You probably oftentimes see on TV, one mobile service provider’s ad about dead zones.
I really didn’t pay much attention to dead zones until I was immersed in one. For the last seven days I was basically incommunicado—no internet, no phone lines, no mobile phone signals. You don’t realize how awful it is to be totally disconnected from the outside world. At the same time, there’s this restful feeling of serenity brought about by the absence of all your technology gadgets that most of the time, unbeknownst to you, robs you of your precious time.
The most awful thing about being unable to communicate is when emergency happens and you need immediate help and you’re basically left unaided. The second most awful thing about being unreachable is the feeling of being helplessly unable to vent out your thoughts to your peers and relatives and share some exciting news.
Well, we recently relocated from the west coast to the east and the address where I live now is a total dead zone. Imagine my frustration when I couldn’t make calls even if I have on one hand an iPhone subscribed with AT&T and a Blackberry subscribed to T-Mobile on the other.
Even the most sophisticated phones and the most promising mobile providers in the nation could not be of use where I was at. Both phones show the same thing—No Service.
I was telling myself how useless it was to have subscribed to both services.
I went to RadioShack to look for a high-speed router and happen to bring out my dilemma to one of the store attendants. I was actually thinking of getting a cell phone signal booster antenna. The guy told me that they don’t come cheap. Ballpark figure would be around $400. He suggested that I use Skype phones so I can make calls from computer to computer for free, as if I didn’t know that all along. Actually for those of you who don’t know you can just utilize most internet messaging services like Yahoo messenger to do the same provided your PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers.
He said, what’s the point anyway of using a mobile phone to call from home when you have a regular phone line. True, but the point is, mobility is a sweet little illusion. With cell phones you get this illusion that you have a surgically attached communication device that makes you within reach even when you’re in the deepest corners of this planet and that includes your home.
Well, that’s the bottom line—mobility. It’s always an ego-fattening illusion to think that you are always connected anywhere, anytime.
My point is, mobile phones are just as basic as when you use them outside your home as when you use them indoors, even if you have a regular phone line because there’s a million other things that you want to do with mobile phones that you cannot do with regular phones, thus, it’s a precious thing to have a detectable phone signal in your home.
As of today, I don’t have a landline phone connection yet, but I am less crabby than the last seven days. My stint of being without communication service has ended after some guy installed my internet connection yesterday which changed a lot of things.
The major change was my T-mobile phone was resurrected from the dead. Yup, my Blackberry phone was one of T-mobile’s hotspot@home-enabled phones, thus, it is able to receive and initiate calls using Wi-Fi signals from a home network. The phone went from no service to one that shows ‘UMA’ (unauthorized mobile access) and yes they were in big bold letters, thanks to Linksys Wireless N router that provided a good ‘N’ spot around the house.
So far I’ve made countless calls with T-mobile’s hotspot@home service and none of the calls ever got dropped. I think voice clarity is superb and the signal is probably better than getting a few bars of intermittent cell phone signals from cell sites and or repeaters.
Thanks to T-mobile for introducing the hotspot@home service. It made a huge difference with my connectivity issue.
As to my other phone subscribed to AT&T, I managed to connect it to my home network, watched YouTube with it, browse the net, check the weather and other stats using Yahoo Go but it remained an unusable gadget for mobile phone communications.
Now, let me give you a bird’s eye view on how I take advantage of the convenience of communication technology.
If you use the hotspot@home service to make calls you don’t use up your minutes cause you are basically not utilizing a regular cell site to transmit your signals. It’s almost as if you bypass other cell repeaters and make the internet as your path of communication. You can probably compare it to VOIP (voice over internet protocol) which is a growing trend in phone communications.
But with or without the free calls, you can also take advantage of unlimited calls using services such as myfaves. Just make sure that you register the number that you’d be calling often.
And to add drama, I use a VOIP long distance service to call my home place—the Philippines.
It’s not only much cheaper than calling from regular phones; it is also more personal and less conventional, which I like.
How many people would call other countries from their cell phone using Wi-Fi signals to call an access number to initiate a long distance call that also uses the internet as a signal path? Get it?
Using the hotspot@home service I call Pingo’s access number for free from my cell phone, and since Pingo utilizes VOIP I pay less than regular international long distance rates. Clarity is remarkable and connection time is efficient. And best of all I’m on my cell phone.
You might ask, why don’t I just get services like Skype, Vonage and save myself the hassle of going through several channels.
You’re right, but it’s a matter of preference. I prefer it better this way.
I really didn’t pay much attention to dead zones until I was immersed in one. For the last seven days I was basically incommunicado—no internet, no phone lines, no mobile phone signals. You don’t realize how awful it is to be totally disconnected from the outside world. At the same time, there’s this restful feeling of serenity brought about by the absence of all your technology gadgets that most of the time, unbeknownst to you, robs you of your precious time.
The most awful thing about being unable to communicate is when emergency happens and you need immediate help and you’re basically left unaided. The second most awful thing about being unreachable is the feeling of being helplessly unable to vent out your thoughts to your peers and relatives and share some exciting news.
Well, we recently relocated from the west coast to the east and the address where I live now is a total dead zone. Imagine my frustration when I couldn’t make calls even if I have on one hand an iPhone subscribed with AT&T and a Blackberry subscribed to T-Mobile on the other.
Even the most sophisticated phones and the most promising mobile providers in the nation could not be of use where I was at. Both phones show the same thing—No Service.
I was telling myself how useless it was to have subscribed to both services.
I went to RadioShack to look for a high-speed router and happen to bring out my dilemma to one of the store attendants. I was actually thinking of getting a cell phone signal booster antenna. The guy told me that they don’t come cheap. Ballpark figure would be around $400. He suggested that I use Skype phones so I can make calls from computer to computer for free, as if I didn’t know that all along. Actually for those of you who don’t know you can just utilize most internet messaging services like Yahoo messenger to do the same provided your PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers.
He said, what’s the point anyway of using a mobile phone to call from home when you have a regular phone line. True, but the point is, mobility is a sweet little illusion. With cell phones you get this illusion that you have a surgically attached communication device that makes you within reach even when you’re in the deepest corners of this planet and that includes your home.
Well, that’s the bottom line—mobility. It’s always an ego-fattening illusion to think that you are always connected anywhere, anytime.
My point is, mobile phones are just as basic as when you use them outside your home as when you use them indoors, even if you have a regular phone line because there’s a million other things that you want to do with mobile phones that you cannot do with regular phones, thus, it’s a precious thing to have a detectable phone signal in your home.
As of today, I don’t have a landline phone connection yet, but I am less crabby than the last seven days. My stint of being without communication service has ended after some guy installed my internet connection yesterday which changed a lot of things.
The major change was my T-mobile phone was resurrected from the dead. Yup, my Blackberry phone was one of T-mobile’s hotspot@home-enabled phones, thus, it is able to receive and initiate calls using Wi-Fi signals from a home network. The phone went from no service to one that shows ‘UMA’ (unauthorized mobile access) and yes they were in big bold letters, thanks to Linksys Wireless N router that provided a good ‘N’ spot around the house.
So far I’ve made countless calls with T-mobile’s hotspot@home service and none of the calls ever got dropped. I think voice clarity is superb and the signal is probably better than getting a few bars of intermittent cell phone signals from cell sites and or repeaters.
Thanks to T-mobile for introducing the hotspot@home service. It made a huge difference with my connectivity issue.
As to my other phone subscribed to AT&T, I managed to connect it to my home network, watched YouTube with it, browse the net, check the weather and other stats using Yahoo Go but it remained an unusable gadget for mobile phone communications.
Now, let me give you a bird’s eye view on how I take advantage of the convenience of communication technology.
If you use the hotspot@home service to make calls you don’t use up your minutes cause you are basically not utilizing a regular cell site to transmit your signals. It’s almost as if you bypass other cell repeaters and make the internet as your path of communication. You can probably compare it to VOIP (voice over internet protocol) which is a growing trend in phone communications.
But with or without the free calls, you can also take advantage of unlimited calls using services such as myfaves. Just make sure that you register the number that you’d be calling often.
And to add drama, I use a VOIP long distance service to call my home place—the Philippines.
It’s not only much cheaper than calling from regular phones; it is also more personal and less conventional, which I like.
How many people would call other countries from their cell phone using Wi-Fi signals to call an access number to initiate a long distance call that also uses the internet as a signal path? Get it?
Using the hotspot@home service I call Pingo’s access number for free from my cell phone, and since Pingo utilizes VOIP I pay less than regular international long distance rates. Clarity is remarkable and connection time is efficient. And best of all I’m on my cell phone.
You might ask, why don’t I just get services like Skype, Vonage and save myself the hassle of going through several channels.
You’re right, but it’s a matter of preference. I prefer it better this way.
