order saying there was no problem on their line the supervisor at my company had me plug my corded phone into my box on my house and at first there was no dial tone then there was clicking before a dial tone he sent a repair man out that stated there was no problem at my box or at my pole but there was a conductive problem across the street a block down by some motels on my line he refused to check that pole he then went to the pole that show the draw the first time and moved my wires down to a different set of screws and said i would have no problems i still had problems then i got a phone call from a motel that evening stating it was the wrong number i called the phone company again and they showed problems still and sent another repair man instead i got a call from a cell phone saying they found some crossed wires that everything should be fine it is the same the phone company said i needed an electrician out to check my lines because the tests showed the problem was inside my house even though i ripped out all of my lines and replaced them and had all of my equipment disconnected i had the electrician out and the report was all of my lines were good to go i have lost at least ten to fifteen thousand dollars over my voice mails being erased and i don't know what to do there is a police report that has been filed and i am afraid that there is an sbc person involved with this because the people across the street had sbc over 12 to 24 times within 2 months before all of this started and also last winter my husband caught someone at the motel looking in our window with headphones on and a satellite disk in his hand pointed to our house i don't know what to do i hope you understand all of this.

Dear reader:

Hmm. For good or bad reasons you no longer trust your landline telephone. You need, therefore, to use a pre-paid wireless phone. Change it every two weeks or so. You will have no luck determining if someone is monitoring your landline. If there is a legal law enforcement tap there is no way to detect it. That's because the recording and listening originates through a telephone company switch, with no equipment outside your home to find and no clicks to hear. If it is a wildcat police tap, one without a court order, then perhaps a top-notch private investigator with very good equipment might be able to tell. But don't worry about this, give up the phone, go to anonymous wireless service. A last suggestion: a combination of medicine and talk therapy is often very helpful.

September 28, 2004

Ever seen your house from space? Try Terraserver.com (external link). It's free. Use the "Advanced Find feature on the left hand side to search by address. My house is below. (You figure out which :-)) Terraserver covers only the United States and not all images are this detailed but you should spend some time looking up your favorite part of the country. I use it for hiking and prospecting and snooping. See which neighbor has a pool. Two tips below.

You'll see this compass navigation bar at the site. Click on "Topo Map" and you'll actually switch to "Aerial Photograph." I know, it's not intuitive but this is the place to toggle among your choices. To recap, go to "Advanced Find" first, put in an address, then use the compass to switch between photograph and map.

For GPS fans take a look next at the navigation bar at the top of most pages. When you are looking at a photograph or a topographical map you can select "Info" and your image will have latitude and longitude lines thrown across it. Very neat. Tell your hiking friends about this feature, they will thank you for it.

Click here to go to Terraserver.com (external link)

September 27, 2004

Good Musings from Ken Schmidt (internal link) and Mark van der Hoek (internal link)

Ken: There's been some terrible language lately going into certain wireless ground lease contracts. The carriers are actually trying to get through clauses like these:

1. One carrier's lease now states they may increase the size of the compound and the landowner must consent, such consent not contingent upon monetary gain. By the terms of the lease they could expand to the whole parcel and the landowner could not object.

2. A certain tower company now includes in its lease that it does not pay ground rent until the second carrier comes on the tower. Outrageous. This is a blanket clause for them, not an exception for expensive sites.

3. In the same lease the same carrier now allows the landowner to request a tower and compound move once during the lease at the carrier's expense after the first term has expired. Still trying to figure that one out.

Lastly, about practices. I cannot stand the lease purchase entities (internal link, more on buying cell ground leases) like Wireless Capital Partners and others. The salesmen are getting downright misleading. Satellites will cut your lease short or consolidation means your tower is coming down, and so on. Yet we will be happy to buy your lease and take those same risks.

Mark:

Those land grab clauses are indeed outrageous, I hope you help your clients negotiate out of them. One thing I know well is that upcoming technology and consolidation won't reduce the number of base stations needed, in fact, we'll need thousands more every year.

Satellites replacing terrestrial cellular radio? Liars! One acronym proves it: RTD. Round Trip Delay. Satellite communications stink because of it. Until some laws of physics are repealed it will stay that way. A radio wave has a finite speed, close to the speed of light, and without some earth shaking breakthrough in quantum physics, that finite speed will limit the user friendliness of satellite phones. Yes, they are usable, but no, they aren't as good. The delay is annoying. You can work with it, but it's still annoying. Then there's the capacity problem, the ability to handle many calls with a limited amount of spectrum.

The whole reason cellular became practical is the concept of frequency reuse. We took single, large antennas off of mountain tops and put smaller ones on rooftops and towers. Now we can use frequencies several times across a metropolitan area, instead of only once. Since satellites have such a huge footprint, they don't have that advantage. For this reason, ground based systems will always offer superior capacity. Any new coding or compression developments that allow more capacity on satellite systems will also be available to ground systems, so satellites can't get ahead of the game.

Then there's the matter of battery life. I'm sorry -- it's just always going to take more power to talk to a satellite than it does to talk to a cell site a quarter mile away. Basic physics again. Oh, did I mention you have to almost always be outside to use them? Barring some nationwide political development, I can't see satellite services EVER replacing terrestrial based services. Augmenting, yes, replacing, no.

Consolidating, yes, another reason used to get people to sell their cell site lease. We lose a tower here and there, but not many. And if it's a multi-carrier tower, the probability drops dramatically. You'd have to get all of the carriers to reach the conclusion that they don't need and will never need that site. I think you're more likely to get a cell site shut down by some lawsuit revolving around a zoning issue or nuisance claim. And we know that's not likely once the site is on the air. It can happen, but it's a rare event.

September 26, 2004

Q. Should I negotiate a cell site lease with the carrier on my own? I'd save several hundred dollars if I didn't pay a consultant.

A. You shouldn't handle the lease without competent help, you have no idea what the contract should include or how to deal with them. The carrier's agents handle cell site leases every day, they would love it if you, someone who has never negotiated a wireless lease, had no assistance. So go ahead. But you're not going to save any money, most likely you'll lose.

A five year lease of $1,000 a month is a $60,000 deal. But what if your expert gets $1100 a month? That extra $100 a month with a 3% escalator clause means an additional $1,236 for you in the first year and at the end of five years $6,562. The negotiator's fees pay for themselves many times over. By the way, do you have a spreadsheet program? Click here for a file that explains monthly increases (internal link) in more detail. There's something else.

Asking too much from a carrier can poison the whole deal. They may walk, rather than dealing with you and your overinflated deal. You can't let this happen. And the only way to know what to ask for is to talk with someone who knows. Like Ken Schmidt of SteelinTheAir.com (internal link).

Fair disclosure here: I get a $25 referral fee from Ken for each client he gets from privateline.com. I think I've made about $175 since recommending him. And the reason I recommend him is because he is honest, he's provided much valuable information to this site, and he answers his e-mails. I trust him. I can't promise that his service will pay for itself but even if it doesn't you'll know you have a contract that covers everything it needs to, that you're protected, and that you'll have asked for as much money as you could without killing the deal. Those two points are worth something by themselves.

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