[LINK] Moving customers beyond voice

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:35 15/02/00 +1100, Tony Barry wrote:

>...URL: http://www.telstra.com.au/newsroom/release.cfm?ReleaseID=4261
>SNIPPET: Telstra today announced it was conducting successful trials of its
>Digital GSM General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) ...

GPRS is designed to supply a packet data connection via the GSM
infrastructure. It can in theory supply a higher data rate (up to 172.2
kbps) than current GSM data connections (9.6kbps). However, will Telstra
charge a reasonable tariff for GPRS, or will it be priced to not compete
with other services?

While the Telstra media release associates GPRS with WAP, there really isn't
much relationship between the two. With GPRS you might as well use real
Internet protocols and not bother with the cut down WAP versions.

A West Australian company, Wavenet International, are about to do an IPO:
http://www.wavenet.com.au

Their Packet radio data products would compete with some GPRS services for
vehicle location updates, alarm notifications, data base FTPOS transactions
and e-mail. Their system is low speed (9.6 or 19.2 kbps) but needs less
infrastructure than a mobile phone network. Telstra has a network of this
sort called "Mobiledata", which they didn't mention in the GPRS announcement.

See:

* An Overview of GPRS, GSM Association, February 01, 2000:
http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/gprs.html
* Slide show on GPRS by Rajarshi Gupta, Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer  Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, 2/24/98:
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/~guptar/wireless/GPRS/index.htm

Tom Worthington FACS     tom.worthington@tomw.net.au  Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd              A.C.N. 088 714 309
http://www.tomw.net.au                  PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617
Visiting Fellow, Computer Science,  Australian National University
Publications Director & Past President,  Australian Computer Society
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