Accessing "T-Zones" via CSD?

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Carl. - 18 Aug 2003 06:25 GMT

Problems with t-zones lately. Just now when it failed to connect, it said
"dialing ***" (never did that before) and finally connected. The t300 has a
small telephone icon in the upper left corner to indicate an active call,
which was on. When I pressed and held the END key to end the data session
as usual, it briefly saw a call timer counting.

Do they charge me money when I used CSD, or is it using minutes? I assume
it is using minutes, but I don't have the CSD option added. The t300 has an
option to select "GSM" (as opposed to GPRS) for data permanently, and if
that works more reliably I would rather just use CSD all the time.

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Doug - 18 Aug 2003 07:36 GMT

>Problems with t-zones lately. Just now when it failed to connect, it said
>"dialing ***" (never did that before) and finally connected. The t300 has a
>small telephone icon in the upper left corner to indicate an active call,
>which was on.

That means it was indeed CSD.

>Do they charge me money when I used CSD, or is it using minutes?

Minutes.

>option to select "GSM" (as opposed to GPRS) for data permanently, and if
>that works more reliably I would rather just use CSD all the time.

GPRS is around 40k speed, depending on your phone and the network
conditions. Use is measured in data quantity. It's independent of
your voice service, so you can receive a call. CSD is 9.6k speed,
ties up the line for voice (no call waiting for me in CA anyway), and
takes gobs of time to connect to sites usually. CSD ends up being
free if you use it wisely, while GPRS costs at least 2.99/mo.

Doug

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MS - 28 Aug 2003 15:29 GMT

> GPRS is around 40k speed, depending on your phone and the network
> conditions. Use is measured in data quantity. It's independent of
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> Doug

Well, with my phone (and I think many) I don't see that there's a way to
choose to connect via CSD rather than GPRS. When I connect with the phone
(usually just to read e-mail, sometimes to use the search tools, yellow
pages, etc., it always connects via GPRS. I have the $2.99 1 MB plan, and
never come close to that allocation. (My phone (Motorola v60) has a black
and white screen, doesn't have graphic capability. A phone that downloads a
lot of color graphics, etc., might use a lot more. I don't find $2.99 per
month much extra to pay, especially since it also gives me 300 extra SMS per
month, which is useful to me, as I have the phone send me an SMS and beep
every time I receive an e-mail at my regular e-mail address, and that
certainly goes well over the 50 per month allotted otherwise.

When I connect with my laptop or PDA however, I dial up my regular ISP from
it, using the TM phone as a modem, that is CSD, and only comes from my
minutes, unlimited on weekends, one thousand monthly on weekdays, never came
close to using that up either.

So the $2.99 plan works fine for me. Perhaps if the GPRS were much better,
much faster, very reliable, it would be worth it to me to pay the $19.95
extra for unlimited GPRS usage, and connect with my laptop that way. But
since the GPRS really doesn't seem that much better than CSD, I'll forego
that for now.

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Doug - 28 Aug 2003 22:25 GMT

>Well, with my phone (and I think many) I don't see that there's a way to
>choose to connect via CSD rather than GPRS. When I connect with the phone

For T-zones yes, that's sadly true. T-Mo phones have locked browser
settings. Unlocking is possible, but a pain, and out of the reach of
the vast majority of users. So GPRS T-zones is it. Thankfully T-Mo
has great, cheap GRPS rates, so no big loss.

Doug

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