We arrived yesterday in Seattle and spent most of the afternoon shopping for 8 cell phones and some data cards. The nature of iotum’s product is that we need lots of end points to terminate calls, and Howard and I are starting to spend a lot of time in different places doing demos. So, we needed the ability to do more than one demo. We also have found that not every place we go to demonstrate the software has open network access, so we needed some data cards.
It was a long process. In the end we bought four phones from Verizon, and four from Cingular. We also bought two Kyocera data cards from Verizon, and put data plans on two of the Cingular sims. If we need GSM data, we’ll throw one of the data cards into my Nokia N90 which has a UMTS modem in it.
The Verizon data service is, frankly, unbelievable. For $80/month you get all you can eat data anywhere within Verizon’s network. Where there’s 1XRT service, that’s broadband speed!
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
