Hi, all;

Thought you might be interested in my cell phone adventure, just beginning...

I live in Los Angeles, but am going to be on the road for the next several months. (Not in the Airstream at the beginning, but hopefully by January.) I looked into the AT&T Digital One Rate program, and have signed up.

This setup requires that you buy a phone from AT&T. The phone is digital/analog capable, and the plan essentially makes the entire United States your local area. No long distance charges, no roaming charges...you get a block of minutes for a monthly fee (I'm getting 1000 minutes for $120/month), and you pay $.25/minute if you go over that. Plus, there is only a charge to your credit card...no separate bills, which I like when on the road, as I get my credit card statements via modem.

Now, $120/month is a lot of money...but I pay at least that much here at home, once you total up all the different bills. (I have two lines at home, one for data.)

What I intend is to make this new phone my primary voice phone.

The interesting thing is, the phone maker (Nokia) sells a software package that allows data communications. No modem is used, just a cable from the phone to your serial port. (you can also program the phone from your computer, although I don't know how necessary replacing the phone ring with a custom MIDI file is!)

The catch is, of course, you must be in a digital-capable area to get the data service, and this leaves out a huge chunk of the country, for right now. They claim it's a good bit faster than an analog cell connection...not 28.8, but pretty close. (19000, if I remember right)

I hope digital service comes quickly, because it is only in the digital service areas that you get added features like call waiting, call forwarding, paging, etc. If/when that happens, I'll feel pretty darn connected from my Airstream! (This Phone is also an alarm clock, a calendar, a calculator, a currency converter, and it plays four games...and, as I described, a digital modem. Hmmm.)

I'll let you all know if the darned thing works.

n