Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Walkie-talkies are still fun

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 22:53:31 -0400

Aug 4, 5:19 PM

Walkie-talkies are still fun

Chris Kridler
Tech Today

Why would grown-ups want to adopt a technology they first used years ago
when they were hiding in a cardboard-box fort in the back yard, making
strategies with a best friend in the treehouse next door?

Because walkie-talkies, at any age, are fun.

Nextel also recognizes that they're useful, at least for certain kinds of friends
and businesses. The company finished its national rollout of its Direct Connect
service last week, meaning people with Nextel Direct Connect service can
make not only cellular phone calls across the country, but walkie-talkie-type
direct calls.

In some ways, the service is brilliant -- you have quick access to the friends or
colleagues in your phone's directory -- but it's also limiting. The great thing
about regular phone calls is that your voices can overlap. You can hear the
other person laugh at your jokes. You can interrupt a long story with an "I've
got to go!" when the doorbell rings.

With the walkie-talkie-type service, you have to take turns. It's great, though,
if you just need to ask a question about which way to turn at a stop sign or
whether the family is out of milk.

My friend Karen Temme in Pennsylvania and I tried out the phones for a
couple of weeks. We both thought they were cool, but we also realized that
unless you and your phone are joined at the hip, direct-connect calls can be
missed easily.

Because the walkie-talkie calls are heralded with a cute little chirp instead of a

conventional ring, the phone can't be in your purse or in another room for you
to hear the walkie-talkie call. It has to be readily available, all the time.

The good thing about the chirp is it's non-intrusive. If you don't want to
answer it -- say, you're already on a land-line call you can't interrupt -- you
don't have to.

On the other hand, you have to keep pressing a button to talk, just as you
would with a walkie-talkie or the Family Radio Service radios that have
become so popular.

"When we talked for 10 minutes or so, my thumb started to hurt a little,"
Karen said.

She has the advantage of living near a Nextel tower, so she had awesome
reception. I had good reception most of the time, but every once in a while it
would drop out mysteriously -- even on U.S. 1 -- and I'd get a long tone,
indicating I couldn't complete the call. At least with Direct Connect, it's easy
to redial. You just hit the button again until you hear a chirp, then talk.

"Most of our plans come with unlimited Direct Connect," said Michele Pinnau,
a spokeswoman for Nextel. About 90 percent of Nextel customers use the
direct service heavily and so choose a plan with unlimited Direct Connect, she
said. With such a plan, the walkie-talkie minutes don't come out of the cellular
call minutes.

It's $10 to add nationwide, unlimited Direct Connect to a Nextel plan, she
said.

The Nextel service is available across the continental United States and
Hawaii, in 293 of the 300 top markets. Those include most major highways
and big cities, Pinnau said.

About 190 million Direct Connect calls are made daily, according to the
company.

The growth in Direct Connect customers has brought a new kind of intrusion
into public life, and in some ways, it's more irritating than cell phones. Now, in

restaurants and other spaces not intended for loud phone talking, the rest of us
get to hear not one side of the conversation but both.

Some people with Nextel phones don't seem to realize there's a button that
switches the speaker mode to private mode, so a user can simply hold the
phone up to her ear to carry on the Direct Connect call.

The phones we tried also had Internet service, and independently, each of us
was able to get a weather forecast with little effort. It was handy. As with any
Internet-capable phone, however, cell surfing is usually more trouble than it's
worth.
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/columnstoryA7941A.htm

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