[NCLUG] Data Through Cellular Technology?

[John L. Bass]

	<RANT>
	These companies don't get it -- I'm using a *prepaid* plan. Why should it 
	matter if I have one or twenty-five phones? They should be encouraging me to 
	surf the web online, they'ld make a bundle with their quarter a minute rate 
	:)
	</RANT>

	Marcio Luis Teixeira

Or maybe 200,000 phones to share the same prepaid? ... Each phone who's EIN is activated
on the network requires non-voice services to manage - and that does cost something in
both network air time and database management. Having more than one phone (EIN) tied to
the same directory number creates a number of interesting problems for the technology,
like when an incomming call exists ... do you ring all 25 (or 200,000) phones which requires
setting up a wireless channel for each phone that is turned on at the time only to have
to turn them all off again when one answers? ... What if more than one answer - which one
gets the call?  There is are long list of interesting "sharing" problems that occur
when you start allowing more than one phone per directory number, that for good reason,
they do not want to deal with (or at least for free). And, it makes the identity theft
problem even more difficult to deal with - since you create a case where more than one
phone really does share the same directory number.

John