Potatoes are more intelligent than grass because people can eat them - Gurdjieff
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British mobile phone operators wonder about Kindle
DURING AMAZON'S big Kindle announcement yesterday we noticed that the outfit failed to announce its telco suppliers.
This surprised us as one of the reasons Amazon gave for not releasing the gadget in Europe straight away was that it required protracted negotiations with different telecom companies.
According to the Telegraph, the UK's mobile phone companies have not been contacted as to which of them has the contract.
Vodafone and O2 said they were 'puzzled' by the news that the Kindle has set its worldwide launch for October 19. Both of them had been pitching for the job, but only heard about the announcement about the same time as the rest of the world.
One shrugged its shoulders and said it did not know if it will have a role in the launch.
Amazon will begin shipping a new version of the Kindle later this month that can be used to purchase and download books in over 100 countries.
Amazon has dubbed the new version the 'Kindle with US and International Wireless'. But no supplier is mentioned.
It might be done through AT&T's network of partners, but apparently even that outfit has not been on the blower to its telecom peers to sort out the service.
Our guess is that if Amazon doesn't figure this out rather quickly then there will be a lot of miffed Kindle owners in Europe fairly soon. µ
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I can't be bothered to dig up the reference (it was quoted in one of the gadget blogs), but the data service is provided via AT&T's data roaming agreements. As these aren't cheap, there's and added $2 fee to download an item while out of the US. Clearly, this is targeted at international travelers and not at the European market..
Isn't the new kindle a GSM device?
A subscriber of any GSM data plan should be able to use the device, right?
Demonstrates how communication and network providers can stifle innovation. We need to our move networking and communications capabilities onto platforms which are not wrapped up in masses of red tape, terms of service and vendors politics and favoritism.