In the March 2001 issue's Letters to the Editor column, a reader wrote in to ask if it would be possible to get wireless email access from a Third World country. This month, another reader has some intriguing suggestions on how this might be accomplished.

Wireless email abroad
This letter was written in response to a letter posed in the March 2001 issue's Letters to the Editor column at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200103/pelte0301001.html.

I travel a lot, though not normally to Third World countries. However, the principal would be the same anywhere.

Any normal phone line using the normal Palm Modem (or mobile or satellite phone if correctly equipped) can be used to call an ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The cost involved in this set up are the phone call charges and the ISP charges.

The ISP can be your normal one, though the further away from your base of operations, the higher the phone charges. This is also determined somewhat by your length of stay at the location. If you are in one place long enough, then it may be worth finding and setting up an account with an ISP that is as close as you can get to your location; at least on the same continent. Email-only accounts can be set up quite cheaply in most cases.

If you set up a specific account just for accessing important email messages(you should limit who actually has this address to prevent unwanted email being sent), download time can be around five minutes in most cases, using MultiMail Pro and downloading around ten simple emails. You may even be able to have your office filter your emails and send you only the ones that you require, or maybe the office could even summarize email and attachments to keep you up to date. Having email messages sent as "text only" is also preferable, as this also decreases download times more than halving the data in an "HTML format," in most cases.

You may also require appropriate phone line adapters to connect your modem to the particular countries' phone system.

In most countries, you can use a calling card or phone card that can also help to reduce call costs.

If you are staying at a hotel, make sure that you discuss call costs before you make that call, as many hotels add extra charges onto calls that are made from the hotel, and some hotel billing systems do not recognize some calling cards. Occasionally, I have had to organize special arrangements through the hotel, though this is less frequent now.

I hope this will be of some use.

Regards,
Mark Thomas