Comment Articles

The GPRS conundrum

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 16 Oct 2001 16:05 BST

It is completely stupid of the phone makers to pretend they are producing "all-in-one" devices that are PDAs and phones and Web browsers. It is only marginally less silly for the PDA makers to pretend that they are now making phones.

But that's what they are all doing.

The latest all-in-one device to be announced -- the Handspring Treo -- won't be available this year, which makes it look like it's way behind the RIM Blackberry, or the Trium Mondo or even the Omnisky device.

In fact, none of these devices makes any real sense for you or me to buy, until they all have access to the Internet. And the sad fact is: they don't.

In the case of Handspring's Treo, they admit it. It doesn't include the ability to use general packet radio -- GPRS -- the "always on" technology which, in theory, means that you can access anything on the Web in a couple of seconds.

And this will cost Handspring almost nothing in lost sales, because although Mondo and Blackberry (and dozens and dozens of mobile phones) all have GPRS, you can't use it.

And you won't be able to use it for another year. To quote Simon Rockman, editor of What Mobile?, "The GPRS service is not going to be useable even by early adopters for another six months, and it will be at least a year before it is available as a commercial user service."

I'd have to agree with him. The networks claim they are offering general packet radio - but in fact, they are drawing further and further and further back from their original predictions, and although they keep saying, "it will be available in a month or two", it never is.