Life without an iPhone

By JAMES WARDEN, News-Record Writer

“Touching is believing.”

Thus sayeth Apple about its iPhone.

Unfortunately, local residents won’t know for some time whether the company’s newest offering deserves their faith because they can’t touch it here in Gillette.

The iPhone is hardly alone in its absence from the area. Wyoming is large and sparsely populated, and that can delay the arrival of the latest goods and services.

The holiday shopping season that started Friday tests the tech-savvy on a particularly biblical scale, as omnipresent catalogs and out-of-state commercials tease geeks with the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

But while those sexy Apple ads can make it hard to believe in life without an iPhone, the Christmas shopping season need not spark a crisis of faith: Some of the latest goods are already here, others are just around the corner and many have viable alternatives.

MORE MAJOR WIRELESS PROVIDERS

- What it is: An expansion from the duopoly that Verizon and Alltel now effectively have in Campbell County.

- Why you want it: One word: iPhone. Until manufacturers start making phones that can jump between wireless providers, local residents will be stuck staring wistfully at ads for sleek phones not available in Campbell County. Even if all phones were made to work seamlessly between rival providers, manufacturers could still choose to limit the hottest phones to a single provider — as Apple and AT&T did with the iPhone. Quite simply, the more providers offering local service, the more access Gillette residents have to the best-selling phones.

- Cost: Comparable to the cell phone service you’re paying for now — just with a different logo on the back of that shiny touch-screen you’ve been eyeing.

- Who’s got it now: Areas with a lot of people in a limited space tend to have the most wireless carriers.

- What’s holding Gillette back: Not enough people, said Roger Entner, a telecom expert and senior vice president of communications at New York-based IAG Research. Carriers are barred from selling service in an area where they don’t have towers, but towers are expensive. To make a profit, companies need about 1,000 subscribers for every wireless tower they put up. Most cities need a few towers. So even when existing companies have just 60 percent market penetration, it can be a risky proposition for a new company to move in on their turf. The arithmetic is so straightforward that Entner accurately guessed the number of major carriers as soon as he learned Gillette’s population.

- Prospects: The signal’s pretty clear that Gillette will be stuck with two major carriers for the foreseeable future.

- Alternatives: Options are limited for carriers, but manufacturers have announced a plethora of touch-screen, multimedia phones similar to the iPhone for virtually all carriers. Verizon’s Voyager, which has already debuted, bears a particular resemblance to the iPhone and has been getting good reviews.

FIBER TO THE PREMISES (FTTP)

- What it is: Fiber-optic connections right into the home. While the telecommunications system is largely fiber optic now, most homes have slower copper wires running the last few blocks to the home.

- Why you want it: Better TV picture quality, clearer phone services and faster Internet. FiOS, Verizon’s FTTP service, now offers speeds up to 10 times that of a typical cable modem connection, and the company has tested speeds twice that rate, said Sharon Cohen-Hagar, a spokeswoman for the company.

- Cost: Verizon has plans that include TV, phone and Internet for about $100 a month. Internet-only plans range from $40 to $180 a month, depending on the speed.

- Who’s got it now: Verizon, the largest FTTP provider, offers its FiOS service in parts of the northeast, Texas, Florida and California. As of September, more than 2 million homes in North America have direct fiber connections, according to the Fiber to the Home Council, an organization that promotes the technology. The overwhelming majority of those homes are in the United States.

- What’s holding Gillette back: Prohibitive start-up costs. Access to FTTP requires laying new fiber-optic wires, said Stephen Hardy, editorial director of Lightwave, a magazine for the fiber-optic industry. That is much more costly than hooking up cable or reworking a copper-wire network to allow speedier DSL service. Fiber-optic cable often simply isn’t laid unless a project already requires digging up streets or stringing wire. Consequently, the service is still very much a niche product; just 2 percent of U.S. households have direct fiber connections.

- Prospects: “Unlikely at any time in the foreseeable future,” Cohen-Hagar said. Verizon has no plans to expand FiOS beyond the company’s old network — which doesn’t run into Wyoming. There are some signs of hope. Fiber optic networks are cheaper to maintain than traditional copper-wire networks, Hardy said. Verizon’s market muscle could also whittle down vendors’ costs and make the technology more attractive to smaller companies. Yet he estimates that it will be about a decade before companies switch over to fiber entirely.

- Alternatives: Cable Internet and DSL. While these high-speed connections are already starting to seem commonplace, nearly half of American households have no Internet or just a dial-up connection.

APPLE RETAIL STORES

- What it is: A traditional brick-and-mortar store stocked with Apple products and run by the company itself.

- Why you want it: Forget waiting precious days for that crucial iPod accessory to arrive by mail. Just drop into the store, pick up the item and get back to enjoying tunes the way you like ‘em. Add in personal shopping assistance, seminars and a one-on-one training, and you have the techie equivalent of a Sunset Boulevard fashion boutique.

- Cost: Depends on what you’re looking for. Many accessories cost about $30, while the latest Mac or MacBook Pro can run well into the thousands.

- Who’s got it now: Apple has more than 200 stores worldwide, but Gillette residents must drive 335 miles to Boulder, Colo., or Broomfield, Colo., to shop at one. The company doesn’t have a single store in Wyoming, and it has just six in Colorado and Utah, Wyoming’s only neighbors with an Apple retailer.

- What’s holding Gillette back: An Apple spokeswoman said the company generally doesn’t talk about the types of markets in which it likes to establish retail stores. But the list of the current stores shows that Apple stores center on densely populated metropolitan areas. Colorado, a state with 4.8 million people, has just five stores. Utah has only one store for its 2.6 million people. Wyoming, a state with a mere 500,000 people, is hardly the only state without a store. When the tech hubs of California, Oregon and Washington are discounted, almost half the states west of the Mississippi lack an Apple retail store.

- Prospects: Chances are slimmer than the newest iPod Nano.

- Alternatives: Those intent on Apple-branded products can log on to the online store at http://store.apple.com. But Apple products have become so pervasive that traditional retailers offer most types of third-party accessories.

CITYWIDE WIRELESS INTERNET

- What it is: Internet service that can be picked up anywhere in town.

- Why you want it: To access the Internet wherever you go. Sure, coffee shops and other businesses provide similar service. But you don’t have to scrape together enough change for a cup of coffee or — let’s be honest — stand outside the business like a panhandler while you check your e-mail for free.

- Cost: Generally free or low-cost.

- Who’s got it now: A diverse group of cities. Smaller communities have used taxpayer money to set up free, public Wi-Fi networks in areas not served by private Internet service providers. Metropolitan areas, on the other hand, have tended to work with privately funded companies to provide for-pay service, although this is often subsidized to reduce costs for low-income residents.

- What’s holding Gillette back: Priorities. The city has been working for the past two years to build a wireless network, said city Administrative Services Director Pam Boger, who heads the committee that is exploring the issue. Yet the goal of this network is to allow city employees to provide more efficient service, not to offer free Internet access to residents. Police officers, for example, could receive details about a suspect in their patrol cars or city utilities could access information on a resident’s water use without needing to send a meter reader by the home. The committee plans to present further details about the project to the City Council in January.

- Prospects: “At this point, we’re not looking at something accessible for the public,” Boger said. “Maybe some day, but that is not our top priority.”

- Alternatives: Coffee shops have been the traditional domain of wireless Internet, but even some fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s have it now.

LOCAL TV STATIONS

- What it is: Local TV

- Why you want it: To make sure you’re able to find out the results of that Camel game or City Council debate when you flip on the 5 o’clock news.

- Cost: Free to the consumer.

- Who’s got it now: Cities of all sizes across the country have local TV stations, but the Wyoming Broadcasters Association lists just three cities with major, for-profit TV stations: Jackson, Cheyenne and Casper, which has two stations.

- What’s holding Gillette back: Money, said Bill Sullivan, a TV representative for the Broadcasters Association and general manager of KCWY-TV in the Casper area. Starting up a station is expensive, and advertising revenues are hard to come by. Sullivan has a $500,000 budget for his news operation alone. Regulations make it hard even to air Wyoming channels broadcast from outside Gillette because the city is in Denver’s “designated market area.” Thus, KCWY, an NBC affiliate, can’t bring service to Gillette without slashing all the programming it has in common with the Colorado NBC station that already has a channel here. “Of course, no one wants to run a quarter of a network.”

- Prospects: Not a pretty picture. “Wyoming isn’t an area that’s known for making money in the broadcast business,” Sullivan said.

- Alternatives: Gillette Public Access TV offers coverage of some local sporting events, including high school football and dirt track racing. Beyond that, out-of-state TV stations are the rule.

WIRELESS BROADBAND

- What it is: A way for mobile phones to access the Internet at speeds comparable to speedy in-home cable Internet.

- Why you want it: The iPhone has given mobile phone users a vision of surfing the Web with a fully functioning browser. But if you don’t have high-speed access, forget about it. You wouldn’t watch your favorite YouTube videos with dial-up, would you? Wireless companies also offer specialized content — such as TV shows, music downloads and GPS directions — through their own broadband-based services, as with Verizon’s V-Cast and Alltel’s Axcess.

- Cost: Providers generally require customers to subscribe to one of the company’s premium plans, which usually start at $20 to $30 more than a traditional plan. Packages with access just to the specialized content can usually be added onto a plan for between $15 and $20.

- Who’s got it now: Coverage is comparable to mobile phone coverage a few years ago: It’s not everywhere, but it’s fast becoming ubiquitous. Densely populated areas and major thoroughfares are most likely to have coverage.

- What’s holding Gillette back: Nada. Gillette fits squarely into the evolutionary roll-out of these products.

- Prospects: Just got up and running. In October, Verizon and Alltel both launched their EV-DO service — the version of wireless broadband used by those companies, among others. While wireless customers may have started to see bars popping up on their phone’s “EV” meter several months ago, the service was just in its testing phase then. Now, though, the system is ready for anyone who wants to jump on board. The downside? A company’s wireless broadband service works only with that company’s phones. If you don’t have Verizon or Alltel, you’re out of luck in Gillette.
source: gillettenewsrecord.com
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