* A pop quiz on international wireless mobility
We’ve recently touted the virtues of enterprise mobility, in particular mobile e-mail and Web access. Enterprise mobility and converged access isn’t always automatic, so today, our readers get to take a pop quiz about international mobile (wireless) e-mail and Web-access.
When traveling in Europe, which of the following may be a reason your U.S.-issued General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) enabled handset might NOT be able to send and receive e-mail?
A. The handset issued to you in North America may not have the correct frequency range to send and receive GPRS in Europe.
B. Your U.S.-based mobile service provider may not have a data roaming agreement with the European service provider that has locked onto your handset.
C. The country you are in does not have GPRS services.
D. The area you are in within a country does not offer GPRS.
E. You may have exceeded your credit limit for international services established by your service provider.
F. Your service plan may not include international data roaming.
Correct answers: For sure: B, D, and E. Maybe A and F. But probably not C. Today, we’ll expand on answers for A and B, and next time we’ll discuss C through F.
A. Unless you have a handset that is over three-years-old, your U.S.-issued handset probably does support the required frequencies needed to connect to a European service provider’s GPRS network. However, we should point out that that GPRS frequencies used in the U.S. and in Europe are different. In fact, GPRS standards allow connectivity at 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. But most manufacturers have had multi-frequency capabilities for about the past three years.
B. Not all service providers have data roaming agreements with all other service providers. In fact, most service providers have data roaming with only one or two partners in a country. And given that your mobile device may not have “locked on” to the preferred provider, the data connection may not work. Before leaving for a given country, check with your local service provider and get instructions on how to manually switch between providers on your handset.
