Cellular Phones

Our cellular providers here don’t make it easy to find out what phones they sell. I don’t know why this is; somehow they seem to think that the handset is a necessary evil, perhaps? In any case, here’s a list, based on research today, of the handsets each of the three providers has in their current stable. I’ve included GSM phones for Rogers, and PCS/CDMA phones for Telus and Aliant.

Obviously Rogers has the greatest variety of phones. Aliant seems to, inexplicably, have phones that seem like they come from the bottom of the “hot and sexy” barrel. Telus comes up the middle. Only Rogers offers a Bluetooth-enabled phone (the t68i). None of the providers offers any information about how to source phones elsewhere and have them enabled on their network.

Comments

Ken's picture
Ken on May 28, 2003 - 00:56 Permalink

I brought a cell phone from AT&T back to PEI, and got it set up on my own after Googling some programming instructions and getting IslandTels network info. Watch out! After changing the carrier code 4 or five times my phone is now blocked and cost more to reset than to buy new.

I would love to see a cell phone system that is P2P and requires no activation other than to hop around all active cellphones, unless you wanted a land line, that would cost 25 cents. For local calls this would work since cell phones can just link directly within so many kilometres, otherwise like in the country you could jump onto a network when you needed to. It would be like default FRS with your cell phone.

Alan's picture
Alan on May 28, 2003 - 02:25 Permalink

Yer talkin’ ham radio Ken! Strap one of them puppies on everyone’s backs. That’ll fix it.

Ken's picture
Ken on May 28, 2003 - 04:40 Permalink

I am KC5RQS

What about making all of Canada a local call, let’s get behind that regional equalizer. Also it is a social equalizer, since even poor people could afford to call Ottawa. You could call it The Telecom Reform act of 2004.
I’m making the web page now.