GSM phones

Today, I got a call on my mobile phone from a Bell Mobility sales person.

The irony is that, were I a Bell Mobility customer, he couldn’t have called me, since I’m in Prague, roaming on GSM.

He wanted to offer me a Bell Mobility corporate package.

I explained that I was not interested in what I call a cordless phone. Sorry, Bell and Telus don’t offer mobile phones. They are just cordless phones. Cordless phones have a base station (usually in your house), and you can go some distance. You have to use the phone that came with the base station, and one can’t use different phones with the same base station.

Mobile phones such as those based upon GSM, seperate their handset from the identity, and you can roam almost anywhere in the world. You can switch phones by just switching the SIM card, or make my phone become your phone by doing the same thing.

What Bell “Mobility” sells is just a cordless phone. Sure, it has a larger range (a good part of Canada, and some parts of the US) than the one I can get at Walmart, but that’s really it.

Bell will switch to GSM. When it happens, I will switch. Or to Telus.