Mobile Internet 

Remember the time you were traveling to make a presentation and needed to access the Internet to get crucial information for the presentation? What did you do? Did you hunt for the nearest cyber café or make the presentation without the additional inputs? Little did you realize that a very powerful device that was lying in your pocket could have helped you. That device is your mobile phone. No matter whether you have GSM, GPRS or CDMA connection, you can connect to the Internet using your mobile phone.

In this article, we will see how you can use your mobile phone to access the Internet in two ways: access the Internet on the mobile phone itself, and use the mobile phone as a modem to access the Internet on a laptop. For accessing the Internet on a laptop, we have also benchmarked various connectivity options– CDMA, GPRS and landline dial-up.

Internet on mobile phone

To access Internet on your mobile, you have three options: GSM, GPRS and CDMA.

GSM

You can access WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) sites using any GSM (Global System for Mobile) phone with a WAP browser. The difference between WAP sites and normal sites is that a WAP site is specifically formatted for access from mobile phones. It is presented in a simpler version to take into consideration the space constraints and memory capacities of mobile phone. Most handsets come with a WAP browser and many websites, such as Indiatimes, Google, Yahoo, and Rediff have WAP sites.

Many cellular operators provide this service with different charging options. They can charge on the time spent while browsing or on the amount of data sent and received. For example, Hutch in Delhi charges Re 1/min for WAP access.

GPRS 

Compared to GSM, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is a speedier way of accessing WAP sites. And, unlike with GSM, if your phone has an HTML browser, then you can even access normal Websites on your phone. The Sony Ericsson P800, for instance, has an HTML browser and you can open any website on it using
GPRS. 

Mobile phones such as the SonyEricsson T610 or P800 come with a built-in POP3 and IMAP e-mail client. Using GPRS, you can connect the client to your mail server and check your mail as you do in any other mail client such as Outlook Express or Eudora. In the P800, for example, once you specify your account settings, you can send and receive mail. You can download either complete mail or just the mail headers.

A GPRS connection is an always-on connection, which means you can receive and make calls while the connection is on. You need a GPRS compatible handset for this. In Delhi, Hutch and Idea provide GPRS services with different tariff options. Hutch charges Rs 99 flat per month, with no usage charges.

CDMA

The third option for browsing WAP sites is through using CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) phones. CDMA offers faster access than GPRS phones. Various CDMA operators like Reliance and MTNL offer this facility.

Internet on laptop

Although you can do a fair amount of browsing on a mobile phone, its small screen is a limiting factor. To exploit the full potential of the Internet, you need a computer, and to do this, you need a few things in place. First is a GPRS enabled mobile phone with GPRS service activated from your cellular service provider. Second is a way to connect the phone to your computer. You can connect the phone using Bluetooth, infrared, serial or USB cable. Third are modem drivers for your mobile phone. These might come bundled with your mobile phone, or you can download them from the manufacturer's website. Fourth is the dial-up number. When you get GPRS service from your service provider, they give you a specific number to dial to access the Internet. After all the above things are in place, you can use the phone as a normal dial-up modem. Just create a new dial-up connection for the phone modem, dial the provided number and you will be hooked to the Net in less than two seconds. With GPRS wireless Internet, you also don’t need a separate ISP connection. 

The GPRS connection is always on and is used only when actual data transfer takes place. Therefore, you can make or receive calls when no data transfer is taking place and you won’t have to break the connection. Depending on the cellular service provider, charges for w ireless Internet vary from Rs 500 to Rs 800 a month.

CDMA operators like Reliance and MTNL also provide wireless Internet with their own tariff structures. However, with CDMA, you cannot make or receive calls while you are connected to the Net. 

Check with your cellular service providers for the Internet services offered, settings, tariff plans, etc and get connected. 

CDMA vs GPRS vs PSTN

We tried out three different connectivity options–Hutch GPRS, Reliance CDMA and an MTNL landline PSTN dial-up–in Delhi, to get an idea of how they compare with each other. We checked for available bandwidth, connection stability, and the time taken to connect to the Internet. Here’s what we found. 

What we did

We used Lucent Technologies’ MyVitalAgent v 8.0.1 software to test the various connections. We accessed the Internet using these connections for one hour and checked the transfer rates and the time taken to connect. Our traffic was mostly inbound as we were interested only in the throughputs while receiving data, which is also the main concern for the end-user.

Average bandwidth

With GPRS we got a throughput of 16.7 kbps (16,777 bps) for receiving data, which is good enough for just basic Web browsing–we managed to easily browse two to three websites simultaneously. However, GPRS is not as fast as a dial-up connection, so don’t regard it as a replacement for dial-up as you won’t get much out of it. 

The MTNL connection gave a throughput of 22.5 kbps (22,509 bps) for receiving data, which is what you normally get from a dial-up connection and is pretty decent for home use.

The results of the CDMA connection were a big surprise. At 94.97 kbps (94,979 bps), it was like having a broadband connection in your pocket. In one hour we managed to download 42620500 bytes, which is about 42 MB of data. 

The speeds are terrific by any standard and you could even use it to share your Net connect with 5-8 users. 

Connection time

A major concern for users is the time taken to connect and log in to the Net. The MTNL connection took about 38 secs to connect and log in, CDMA took under 5 secs, which is far lower than the dial-up. However, the best was GPRS, which took just above a second to establish the connection. So, with GPRS and CDMA you get instantaneous access without having to wait for the connection to take place, as happens in dial-up. 

Connection stability

Lastly, we checked for the reliability of each connection. Both GPRS and CDMA were extremely reliable. You can use them for extended periods without the connection getting broken or becoming extremely slow to use as sometimes happens in 

dial-up. 

GPRS connection can be used as a permanent connection as it is only used when actual data transfer takes place. The Reliance CDMA connection has a unique feature. If it’s not being used for some time, the phone automatically switches to voice mode and when you request for some data it switches back to data mode transparently. You can make or receive calls only when the phone is in voice mode and not in data mode.

In PSTN, you cannot make or receive calls as long as the connection is on. You have to break the connection for that.

Price

Finally, let us look at the cost of each of these options. Hutch, in Delhi, charges Rs 499/month irrespective of the usage.

Therefore, in Rs 499 you get an always-on connection to the Internet for a month. Reliance has several tariff plans, starting from 40 paise per min, but you’ll need to check with your dealer for the exact details. The MTNL connection comes out to about 45 paise per min.

Anoop Mangla