Yearning for an iPhone?
Mesmerized by those ads that promise to have your iPhone find romantic recipes for your supper by the time you get home or identify the various bugs crawling around in your dainties drawer?
Well, don’t shell out $199 for the two-year contract for the fancy new, high speed 3GS or even $99 for the year-old 8GB 3G iPhone.
First, ask yourself, why do I want the iPhone, and, if it is for the applications and not just for calling, ask: do I travel north of a line drawn between Brunswick and Lewiston?
If you do, you will fall into the AT&T 3G/Edge black hole.
You need to know that the iPhone is two different things.
1) A phone.
2) A computer that can use a high speed network by AT&T called 3G or 3rd Generation.
Apple only makes the iPhone. It is only as good as the network (AT&T) it is on, and while the fast 3G iPhone was introduced (and sold in Maine) last July, the AT&T 3G network to go with it did not come into southern Maine until the middle of November.
Until then, Mainers who were paying for the 3G data plan like everyone else in the US were only getting AT&T’s much slower EDGE network.
IMHO, kind of like paying for DSL and getting dialup. No refund however.
EVEN NOW, AT&T dealers have absolutely no idea when 3G data service will be extended north of Brunswick/Lewiston.
Should you doubt me, do not, repeat, do not take a sales person’s word that it will be by a certain date; ask the AT&T or Apple store manager.
There is absolutely nothing in writing as of the date of this blog as to the time that the fast 3G data network will be extended north.
So, if you stay south of that line, and if that is where you do your bird watching/identifying (a fine app I have found) or if you do your restaurant searching (another bunch of fine apps), you will be hunky dory.
North of that line you will be on the AT&T Edge technology, or on no service at all.
Should you wish to check service north of that line, go to the AT&T coverage map.
Once there select “Data” at top of map to turn the map blue; enter Maine as State; click “view map.”
The resulting map of Maine should be remain blue; the darkest blue around Portland is the 3G network; the egg shell blue is the Edge network, and the hatched blue are Partner networks which pass some data.
Use the elevator to zoom in.
Notice that the Edge service in most cases simply hugs the I-95 corridor.
For example, with Edge you can use (slowly) some of your apps in Oakland but not in Belgrade; in Newport but not in Corina; in Bar Harbor; Southwest and Northeast Harbor but nearly nowhere else on Mount Desert Island.
Oh, and then there is the matter of the dropped calls with the 3G iPhone; but that is the subject for another blog.
Peter B. Hayward
Social Justice – We need to strive to change what we cannot accept for our all fellow human beings. We do not have the option of silence.
Copyright © 2009 Peter B. Hayward. All Rights Reserved
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