Shopping for Wireless E-Mail Service

Two years ago, in the spirit of research, I sent my friend Margaret an e-mail message from a solitary-confinement cell in Alcatraz. At the time I was amazed that my message could bust out of a windowless former prison cell, bounce across the country, and land in Margaret's in-box within a minute or so.

Today I'm impressed by all the devices and services available for sending and receiving wireless e-mail: wireless PDAs that act as cell phones, cell phones that act as wireless PDAs, and so on. The options seem endless--and a bit mind-boggling.

If you're thinking about signing up for wireless access to e-mail (and the Web), I recommend starting with your mobile-phone service provider. Major carriers such as AT&T Wireless, Sprint, and Verizon offer data plans combined with voice service, or available separately. Each carrier provides a variety of ways to get wireless e-mail, from PDAs to cell phones to notebooks equipped with wireless modems.

There are benefits to adding data services to an existing voice account: Usually, voice and data services are combined on one bill, and you can add data service to a wireless phone plan without having to change your cell phone number. There are also drawbacks, of course. You are limited to the wireless devices your cellular service provider offers, and figuring out which wireless e-mail device and service best suits your needs and budget can be a challenge--maybe I should say, is challenging.

Getting Started With AT&T

To help you prepare for what you will undoubtedly face when you set out to explore wireless e-mail, I'll share what I learned in my own quest to add the service to my existing cell-phone account.

My cellular service provider is AT&T Wireless, and I currently subscribe to a national plan for my Nokia 8260 wireless phone. To get both wireless data and voice services on a single device, such as a wireless phone or PDA, I'd need to switch to an AT&T Wireless MLife calling plan and add a monthly data-services plan. That's because AT&T Wireless offers data services as an option for MLife, but not for the digital cellular phone service I currently subscribe to.

MLife operates on a different type of network than does my Nokia 8260, which operates on the AT&T Wireless TDMA network. MLife runs on the AT&T Wireless GSM/GPRS network, a next-generation 2.5G network. That means I would need to buy a new GSM/GPRS-compatible mobile phone to place voice calls and access data on an MLife plan.

Switching to another plan also means, of course, that I would start a new one-year contract.

New network, new contract, new phone. What next? A new optional service. Data services cost anywhere from $6 to $100 or more per month. AT&T Wireless, Sprint, and others typically price data service plans by kilobytes and megabytes--which can be confusing, given that most of us don't think in terms of how many megabytes we consume per month.

For instance, AT&T Wireless's MLife monthly data plans begin at $3 and top out at $100. In the $3 plan, you pay 2 cents per kilobyte. For $8 a month, you get up to 1 megabyte of data; after that it's 1 cent per kilobyte. For $100 per month you get up to 100MB.

One megabyte is equal to 1024 kilobytes. When I consider the volume of spam I receive, plus all those long messages in which someone responds to an earlier message, which was a response to another message, the kilobytes add up quickly.

MLife subscribers who need to access corporate e-mail (which is usually secured behind a firewall) must also add AT&T Wireless's Office Online, a $3-per-month service. The good news: Office Online and the MLife data services are optional services that can be added to and removed from an account at any time; they don't require one-year contracts.

Other Options

So far, I've only touched on AT&T Wireless's MLife data service, which is aimed primarily at consumers using mobile phones and PDAs.

For mobile professionals who need frequent wireless Internet access and the ability to view e-mail attachments using a PDA or notebook, AT&T Wireless offers more robust Mobile Internet rate plans. These plans can be combined with a voice plan or purchased separately. Monthly rates with a voice plan begin at $8 for 1MB and go up to $20 for 8MB. Data-only plans, designed for users with heavy data-access requirements, begin at $30 for 10MB and go to $100 for 100MB.

Answering the Call

I've found that wireless PDAs are great for e-mail, and wireless phones are well-suited for voice calls. But the majority of combination devices--communicators that allow you to do both--involve tradeoffs in one area or another. Wireless PDAs are often bigger and bulkier than wireless phones, while a wireless phone's screen and keypad are woefully inadequate for viewing and typing e-mail.

If I were to sign up for an AT&T Wireless Mobile Internet rate plan, I could continue to use my existing wireless phone and service plan, according to an AT&T Wireless spokesperson. In addition, I'd simply sign up for a Mobile Internet rate plan, which would give me Internet access from a wireless-enabled PDA such as a Palm Tungsten W, or on any notebook via a wireless data modem such as a Sierra Wireless Aircard 710 ($250) or Aircard 750 ($300).

So which device and service plan am I going to get? In all honesty, at the moment I have no idea. I'm still vacillating between the Palm Tungsten W, a Blackberry, and no wireless data device at all (the cheapest option). Before you decide on a wireless e-mail device or plan, ask yourself a few questions:

Do you want one device for wireless voice and data? If so, do you intend to do more talking than typing? In that case, consider a wireless phone with PDA capabilities, such as the Samsung SPH-i330. But if you expect to get e-mail more often than phone calls, then look at wireless PDAs such as the Palm Tungsten W with voice capabilities. Read "PDA Phones for the Smart and Rich" for more information about both devices.

Do you need to regularly view e-mail attachments? If you do, consider a wireless-enabled Pocket PC or Palm OS-based PDA, or buy a wireless data modem for your notebook. Pocket PCs include a version of Microsoft Office that makes it easy to send and receive Word and Excel files: The Pocket PC-based Hitachi G1000, for instance, is a slick wireless communicator with a built-in QWERTY thumbpad and a camera.

Does your cellular service provider offer wireless Internet access for notebooks? AT&T Wireless aside, Sprint has been heavily advertising the use of its nationwide third-generation PCS Vision network with notebooks. For my review of Sprint's PCS Vision on a notebook, see "Mobile Computing: Sprint's New High-Speed Wireless."

Have you checked your ISP's wireless offerings? Cellular network service carriers aren't the only game in town, of course. Some ISPs such as EarthLink also offer wireless devices for e-mail and Web surfing. For my review of EarthLink's wireless service, go to "Mobile Computing: Review of Wireless Service for PDAs."

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