|
How Reliable are Cell Phones?
By S. Housley
Cellular phones and pagers
are part of the "now" generation,
instant contact, anywhere at any time.
People are looking
for convenience, comfort and security. The question is
how
instantaneous and reliable is the contact?
Talking with someone is
the main use for a cell phone, yet due to poor reception how often do calls
not go through, or important calls "dropped" due to flaky coverage? Let us
not forget, that in a time of tragedy, lines were congested and the
resounding "all circuits busy" messages were heard from coast to coast. There
is certainly room for improvement if you want to reach out and touch
someone.
The alternative to voice communication is traditional
text
messaging, enjoyed by the young as SMS, a 'hip' communication method,
and the older as the tried and true
paging, a trustworthy means of
communication. A carrier
receives pages or text messages via a traditional
dial up
modem or Internet connection to their terminal, and
then
broadcasts the messages over their network to the appropriate
wireless device. How instant is sending a text message? The answer might
surprise you...it depends.
Traditional means of sending text messages is
surprisingly
reliable and fast. However, many cellular carriers,
wishing to merge technologies while keeping costs down, have opted to
utilize email technology to send text messages. Why not, an email is nothing
more than a text message, using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). On
the surface this sounds like a great idea, nearly everyone has email
access, and the use of the Internet streamlines the sending
of messages.
What is often overlooked, is the fact that email was
not
designed to be time sensitive. There can be significant delays and an
instantaneous receipt can be lost when sending email to a pager or cell
phone. Text messages sent via the email protocol SMTP could take a more
scenic delivery route. While in many cases, receiving messages in a timely
fashion is not critical; some industries require and benefit from the
receipt of urgent messages. It is therefore important to realize and make a
distinction between the protocols that are designed for instantaneous
communication and those that are not.
If sending messages immediately
to a cell phone or pager is
required, more reliable protocols are available.
When sending text messages, via a modem, the Telocator Alphanumeric
Protocol (TAP) is extremely dependable, albeit slower due to the modem
dialing. If sending messages with a high-speed Internet connection use the
newer time sensitive Internet protocols: Simple Network Paging Protocol
(SNPP) and Wireless Communication Transfer Protocol (WCTP). If
your
carrier supports these protocols they are the better options
for
sending important messages.
If carriers understand the "now" generation
is about speed
and reliability, customer satisfaction will improve.
Text
messaging is a reliable and useful communication method,
especially
since voice is not always convenient or possible.
With public awareness and
urging, carriers will increase their offerings of text messaging protocols.
Carriers should offer email or SMTP, but they must also support
time sensitive protocols, regardless, of whether the protocols are older
such as TAP or newer such as WCTP.
Resources -
Carriers supporting
SNPP - http://www.notepage.net/snpp.htm
Carriers
supporting WCTP - http://www.notepage.net/wctp.htm
About
the Author -
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc.
http://www.notepage.net a company
specializing in
alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging
software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
, and http://www.small-business-software.net
|
