By Nancy Gohring
Special to The Seattle Times

Seattle finally has a high-speed mobile wireless data network.
Known as 3G, or third-generation wireless service, the network has been in the works for years and is now available in a few select cities. I decided to find out if AT&T Wireless’ 3G service, called UMTS and recently introduced in the Seattle area, could possibly live up to the hype.

The third generation succeeds the first-generation cellular networks’ analog voice service and the second generation’s digital voice and some basic data offerings.

More recently, carriers including Redmond-based AT&T Wireless have offered some faster speed data services known as 2.5G that are comparable to dial-up Internet connections on a computer. 3G promises to deliver true broadband connections to phones and laptop personal computers.

AT&T Wireless offers the service in six markets. On Monday, Verizon Wireless is introducing a similar 3G service in 11 new markets (Seattle is not one), in addition to three existing markets. AT&T Wireless’ offering is the only one in Seattle.

It would be tough for any 3G offering to live up to expectations set by the wireless industry. Carriers and phone makers have been talking for years about how 3G would change our lives.

With such high-speed wireless data networks, it was said, we would all soon use our phones to watch streamed television programs, conduct video conferences, wirelessly play games with competitors on the other side of the country, browse the Internet as quickly and easily as at our desktops and watch live concerts.

Some promises are true

AT&T Wireless is offering two phones, one from Motorola and one from Nokia, as well as a PC card that can be used in a laptop for Internet connectivity. I tried out the Motorola phone and the data card to find out if some of the promises could be true.

Surprisingly, some are. For example, AT&T Wireless UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) phone users can subscribe to Real-rTV, a service from Real Networks that offers an on-demand video news service.

I watched ABC News clips, popular movie trailers and music news from Rhapsody, the digital music service. I happened to be using the phone during the Olympics and Real-rTV offered a package of special coverage that included daily video highlights, medal count listings and short clips about athletes.

As part of the Real-rTV offering, I also listened to NPR programs, watched clips from the Weather Channel, caught up on sports news with Fox Sports clips and heard my horoscope read to me.

The video and audio services worked remarkably well. They are actually streamed, rather than downloaded first, and I found it worked better than streaming video to my PC often works. Once, when I was slightly out of range, the video came through a bit garbled but when I moved back into range it worked just fine.

I never had to wait mid-video while the stream paused to buffer, as I almost always do when watching videos on my PC.

I noticed a couple of minor content-related glitches that will likely get worked out over time. It appeared that the NPR clips have a set time limit. One clip I listened to ended mid-sentence as if the time was up.

Another time, I watched a music news clip from Rhapsody and at the very end caught a blooper of the newscaster joking with someone off-camera. Also, while the Rhapsody news item was supposed to be updated daily, the clip was often several days old.

Weighing the value

I found it fun and easy to watch the clips and didn’t run out of new and interesting videos to watch, but I’m not convinced that I would pay for the service. (Real charges $4.95 per month to watch the videos.)

While the content could be worth the extra investment for some users, much of it can be found via news clips readable on the phone via the Internet as part of AT&T Wireless’ regular mMode monthly subscription. UMTS customers pay $24.99 for unlimited access to mMode, which includes basic Internet access plus special mobile data services.

Also, the Motorola phone, which retails for $299 (as does the Nokia), underwhelmed me. It was clunky to operate. The handset, for instance, features a toggle button that can be pushed up and down or side to side to scroll through menus and then pressed to select something. I found that it only sometimes worked at selecting an item. I would instead have to hit a separate button that corresponded to a «select» command on the screen.

The phone was also slow at registering movements of the button and my frustration with the shortcoming didn’t make it any easier to use. Sometimes when I’d press the toggle button down to reach the next item on a menu, nothing would happen. Instead of patiently waiting for the phone to catch up, I’d hit down again and again. When the phone would finally respond, I’d find my cursor had moved several lines below the item I was targeting.

The phone I used came with headphones to keep from disturbing people around me. Otherwise, the phone’s speaker is on the back, an inconvenient place.

Nice screen size

The phone does have some upside. While at first glance it seems huge, especially compared with most available cellphones, the screen had just the right dimensions to get a good experience watching videos.

In addition to all the services based on the high-speed wireless network, the phone has plenty of other bells and whistles. It includes a camera, but with a neat feature for taking pictures of yourself. Users can switch the screen view so that if you’re taking a picture of yourself, you can see yourself — and what the photo will look like — in the screen.

The phone also includes a video camera. I took a few short videos and transferred them to a laptop via infrared and e-mail.

In the future, AT&T Wireless could start offering video conferencing to users of this phone. The phone has a dedicated video call key, which an AT&T Wireless spokesman said is for video calls, though such a service hasn’t been enabled. He was mum as to whether the carrier plans to turn it on in the future.

By purchasing an extra cable, users of the Motorola phone can connect the handset to a laptop for Internet access. My AT&T Wireless contact preferred that I try the dedicated data card instead so I borrowed a Novatel PC card.

The card costs $149.99 with a two-year agreement plus $79.99 a month for unlimited use.

Oddly, I found that coverage was far more limited on the data card than on the phone. With the phone, I received a strong 3G connection in my house near Green Lake, in locations around town and as far north as Mukilteo.

But I couldn’t use the data card in my house. In fact, I thought I was having a more complicated problem when I first tried out the card because I didn’t know when I wasn’t connected. I would open the connection-manager software that comes with the Novatel card and press connect. The software would show that I was connected to a signal of three of four bars of coverage. But no matter what Web page I tried, I’d get a message saying that the page couldn’t be opened.

After a few days, during a moment when I was about to give up trying, the connection manager went from three bars to none in the blink of an eye. Then it completely disconnected.

No special message popped up to notify me that I wasn’t connected. I realized then that I had not been able to open any Web site because I wasn’t actually connected to the Internet. I would have to hit the connect button again and then try again to open a Web page.

I soon figured out that even though the connection-manager software sometimes showed I had coverage when I used the card at my house, I could almost never actually open a Web page. And when I could, I would soon be disconnected.

A few good results

I got mixed results elsewhere around town, but when I could find a strong connection, the service was great. On the shores of Green Lake, I used a popular bandwidth meter to clock my connection speed at 338 kilobits per second, which is even faster than my 256 kilobits per second DSL connection at home.

In a couple of locations in Belltown, I found connections of 293 kilobits per second and 247 kilobits per second. At the top of Queen Anne Hill, I clocked 329 kilobits per second.

I wasn’t always so lucky, though. I tried to get online from a number of locations in Wallingford, including on 45th Street and never succeeded in connecting. Heading up the hill on Queen Anne Avenue, I also couldn’t get a connection.

I can’t imagine why coverage seemed more spotty on the data card than on the phone, and neither could an AT&T Wireless technical manager. Perhaps it’s a better idea to use the phone as a modem, connecting it to a PC to get online.

While I was more pleased with my experience using the phone than with the PC card, I was generally impressed by my experience with the first 3G service in Seattle. I suspect that with time, the phones will shrink, coverage will improve, prices will fall and additional, unique offerings will be available for 3G phone users.

Nancy Gohring, a Seattle freelancer, writes frequently about telecommunications and wireless developments.

By: BRADLEY. J. FIKES — Staff Writer

Telecom executive Julia Wilson likes being free from telemarketing calls. Student Cyndi Headley didn’t want to change her number after moving. Eric O’Connor, a chef, likes the ability to take care of business any time of the day or night. Keva Dine, a job recruiter, just wants all her messages and phone calls in one place.

These four North County residents are part of the new telecommunications mainstream: They primarily use a cell phone instead of a traditional land-line phone. Wilson, Headley and O’Connor no longer have a land-line phone. Dine dropped her personal land-line phone, but kept one for her business.

An estimated 14 percent of U.S. consumers use a cell phone as their main phone, according to a February study by In-Stat/MDR, a research firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz. The Yankee Group, a research firm based in Boston, estimates that 4 percent to 5 percent of consumers have cut the cord entirely and do not have a land line, even as a backup.

«Wireless substitution,» as it’s called, reached a milestone in 2001, when the number of business and residential land lines fell for the first time since the 1930s. The trend got a big boost in November, when new regulations gave customers the right to keep their phone number when switching carriers, including land line-to-wireless switches.

Young and single people are most likely to go totally wireless, said Andrew Seybold, head of the Andrew Seybold Group LLC, a wireless consulting firm in Felton. They grew up with cell phones and may have relied on one exclusively during college. For such people, having a cell phone is normal; a land line is secondary.

«This is getting to be a real hot issue,» Seybold said. By some analyst estimates, he said, the percentage of those going totally wireless could reach 40 percent.

For the cellular industry and companies such as San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc., this is obviously good news. It’s not good for the «Baby Bells» such as SBC and Verizon, which have long had a near monopoly on voice communications.

Wireless whiz

Wilson, a Carmel Valley resident, has a technologically advanced wireless setup that befits her role as head of the San Diego Telecom Council. Her cell phone, a Kyocera 7135 that works over the Verizon Wireless network, handles voice and e-mail.

«I just moved, and it’s so nice not to have to switch a phone number,» Wilson said. «It’s one less thing to worry about.»

Wilson said she dropped the land line about a year ago, in part because she was constantly being bothered with telemarketing calls. Since then, she has been nearly free of that annoyance. Federal law forbids telemarketers from calling cell-phone numbers unless there is a previous business relationship.

For Internet access, Wilson subscribes to Verizon Wireless’ high-speed service, which she uses in a laptop equipped with a PC card. The laptop is small enough to fit in her purse, so Wilson takes her Internet access anywhere there is a Verizon signal.

Wilson said she took part in a trial test of the wireless Internet service last year and was impressed with its speed

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far faster than dial-up. So instead of having to look for a reason to subscribe to the service, Wilson asked herself why she needed a land line.

«It was so easy, and after having my card for several months and never using dial-up, away went AT&T,» Wilson said.

Wilson’s total bill is about $180 a month for voice and Internet.

Business anywhere

O’Connor, a chef at the Calypso restaurant in Leucadia, said he uses his cell phone to handle business needs when away from the restaurant.

A Carlsbad resident, O’Connor orders food for the Calypso and relies on his Samsung X427 phone to make sure the orders have been placed, wherever he may be.

«You’ve always got the phone right there in your pocket. The biggest worry is having it charged,» O’Connor said. His cell-phone bill from Cingular is about $100 a month.

Although he has no telephone land line, O’Connor depends on a different wire for Internet access: that of Cox Communications’ cable modem service.

Dine operates her own recruitment agency from a home office in Encinitas. She canceled her personal land line about 18 months ago. She has a land-line telephone through Cox Communications, which also provides her Internet access.

Dine uses her Palm Treo 600 on the Cingular network when away from the office. Her cell-phone bill ranges from $100 to $200 a month.

«I’m on the phone all the time, e-mailing all the time, and have to be constantly connected and reachable,» Dine said. «I even have my cell phone pick up my e-mail when I’m out of the office. I maintain my calendar on it as well, so if someone needs to change their appointment, I can plug that in there. I can get online and pay bills at the grocery store if I wanted to.»

Taking it with you

Headley, an Encinitas resident, got rid of her land line about two years ago when she moved.

Unsure about where she would wind up, Headley gave out her cell-phone number to those who wished to contact her. She decided to keep it that way after moving, to avoid the hassle of notifying her friends of a new number. Headley spends about $45 a month with Cingular for her service on a Motorola phone.

Having just a cell phone and no land line saves money, thanks to included long-distance minutes, said Headley, a former Oceanside High School teacher who plans to attend Cal State San Marcos this fall.

«I’m even keeping in better touch with my mother since I started using the cell phone without the land line,» Headley said.

Drawbacks

Going totally wireless has disadvantages. For O’Connor, it’s the «horrible» reception at his home.

«I can only put my phone down in certain parts of the house,» he said.

Dine said she lost a «really cool number» when she canceled the personal land line.

There is a more serious concern

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safety, said Seybold, the wireless industry consultant. One concern is that emergency operators can’t automatically locate a cell-phone caller in the same way they know where a land line is located. Also, guests at a home with no land line may not have a phone to use if the owner is away and there is an emergency.

Seybold’s solution is to sign up for a family plan that provides a second phone at a small additional charge and shares the minutes between them. Take one phone and keep the other one charged up in the home.