Mobile dream can be nightmare

By PETER GRIFFIN

Just when mobile computing seems to offer so much - downloading the rugby results in the back of a taxi or e-mailing mum mid-OE - the screen goes blank and the promise drops out like a broken connection.

To start with, some of the PDAs (personal digital assistants) and mobiles on the market are tricky to set up, especially when you start messing around with things like Bluetooth - a technology that allows certain devices to connect to one another without wires, synchronising e-mail accounts or data-roaming overseas.

And you can't always depend on the network operators or internet provider help desk techos to help you out. Sometimes they're as ill-informed as you - a lot of this is relatively new ground, all round.

Then there's the roaming issue. In an ideal world you'd be able to take your mobile phone or Palm Pilot with you when you go overseas, pick up email from your New Zealand internet provider and log onto the net for brief surfing spells, connecting seamlessly whether in Calcutta or Canberra.

You'd be able to avoid the over-priced hotel business centre and the grubby teenagers clogging up the internet cafes.

But the reality is much more frustrating. To start with, as a Telecom CDMA subscriber, you cannot data-roam overseas - full stop.

It's a "temporary" obstacle that Telecom and other operators such as Australia's Telstra are working together to remove, but meanwhile it's a huge disadvantage, especially for business travellers.

The lack of data-roaming makes Telecom's ad campaign boasting the best roaming coverage all the harder to swallow. Annoyingly, things like this rarely pop up in the silky pitches of mobile phone salespeople.

A Telecom user can switch on his phone in Korea and happily connect to a local CDMA network for voice calls, but text messages and emails are another story - you can't send them home or receive them. No tapping into the company network on your PDA from abroad. That would be wishful thinking, sir.

Technology, funnily enough, is at the root of the problem.

There are various types of mobile networks around the world, and not all of them talk to one another.

To roam on the US GSM 1900Mhz networks, you need a tri-band phone, because GSM there is different to GSM in the rest of the world (where it operates at a different radio frequency - 900Mhz and 1800Mhz). Most phones sold here are not tri-band; you need to search one out.

The lavish Nokia 9210 Communicator, built with Europeans in mind, therefore becomes as useful as a brick when you travel to the US - or Korea for that matter, where GSM networks are non-existent.

And don't make the mistake of taking your CDMA phone to the UK - or to most of Europe for that matter. GSM rules supreme there.

At this stage, mobile computing is also too expensive for most people.

The network operators, desperate to squeeze more profit out of data services as revenues from straight voice calls flatten, are nuts if they think people are going to shell out $1500 for a flashy gadget and then face data charges of $20 to $30 a month.

Sometimes, jumping on a computer connected to a phone line is a whole lot easier and cheaper.