Alltel Cellular - What a trick on Alltel...(c;

Author

What a trick on Alltel...(c;

Larry

2006-04-18, 11:48 pm

I was in my new local Alltel company store, this afternoon, to complain
about the signal at home going to hell the last couple of weeks. Now
that the foliage is coming out on the trees, it's getting worse. I think
they tilted the antennas down, again, and I'm down a hill on the river,
in shadow to the local cell which is behind the hill. I'm down to 1 bar
and switching to analog inside the house, now. It wasn't that way until
very recently. They're promising to look into it. Yeah, right.

Does anyone know a backdoor number into Alltel's network department I
could ask for help in moving the antennas back around to "Useful"?

Time for play......

While I was in there, the chickrep waiting on me talked into her toy
computerphone, the UT STARCOM:
http://www.alltel.com/phones/audiovox/6700.html

The sliding keyboard is neat, but doing a webpage really sucks, even
though it actually will display a tiny part of the weather map on
vortex.plymouth.edu, my fav spam-free weather site.

Fooling around with this little computer running Windoze Lite Lite, I
found its wifi connection page and BINGO! There were two 802.11 wifi
links showing up. Both were calling for their passcodes, but I guessed a
few from Quiznos Overpriced Sub Shop's netlink, next door to the Alltel
office, and found it...(c;

I connected the Alltel toycomputer to Quiznos' wifi and called up a few
really fast-loading webpages, now that we were on wifi, not cellular
dragging along like a snail.

I motioned the chickrep over and asked her if her toycomputer went this
fast all the time, because I heard Alltel was slow loading..(c; The look
on her face?

PRICELESS

She loaded the same webpage, on her phone, and waited...and waited....and
waited. While we were waiting, I booted CNN.com for the news, on my
wifi-connected demo phone, and it blinked right up, pictures, spam and
all. She just stared..(c;

After having my fun, I showed her how to speed up her "internet service"
to wifi speed at her desk in Alltel's sales floor space. She didn't even
know it HAD real wifi, much less how to connect it to anything.

I wonder if Network Stumbler (www.stumbler.net) will work on a UT
Starcom? It boots Windoze so should work, right? You could be scanning
with Net Stumbler for real broadband while slogging along on Alltel's
overpriced dialup....(c;

Connected to wifi, it's gonna need a hard drive....(c;

Richard S

2006-07-02, 3:36 pm

I've got that phone. It picks up wifi as I drive down the street at 25 or
so going to work. I was surprised to see that it picks up my home wifi at a
distance greater than my wifi laptops. Overall I like the PPC6700, but my
experience with these combined devices persists that the phones are really
quite poor. I bought a 1 gig sd card, downloaded a free registry, moved all
the internet stuff, message attachments etc. to the card and it seems to
work well.

"Larry" <noone@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns97A9C5D5061C
0noonehomecom@208.49.80.253...
>I was in my new local Alltel company store, this afternoon, to complain
> about the signal at home going to hell the last couple of weeks. Now
> that the foliage is coming out on the trees, it's getting worse. I think
> they tilted the antennas down, again, and I'm down a hill on the river,
> in shadow to the local cell which is behind the hill. I'm down to 1 bar
> and switching to analog inside the house, now. It wasn't that way until
> very recently. They're promising to look into it. Yeah, right.
>
> Does anyone know a backdoor number into Alltel's network department I
> could ask for help in moving the antennas back around to "Useful"?
>
> Time for play......
>
> While I was in there, the chickrep waiting on me talked into her toy
> computerphone, the UT STARCOM:
> http://www.alltel.com/phones/audiovox/6700.html
>
> The sliding keyboard is neat, but doing a webpage really sucks, even
> though it actually will display a tiny part of the weather map on
> vortex.plymouth.edu, my fav spam-free weather site.
>
> Fooling around with this little computer running Windoze Lite Lite, I
> found its wifi connection page and BINGO! There were two 802.11 wifi
> links showing up. Both were calling for their passcodes, but I guessed a
> few from Quiznos Overpriced Sub Shop's netlink, next door to the Alltel
> office, and found it...(c;
>
> I connected the Alltel toycomputer to Quiznos' wifi and called up a few
> really fast-loading webpages, now that we were on wifi, not cellular
> dragging along like a snail.
>
> I motioned the chickrep over and asked her if her toycomputer went this
> fast all the time, because I heard Alltel was slow loading..(c; The look
> on her face?
>
> PRICELESS
>
> She loaded the same webpage, on her phone, and waited...and waited....and
> waited. While we were waiting, I booted CNN.com for the news, on my
> wifi-connected demo phone, and it blinked right up, pictures, spam and
> all. She just stared..(c;
>
> After having my fun, I showed her how to speed up her "internet service"
> to wifi speed at her desk in Alltel's sales floor space. She didn't even
> know it HAD real wifi, much less how to connect it to anything.
>
> I wonder if Network Stumbler (www.stumbler.net) will work on a UT
> Starcom? It boots Windoze so should work, right? You could be scanning
> with Net Stumbler for real broadband while slogging along on Alltel's
> overpriced dialup....(c;
>
> Connected to wifi, it's gonna need a hard drive....(c;
>

Larry

2006-07-02, 3:36 pm

"Richard S" < richarde99@NOSPAMhot
mail.com> wrote in
news:zEupg.52452$ZW3.14177@dukeread04:

> I've got that phone. It picks up wifi as I drive down the street at
> 25 or so going to work. I was surprised to see that it picks up my
> home wifi at a distance greater than my wifi laptops. Overall I like
> the PPC6700, but my experience with these combined devices persists
> that the phones are really quite poor. I bought a 1 gig sd card,
> downloaded a free registry, moved all the internet stuff, message
> attachments etc. to the card and it seems to work well.
>
>

Thanks for the report. I was going to get a Palm OS phone/PDA, but there
are so many carrier games going on trying to bleed it for every penny,
and a friend of mine handed me his Handspring Visor Edge PDA with all the
toys, I decided I was better off syncing with the laptop on wifi than
playing cellular phone restriction games with the carriers trying to
maximize profits....

Besides, I got the Linksys CIT200 wireless phone for Skype on my notebook
to wifi, just for fun. Skype, of course, is mostly free with no games.
Hell, I can talk to Switzerland for EU0.017/minute from my prepaid
account you pump up with your credit card. Skype to US/Canada is no
charge until January as Skype tries to put Vonage out of business...(c;

Cellular must be in a tither. I told the Cisco boys at Linksys their
next model phone would have Skype in ROM and an 802.11g transceiver,
instead of the 1900 Mhz transceiver in mine to the cell plugged into the
laptop USB port. The 2nd generation phone simply scans for any open
hotspot, logs itself onto Skype when it can, and runs Skype direct from
the handset, no laptop or desktop computer necessary. A tiny Linux with
Skype ported to it would be really nice in the phone. It wouldn't
crash...(c;

The Skype phone is far more fun than glitzy cellphones you have to sign
over your first born child in a contract. Skype only costs you if you
use it to landlines or cellphones, even then a lot of it is free.

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-kea...00-skype-phone-
review.asp

I leave the notebook running off the car battery with the Skype cell up
on the dash. It hooks to the local hotspot. I carry the Skype phone in
the mall or restaurant, up to about 150 meters from the car, a fair
distance given it runs off USB power! Works great...great fun.

LinkBot