Over the past year or so there have been some announcements and advertisements, for telephone and data communications services, that simply haven't worked for RVers. Some had promise and even worked for awhile, others were simply misleading advertisements. All caused the mobile, computing RVer to have hopes beyond reality of the situation. It's my estimate, of the questions I received last year, almost half involved one or more of those technologies. In an effort to provide a single place, where RVers can find information about those failed or inappropriate technologies for their use, I will attempt to post them here and try to keep it current with developing technology.

• ATT and MCI cellular telephone one-rate-plans come close to working as advertised, for voice telephone calls. Of course there are still many areas not having cellular coverage, but that situation continues to get better. Still, there are some mom-and-pop cellular telephone companies that won't honor connectivity to their systems, under the one-rate-plans. This is mostly because of the rates ATT and MCI reimburse them for, when calls are made through their cellular system. Worse yet, some became locked into agreements that exclude the other competitions use and are now exclusively ATT, MCI or others. Still, for many RVers, their plan works out well for voice calls and trips to payphones have become a thing of the past. Essentially, regardless of where you are at, for less than $100.00 monthly, all cellular calls become local ones. You do not sustain any roaming, air-time or long distance charges.
  
• They advertise PCS services and Internet access over their cellular phones and that is true, but somewhat misleading. Short, text only messages can be sent to their cellular phones, not to an attached PC. For obvious reasons, these must be short enough to read on the tiny screen. The paging services are great, if you need that. Call conferencing, talking to more than one family member or friend at the same time, are also nice features as well as call-waiting, caller ID and other services provided, at additional cost. However, all those neat features are not available in many/most places. For the most part, those are provided when you happen to be in contact with an ATT cellular system only and are not "roaming" outside ATT. Otherwise, only basic telephone call services are available.
  
• Internet access, via PCs and cellular telephone, has all but been rendered impossible with the one-rate-plans. All cellular data from PC modems is over "analog", there is no current protocol for accomplishing it over digital cellular phones. ATT owns no analog cells, they are all digital. When we used a cellular enabled modem to our laptop PCs and a cellular phone, to access the Internet, the modem caused the cell phone to switch to analog and the connection was made. ATT was paying their competition for each of those analog calls, so they modified all cellular phones, used with their one-rate-plan, not to switch to analog if there is a digital cellular presence from any carrier in the area. This all but killed PC data over cellular, for their plan. Older, costlier plans still work.
  
• ATT and Cisco announced a joint venture to produce a protocol for PC data over cellular telephones and they will eventually succeed. However, it remains to be seen how long that will take and whether or not they will release it as a standard for other modem manufacturers to build to or not.

• DirecPC and DirecDuo advertise very high speed Internet access over their satellite systems. It is true that they can send data at speeds from 200 KBPS to 400 KBPS to your PC. What is finely printed in their advertisements is that one still needs a telephone line to connect to their servers. Their high speed access is one way only, from the satellite to your PC. Until ATT, MCI and others can work out a method for wireless telephone connections for data, we're still left with the need for a classic telephone line to take advantage of this offering. Some people think Hughes Corp. will offer this service from the regular satellite TV receiver and dish antenna. This has never been the case. One must purchase a separate dish antenna and either a ISA board for insertion into a tower PC or procure their stand-alone box to interface a laptop via the serial port.
  
• Iridium offers two way telephone calls and paging via their worldwide satellite system. Before the system became operational, it was hoped this was the answer to our problems. As of now, the phone costs approximately $3,000.00 and the service is about $1,000 monthly. Needless to say, the average citizen is not knocking down their door to contract for this service.

• Radio Ram still works as well as it did a year ago, but has been bought out by South East Bell. Bell systems have not been expanding the coverage areas, like was being done before. They advertise 92% of urban America now has radio coverage. Please note they state "Urban Areas". Ninety two percent of people living in large metropolitan areas can use it, but there are very few RV parks in those areas. Over the past year, we have had radio ISP contact at less than 1/5^th of the parks we stayed at. Generally, if one is within about 25 miles of their antenna the system is functional. ISP's using this radio Internet connection method have been failing with regularity and the industry is consolidating into larger ISPs. As an example, radio RAM ISP Zap-It was bought out by GoAmerica. They are still servicing the accounts taken over, but aren't offering new accounts all the services provided from those ISPs they now own. My advice is unless you are mostly using parks and campgrounds within their known coverage areas, it isn't worth the $400.00 radio/wireless modem and monthly ISP cost. For RVers, staying at a limited number of campgrounds within their coverage areas, it would be great and possibly worth the cost.

• While it's great that the Internet has shrunk the world and made the gaining of information easier, it can also cause confusion. As an example: acoustic coupler manufacturers are advertising that their units operate at speeds up to 28,800 BPS and it's true. However, that's not so in the US. Most of Europe and Asia have digital telephone systems and phones. Other than some private telephone switches, mostly in large corporations. those in the US are still analog and are designed primarily for voice use. Thus, our telephone line connected, PC modems are analog. Compounding the problem, US payphones use carbon packed diaphragms in their send and receive handset elements, further lessening possible data connection speed. At best, one can obtain 2400 BPS (more often 1200 BPS) from acoustic couplers and US payphones. As long as one knows that and can cope with the slow speed, they do work, but very, very slowly.

While the above is disheartening for RVers, there have been some very encouraging changes, at many RV parks. The efforts of Rversonline webmaster, Tom Gonser, and others like Escapees, have really started to make a difference. In addition to their organized efforts, I doubt there is a RV park manager who hasn't been asked for use of a telephone to send/receive email or perform online banking. RVers, calling for advance reservations, don't hesitate to ask if the park is modem friendly and won't come unless it is. Finally, Trailer Life and Woodall's campground guides are starting to post modem friendly parks, but still have a long way to go in this regard. Web sites are being developed to list parks with phones on their sites, for overnighters, not just seasonal visitors. The latter is a very long way from us being able to expect campgrounds to routinely offer, but it's a start.

It's now our experience that not one in ten commercial or private campgrounds will refuse a request for a few minutes connect time to one of their office phone lines. Stores like Kinko's offer free connection to the Internet, as long as one is calling a local or 800 type number. So are truck stops and many other businesses. Things are looking up, but the hoped for wireless services simply aren't there for us, yet. The old days, of looking for a modern library or cyber café, are all but gone. Still, at some places it is still necessary to go there. However, those places are getting farther and farther apart and campgrounds are quickly wakening to the reality that they lose much business, if they don't provide telephone connect facilities for their RV Computing customers. They're responding to their own need to stay in business or make a profit, nothing less, nothing more.

Because of the technology shortcomings and disappointments, some parts of my articles are obsolete. I will be working to update them shortly. If you have comments or questions, relative to this article or any other subject of RV Computing, send me an email at: LMCHANEY@concentric.net and I'll be glad to respond.

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