Monday, September 17, 2007
16:23 by FoxTwo Circumstances coerced me into signing up for one of those "mobile broadband" plans. Back in the old days, they were known simply as "Data plans", ie for your phones to be able to dial up to a number and connect to the Internet, and be able to check mails and surf the net.
Nowadays, with the advent of WAP and GPRS (and all those new-fangled jargons), the old, slow-poke way of connecting to the Internet are replaced with this new term - "Mobile Broadband".
A few guys in my office had signed up for the M1 "mobile broadband" plan. Having "WiFi" spots in Singapore isn't enough for them it seems. They NEED it on the train, on the bus, everywhere they go (tsk tsk).
Then, things happened, and made me seriously consider doing the same too - ie go to M1 and sign up for the mobile broadband thing. However, I decided to do a little more research first. So, I started looking at Singtel ("Broadband on Mobile") and Starhub ("MaxMobile") for more information. All I needed to do, was to get the notebook connected to the Internet. It doesn't matter how - via WiFi, Bluetooth, whatever.
In general, all offerings from the 3 major telecomm providers are similar - they use the GPRS protocol to connect you to the Internet. Almost everyone knows, using GPRS without a Data Plan will burn a reeeeeaaallllyyyyy deep hole in your pocket.
After reading all the price plans, it seems that since I'm a Singtel subscriber, I may as well sign up with Singtel. Yes, no doubt I won't get a nice plain white featureless USB box to plug into my notebook, but my phone effectively becomes the "white featureless USB box", except now I can connect the notebook to the phone wirelessly via WiFi or Bluetooth if I didn't want wires (incidentally I opted to have wires cos the USB port would charge the phone as I'm using the GPRS to go out to the Internet). Plus, now if I'm out and about and I suddenly need to go to, say, www.streetdirectory.com to pull up a map on the phone, I can! Without worrying about "how much will this cost me" too!
As I said, I opted for Singtel only because their data plans are pretty comparable to M1, and the bundled "free" data is 10GBs compared to M1's 5GB.... I don't think I can ever exceed 10GB a month (nor even 5GB!) doing mobile Internet. I exceed 100GB monthly at home though, on my Starhub cable :)
Now, with this mobile broadband thing on my phone, I don't even need to look for "McDonalds" or "Starbucks" anymore. I can be sitting right smack in the middle of Botanic Gardens, or Mosquito Circle, and it doesn't make a difference - I can still connect to the web.
And, my MSN will still be on.... :)
16:23 by FoxTwo Circumstances coerced me into signing up for one of those "mobile broadband" plans. Back in the old days, they were known simply as "Data plans", ie for your phones to be able to dial up to a number and connect to the Internet, and be able to check mails and surf the net.
Nowadays, with the advent of WAP and GPRS (and all those new-fangled jargons), the old, slow-poke way of connecting to the Internet are replaced with this new term - "Mobile Broadband".
A few guys in my office had signed up for the M1 "mobile broadband" plan. Having "WiFi" spots in Singapore isn't enough for them it seems. They NEED it on the train, on the bus, everywhere they go (tsk tsk).
Then, things happened, and made me seriously consider doing the same too - ie go to M1 and sign up for the mobile broadband thing. However, I decided to do a little more research first. So, I started looking at Singtel ("Broadband on Mobile") and Starhub ("MaxMobile") for more information. All I needed to do, was to get the notebook connected to the Internet. It doesn't matter how - via WiFi, Bluetooth, whatever.
In general, all offerings from the 3 major telecomm providers are similar - they use the GPRS protocol to connect you to the Internet. Almost everyone knows, using GPRS without a Data Plan will burn a reeeeeaaallllyyyyy deep hole in your pocket.
After reading all the price plans, it seems that since I'm a Singtel subscriber, I may as well sign up with Singtel. Yes, no doubt I won't get a nice plain white featureless USB box to plug into my notebook, but my phone effectively becomes the "white featureless USB box", except now I can connect the notebook to the phone wirelessly via WiFi or Bluetooth if I didn't want wires (incidentally I opted to have wires cos the USB port would charge the phone as I'm using the GPRS to go out to the Internet). Plus, now if I'm out and about and I suddenly need to go to, say, www.streetdirectory.com to pull up a map on the phone, I can! Without worrying about "how much will this cost me" too!
As I said, I opted for Singtel only because their data plans are pretty comparable to M1, and the bundled "free" data is 10GBs compared to M1's 5GB.... I don't think I can ever exceed 10GB a month (nor even 5GB!) doing mobile Internet. I exceed 100GB monthly at home though, on my Starhub cable :)
Now, with this mobile broadband thing on my phone, I don't even need to look for "McDonalds" or "Starbucks" anymore. I can be sitting right smack in the middle of Botanic Gardens, or Mosquito Circle, and it doesn't make a difference - I can still connect to the web.
And, my MSN will still be on.... :)
Tags:
Labels: internet, m1, mobile, phone, singtel, starhub
