EVDO still better

As I blogged previously, I am currently working at Indonesia (or some of you may be familiar with Bali then the actual country name). In the next couple weeks, I will be moving to Sanur, Bali as my wife got a job there. Once again I have to figure out my Internet connection there as my work requires a reliable speed so that I can use Skype to make call to the United States. I spent more than 4 hours on the phone a day and Skype is my only buddy here if I don’t want to break my bank spending outrageous in long distance bill

At Surabaya, I have been relying on Speedy to provide me Internet connection. Speedy is one of the DSL provider here and I am paying premium to get the connection I need. In theory, I should use the same service there in Bali when I move. However, there is one problem I am facing with this new place. We just learned that the previous tenant of the house failed to pay their phone bill and the phone line is blacklisted! Well I am not going to blog to tedious paperwork here to deal with that problem. I have to come up with plan B soon.

I have been trying several options for HSDPA connection providers here in Indonesia. Most of them have a decent download speed. However, their upload speed is horrible! Most of them only provides up to 72kb up which is not acceptable within Skype standard. While GSM/HSDPA provider give me the flexibility of switching providers (simply switching the SIM card), this time I decide to see if there are options here for CDMA/EVDO.

Recently Bakrie Telecommunication just announced EVDO RevA service in conduction with Google service called AHA. The option and the pricing model is very attractive and it seems promising. However, unfortunately their service doesn’t reach Bali yet. As I research around, I finally found another one, SMART. I checked their service map and EVDO pricing options, I think I found one that will work for what I need. I decided to go to local store directly to pick up one of their starter kit package which includes one USB modem C100 and 100 days of free Internet access.

To my amazing, I tested the device and able to get close to 700kb down and 250kb up during the day (trust me this is good for Indonesia). That should work for what I need. I did a quick Skype call to my mom and the sound quality is good. I am pretty happy with the result. Now all I need is one of those wireless router so that I can share the connection with multiple devices.

Well I have 100 days to test this out. I will report back if I found any problems with this solution. EVDO rules!

Mobile plans varieties do benefit customers

The more I think about it, it is amazing to see how many varieties are offered here in Indonesia for the mobile plan choices. From CDMA to GSM, post-paid and pre-paid, 3G or non 3G, you name it, they have it all. And it is very common here in this country that customers to have more than one mobile devices and more that one services. For each choices and carriers, it has each own strength and weaknesses as far as the service offering goes. Secondly, it allows the customers to take advantage on so many different offers and promotions that each choices has.

In the last couple weeks, due to my plan of relocation from Surabaya to Bali, I was on the hunt for the most cost effective and reliable way to make a lot of phone calls back to the United States. With the choices, I explore from trying to take advantage of the high speed but metered 3G network for using Skype or simply choosing the right long distance plan for the calls. I choose to keep my mobile selection pre-paid. That way there will be no contract and I can switch to any carriers and plans at any time. One carrier offers up to 1000 minutes call to US for merely $15 per month. Another carrier gives me better phone clarity at 3 cents per minute rate (or approximately $3 per hour. I decide to take both options to compliment my day-to-day Skype call via my home DSL line.

We don’t see this kind of varieties and choices in the US. The pre-paid plans offered in the US are so expensive that it doesn’t compete at all to the ones that force you to the long term 2 years contract. This makes the mobile business less competitive in my opinion. The market is no longer has the liberty to choose the best plan and switch to a better plan easily as it becomes available.

Another good example, with the Blackberry services, here in Indonesia, the carriers are very creative. They pretty much have options for just about every variation of BB service that you can think of. you need just BBM and no email, you can have that. You want BBM and Facebook only (Facebook is very popular here), you got it. You pay only a fraction of the normal price for this sub-set selection. This way, the carriers Blackberry plan is able to penetrate to almost any type of users and makes the Blackberry devices to be the number one devices of must-have for everybody.

The same with the data plan. They give you options such as, you want high speed with capped monthly bandwidth or you want unlimited bandwidth but the speed will be reduce after a certain amount of bandwidth usage. You can have daily plan, monthly plan, pay-per-use plan. This is all I think good for us, the customers.

All of these are good for the mobile retail businesses too. This keep the businesses more fluid and not static or stagnant. The structure encourages people to keep hunting for bargains, better plans, better services, better offers. Not like in the US, where the carrier store controls the market.

Too bad all these choices here is not backed up with a quality service. That is just due to lack of quality technology infrastructure to begin with.

Well I hope the rest of the worlds adopt more and more choices like this and not the behemoth monopoly service like those we found in the US. With these choices, they make the global communication for travelers and world-mobile-user like me be able to work anywhere I want. That’s what we call a TRUE mobile.

iPad in our life

iPad is becoming more and more integral to my day-to-day life. Thanks to so many great applications that makes it possible. Obviously at home, the device has been the subject of “fight” between my wife, my kids and I

If you have a 5 years old and a 3 years old like me, iPad becoming their first choice over Nintendo DS and PSP, can you imagine that? You will think that they will choose NDS and PSP in the heartbeat but the reality both devices are sitting around collecting dust now. The variety of activity that they get from from iPad is far more greater. For example, tell me how many games in NDS that gearing toward education? The last time I check, I could not find a game in NDS or PSP that will teach the kid how to read or pronounce! That is mind boggling to me. For those games, I have to buy my kids Leap Frog system which the screen is so sub-par compare to what they get from iPad.

As for my wife, she enjoy reading books and browse the Internet. With iPad, she doesn’t have to need to carry around her Sony TZ anymore (she is still using since I have to take the iPad away from her time to time to work ). Now she is requesting me to purchase another iPad just for her. She just could not wait for the share anymore! Oh I forgot to mention, she is a gamer and Plant vs Zombie and Traffic Rush are her favorites !!

For me, I use iPad daily for so many task. From simple browsing, remote desktop to my PC, emails, tweeting, and much more. And the things that I do with iPad are growing everyday. Just today, I purchased an app called Air Display which allows me to use my iPad as my second screen for my Mac !! For only $10 (the software cost) and I get a 2nd monitor, what a bargain. Reading my business documents in iPad is a pleasure. Even with my “offline” life at Indonesia, with proper apps installed (offline browser, iCab, GoodReader, DropBox) , I am all set.

Now all I need is to wait this fall where OS 4.0 becomes available to my iPad. I will definitely looking forward to see how multi-task will enhance my experience even more with my iPad!!

How do I use my iPad?

This is my 2nd day since I bought my iPad. I still love it and I still think this is one of the best thing that I bought since my Sony TZ notebook. Probably at this time, you have read so many reviews and articles and obviously every writer will either love it or hate it depending on where they are coming from and their expectation. So what is my expectation? I think I mentioned in my previous post that I have been hold of purchasing Amazon Kindle and bought iPod touch instead. I love my iPod and love all the apps it has. However, doing certain thing in iPod touch does not make sense.

This is where iPad shines.

To love iPad you have to break several paradigms. First it is not a PC or computer or whatever Microsoft has planted in our mind about Tablet PC. Second, it is not a PDA. It is actually better than that. It is a true MID device, a new digital lifestyle device that supposed to compliment our day to day job. Of course, day to day job is a very broad term and the interpretation can be vary. But these are what I think it is great for and this is why i love it:

1. It is a great ebook device. I think the screen is gorgeous, although not a perfect screen for outdoor usage. But I live my life mostly indoor so this is not a big deal for me. The fact that I don’t have to choose between which ebook reader I want is a big winner. I still enjoy reading book from Amazon, books from B&N and now there is new choices from Apple itself. That’s just great. Because there are some books that only available from certain format and iPad becomes the most complete digital book reader device.

2. Perfect digital notebook device. I can now easily open up my Evernote or Wordpress and start jotting my ideas and notes as if I am using a laptop but without all the excess baggage that I don’t need. The virtual keyboard is really pleasure to use with. I don’t even know why we needs the Bluetooth keyboard with iPad. Digital journaling is so awesome with iPad.

3. Awesome web Internet tablet. If you like me, I do most of my work “web” way. Some people call it web 2.0 apps, some call it software as services, these new era of web based applications is making our life much more convenient. Apps like Google Docs, Evernote, Freshbook, Sales Force are so much easier to access now with iPad. And you know who’s coming to this list? Microsoft office 2010. Yes we’re going to be soon able to use Word, Excel online. I don’t need laptop anymore to do all the work. All day long I will have a device that allows me to connect to those apps and the device is light and easy to carry on and more importantly it has battery power for almost “all day” long usage for the first time!

4. Great device for social activity. From Facebook to Twitter, iPad has great apps for that or I don’t even need the apps as I can just fire off Safari and start to use the website instead. With the upcoming rumor of multiple-task capability on OS 4, these activities will becoming more pleasant.

5. iPad is the new media pad! Viewing photo albums and music and video collection cant be better than this. iPad definitely going to find a good niche among the photographers out there. We can use iPad to show the proof of the photo or digital media (songs and videos). We can even plug in a VGA adapter to use the projector to showcase the media!

6. Perfect combination of work and leisure. The list of apps are increasing rapidly. I can now do remote desktop through Logmein and at the same time play scrabble

So that’s it, you have my reason why loves it. I am not saying that iPad comes without its shortcomings. There are some level of nuances that I think they will be addressing sooner or later. But if you do what I do on my list above, this device is definitely for you!

Let me know what you think.