Omnisky Declares Bankruptcy, Sells Out to EarthLink

Cost was one reason but another was that it isn't available in Atlanta, where I live. But seeing as EarthLink is based out of Atlanta, I hope that will soon change.

I was in a store in Overland Park KS a few months ago and they actually had these Omnisky modems for sale.
I asked the clerk if buyers got, you know, PISSED, when they got it home and found out that they were a four hour drive to the nearest covered area.

I live in a major (not covered) city and I waited forever for this before it became obvious that it was never going to expand any further. That message about "now available in Orange county" has been there for, what?, a year?

I finally bought a nokia 8290 (IR port and built in modem) and have been using it to connect to the net with my Palm 505 (they have been promising those modems for quite a while now too) ever since.

Uhhh, I think the original posters question was why people "DIDN'T" subscribe to the service. I agree that coverage and price scared a lot of people off, including me. Now I'll be QUIET.

I am a current subscriber. Started Dec '99 with the beta program. I live in Northern Va, near Dulles Airport. Besides the cost (when I first started there wasn't much of a choice except Ricochet and see what happened to them as well), I have been very happy with the service. It works in most of the DC metro area. In addition I often travel on business. I've used OS in Houston TX, Boston Mass and other cities with no trouble. As new technologies have emerged I've been noticed that the speed of OS leaves a bit to be desired, but for email it doesn't have to be that fast.

Will I upgrade to a new OS account when I move to new hardware? Probably not, unless I can get a good deal on a modem and a cheaper service plan. I'll probably move to a new cell phone that will connect to which ever PDA I buy next.

Mike
miknny@yahoo.com

I would happily have paid $40/month for it...but no coverage at all, good or spotty, in the boonies, so not much point.

I was an Omnisky beta tester and kept the service for over a year, though I used it less and less as time went by and, when the credit card it was on expired, I let the service lapse, as well.

Why? Well, it certainly wasn't the cost, because I then signed up for a Blackberry, which I adore. Rather, to me at least, the problem with Omnisky was basically twofold (though, of course I would have liked it to be cheaper, too): first, though I live and do most of my work in New York City and environs, even here I found service much spottier than with a cell phone. When inside, the modem worked only near a window -- and then, only when the building was tall and not obstructed by other buildings. In a boardroom, or an interior office, or at a restaurant, you could be almost guaranteed that there would be no reception. And these are the places you really want service...to check to see if an important e-mail, or document or agreement has come in. Otherwise, what's the matter with waiting until you get back to the office, or just calling in for messages?

Second, the light notifying you of new mail almost never worked properly, meaning you had to turn your Palm on and download new mail manually, which for those of us who get 200 messages a day could amount to a heck of a long wait after a two hour meeting. In no way could Omnisky's service compare to the Blackberry which almost instantly lets you know of new messages.

I don't mean to advertise the Blackberry or unfairly malign Omnisky. I know many very happy users of Omnisky who need true TCP/IP connections and who greatly value the service. And certainly, not everyone needs all of their e-mail 30 seconds after it arrives, as is the case with the Blackberry.

It's just that I can easily understand why the appeal of EITHER of these services is so limited right now. Too many people just don't see the point.

Someday soon, with 3G service, I guess, there will be a company/hardware/wireless service which gets widespread acceptance. It's just that, at the moment, the appeal of such services and devices is limited to very early adopters who will overlook inconvenience and limitations to squeeze out the value they need.

Someday, there will be a value that many people actually WANT.

Dan Prizer

The problem with Atlanta (and the rest of BellSouth's main territory) is that neither analog cell carrier has deployed CDPD. This is a channel that Omnisky's hardware used for its wireless access, and its based on reusing spectrum that was deployed for analog cell phone users. They had contracts with the two main CDPD carriers: Verizon and AT&T, so the Omnisky service area was the union of the two companies' areas. BellSouth had one of the analog licenses in Georgia, but they had their own Mobitex network they didn't want to compete with. The other carrier just never bothered deploying.

Until the B-side carrier can be prodded to deploy CDPD, Earthlink won't be able to provide that service around Atlanta, even though there does seem to be demand. Too bad.

The largest start-up cost for Riccochet/OmniSky was, of course, trying to build a nationwide data infrastructure.

Spend a day hunting down cellphone towers. Do you realize just how many of those things there are in your average city?

Here's a map of downtown Vancouver, BC to give you an idea:
http://geckobeach.com/cellular/maps/vancouver/vancdown.htm

Then remind yourself how bad celphone coverage can get in most cities.

Keep in mind that those OmniSky nodes are probably $2000/ea, at least, throw in the cost of tower rental, and access for all the points...

Is it any wonder why prices were high, nobody was turning a profit and coverage was so lousy?

The Treo inventors have the right idea - piggyback on an exsisting network.

As far as prices - Isen't G3 supposed to exponentially increase the amount of data bandwidth available per node? If the cel providers are BRIGHT, they'll drop the prices instead of getting greedy and get some market saturation going.

We'll see, I guess.

I am a former YadaYada subscriber, was for about 2 months. Now a lesson why Omnisky,yada yada died. Main reason, PRICE. Come on people, why the hell will anyone pay $30-$50 for something that is limited to only their handheld. I pay $30 for my cable modem, and get a whole lot more out of it then I would have if I used it with my pda. Earthlink has the right idea, bundling. A person gets dsl/cable. Then they get the option of getting wireless inet for their pda. They are more likely to do this because a. they are informed about it from their current provider, b. they actually learn you can do that, c. it'll be a lot cheaper, hopefully. OS did say that the price will stay the same, but that could just mean it won't go up at all, not that it won't go down. Also, the coverage is horrible on cppd. Kyocera, Airprime, and Handspring have the right idea. Go through the providers, who people already go to and use existing established networks.

Btw, to the guy who was mentioning 3G. It should be noted that 3G needs even more towers then are already in the field to operate.

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When you have a Clie showed up your mouth, you can only talk in vowels.

It was so obvious, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Called what?

Its not about the products, its about the modems. If there was a modem for the popular clies, not just the lowest oldest model, they would have had them long time ago. If its a CPPD modem, all you need to do is activate it through them, like a cell phone.

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When you have a Clie showed up your mouth, you can only talk in vowels.

If you were buying a PDA from a company that MADE PDAs, instead of buying one from a company that makes consumer appliances.

Everybody else (Handera (Definately!), Handspring, and finally Palm ) realized that they coulden't sell peripherals unless they kept the same connector design for longer than a model or two.

Sony thinks it's still making MiniDisk players, where they can change the case completely around every revision. It's an OK way to think when you're selling something that just needs a headphone plug to work, but it dosen't cut it with more complex hardware.

Maybe someday Sony will settle down on a hardware platform - But when they do, you'll have to buy another one! God knows they won't offer adapters. Hell, they diden't even want to offer OS upgrades.

SUCKER.

Can someone confirm this? Friends of mine have Palm7x's and LOVE them. What a waste.

I'm sorry folks, but this is a completely false rumor. As a Palm employee, I cannot disclose Palm's plans for Mobitex-based product beyond Palm VII, but I can safely say that the Palm.Net service will continue!