Leash selection...

[jay]

Telephones aren't generally a good way to reach me... I'm rarely near them, and I only check voicemail once or twice a week. Compared to multiple times daily for email... anyone working with me learns this quickly ;-).

However, I'm now supposed to be spending 25-40% of my time being the technical manager of a $10M contract with a large aerospace company, doing vehicle health management for the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) program. I'm based in Silicon Valley, but the SLI program guys are in Alabama. And they are quite frustrated with trying to reach me, given how much I travel... to the point where they want me to get a cell phone.

I have helped design and install wireless communications networks in remote field sites, but I have hardly ever used a cell phone. Never owned one, and have preferred to use payphones while on travel. NASA has given me an assortment of phones and services to choose from, here, but I have no idea what works well in practice... so I'm soliciting recommendations. Their contract is with Verizon, using a national single-rate plan with no roaming charges. Costs are $55/mo for 400 anytime minutes, $100/mo for 900 minutes, and so forth, with no separate night/weekend allowance. I have no idea how many minutes is enough... even 150 minutes seems like a lot to me.

Equipment-wise, there are both tri-mode phones (2 digital frequencies, plus analog) and tri-mode plus something called 1X or Express Network for higher-speed wireless data. All of them have mini-browsers and messaging capability. I don't know if I'd be better off with a phone-with-connection-kit, or a Pocket PC/Palm PDA with telephone capabilities. The former would be the Audiovox CDM9155, or Motorola T720, vs. Kyocera 6035 Smartphone (Palm OS) or an Audiovox Thera (Microsoft). How does one talk into a PDA? That seems clumsy...

Any advice or relevant experience would be welcomed... thanks.

Comments

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

We like our Verizon service. There have been one or two glitches over the years, but overall the service has been reliable, and the plans have just been getting better over time. I suggest checking with Consumer Reports (they have an on-line service, now, too!) to see about which phone(s) they are recommending. akienm did that before buying my phone, which is a Motorola Timeport (which I think is discontinued, but there's a new version). I've been very happy with it.

[akienm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as Dawn said, we've been very happy with our service. In practice, 900 minutes hasn't been too much. But then I'm very comfortable on the phone, and am prone to chat.

One of the things I always look for is that the CDMA is by Qualcomm. The CDMA by Nokia hasn't been anywhere near as good. We had a Nokia and a Sony at first, and standing in a mall we were able to reach home with the Sony, but not the Nokia. I believe Motorola uses Qualcomm's technology. We've had better luck with Dawn's Timeport than we have with any other phone in terms of being able to get a signal in far off places.

The service has one feature I REALLY like, at any point, I can change the service plan to whatever is the current offering. Now this usually means signing up for 2 years again, but since we've had our phones for way longer than that, I'm OK with it. It means that as plans have become progressivly cheaper, we've been able to keep updating and getting the better price.