Technobiography

Telco usiyosero sa Sydney

I tried to observe the telco industry in Sydney while I was there.

Here are a few things I found out or observed during my tech usiyosero escapades:

• Sydney has around 5 major mobile telcos

• Some telcos use GSM, and one (Orange) uses CDMA

• SMS and calls are exchanged seamlessly between GSM and CDMA

• My sister and brother-in-law use Orange cellphones. Their phone calls from Orange to orange are free up to 5 minutes. If you want to continue talking after 5 minutes, you will be charged. Or, you could hang up and make another free 5 minute call.

• I observed that when I make a call using my sister’s cellphone, the timer starts counting when I press the call button (while the called phone is ringing). My brother observed that the called phone’s timer starts only when the phone is answered. At the end of the call, the time on the caller’s phone will be a few seconds more than the time on the called phone. Which time will be used when the bill comes? I don’t know.

• There is the phone icon that appears on the cellphone display when making a call. When I send SMS using my sister’s Samsung handset (with Orange SIM), I observed that the phone icon appears too. I wonder whether it’s just the handset or whether it’s how the CDMA system works. Is SMS transmitted through a “phone call”?

• One of the telcos is called “3”, I believe it’s a subsidiary of Vodaphone. It’s advertising, I noticed, announces that it has 90+% coverage of Australia’s population. I guess they’re at the marketing stage where they need to prove to prospect subscribers that they have a large enough network (similar to the circa 2001 Touch Mobile campaign where Aga and Charlene would go around the country to show that the signal and usage in different parts of the country is going strong).

• The Australian telco “3” is promoting 3G technology that will provide subscribers mobisodes (short mobile phone TV episodes), games, music, e-mail etc.

• I also saw that Vodacom had the broadband wireless service similar to PLDT WeRoam. You plug in a card with a small antenna into your laptop and you get an Internet connection anytime anywhere. (I saw that too in Johannesburg, also by Vodacom).

Hyon lang. Some of the things I observed.

ka edong
techno travels