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Further
Reading ...
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Could We, as Net Marketers be missing a Great Opportunity? - John Coote
It is well known that people from all walks of life use the Internet for a wide variety of reasons. For many, their objective is just to learn or gather information. Yet vast numbers use it for the purpose of making their living. Then masses of...
Bare Bones Guide To Starting A Business - Robert Nelson
Always contact a Lawyer for advice as to how to set up a business if you are unsure. There is always free legal advice available through SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). If your business starts to get really lucrative in the future, you...
Having a Portfolio on the Internet Can Help you Infiltate the Workforce - Jesse S Somer
If you’re an up and coming graphic/web designer just out of university, you’ll know it’s quite hard to break into the workforce. You have to contact employers one by one, spend your time traveling and lugging your portfolio to their offices. Well,...
Term Life Insurance Quotes for Singles - Ivon T Hughes
Term life insurance quotes are rarely a concern of single people, but they should be. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that term life is something owned only by families in the event that the chief breadwinner dies. Term life insurance...
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How Reliable are Cell Phones
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Written By:
Sharon Housley
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Cellular phones and pagers are part of the "now" generation, instant contact, anywhere at any time. People are looking for convenience, comfort and security. The question is how instantaneous and reliable is the contact?
Talking with someone is the main use for a cell phone, yet due to poor reception how often do calls not go through, or important calls "dropped" due to flaky coverage? Let us not forget, that in a time of tragedy, lines were congested and the resounding "all circuits busy" messages were heard from coast to coast. There is certainly room for improvement if you want to reach out and touch someone.
The alternative to voice communication is traditional text messaging, enjoyed by the young as SMS, a 'hip' communication method, and the older as the tried and true paging, a trustworthy means of communication. A carrier receives pages or text messages via a traditional dial up modem or Internet connection to their terminal, and then broadcasts the messages over their network to the appropriate wireless device. How instant is sending a text message? The answer might surprise you...it depends.
Traditional means of sending text messages is surprisingly reliable and fast. However, many cellular carriers, wishing to merge technologies while keeping costs down, have opted to utilize email technology to send text messages. Why not, an email is nothing more than a text message, using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). On the surface this sounds like a great idea, nearly everyone has email access, and the use of the Internet streamlines the sending of messages.
What is often overlooked, is the fact that email was not designed to be time sensitive. There can be significant delays and an instantaneous receipt can be lost when sending email to a pager or cell phone. Text messages sent via the email protocol SMTP could take a more scenic delivery route. While in many cases, receiving messages in a timely fashion is not critical; some industries require and benefit from the receipt - continued below ...
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of urgent messages. It is therefore important to realize and make a distinction between the protocols that are designed for instantaneous communication and those that are not.
If sending messages immediately to a cell phone or pager is required, more reliable protocols are available. When sending text messages, via a modem, the Telocator Alphanumeric Protocol (TAP) is extremely dependable, albeit slower due to the modem dialing. If sending messages with a high-speed Internet connection use the newer time sensitive Internet protocols: Simple Network Paging Protocol (SNPP) and Wireless Communication Transfer Protocol (WCTP). If your carrier supports these protocols they are the better options for sending important messages.
If carriers understand the "now" generation is about speed and reliability, customer satisfaction will improve. Text messaging is a reliable and useful communication method, especially since voice is not always convenient or possible. With public awareness and urging, carriers will increase their offerings of text messaging protocols. Carriers should offer email or SMTP, but they must also support time sensitive protocols, regardless, of whether the protocols are older such as TAP or newer such as WCTP.
Resources -
Carriers supporting SNPP - http://www.notepage.net/snpp.htm
Carriers supporting WCTP - http://www.notepage.net/wctp.htm
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and http://www.small-business-software.net
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