A farewell letter to my TomTom One...

[Arno]

In general, what kind of cost for data plans that include tethering (if any exist), and if not, how much extra for tethering for a data plan? That will make a big difference to people who are buying the newer GO400/500/600 models there.

The new Nav4 GO400/500/600 and the "Live" 5000/6000 models are missing so many features vs. previous models that many of us are amazed that they chose to send them to market.

As I did not have any data plan, I ended up paying $10/mo. for 100MB to get Live on the GO 600.
Had it been available, I would be better of getting a $60/yr. subscription to TomTom for a GO 6000.
Even if the device would cost $100 more, I would break even the first year and be in the money in each subsequent one.

GO 930 'plus'
I thought at the time that it required the 930 T model which was not sold in Canada.
And no, I am not sufficiently interested to start digging.

 

[canderson]

The "T" model was the one that came with the RDS cable. Didn't have anything to do with Plus, apart from the fact that Plus would have made the cable unnecessary.

 

[Arno]

So "plus" was working off your data plan. I had the data connection disabled on my Samsung SCH-u510 at the time.
As I have written often, in my neck of the woods TomTom doesn't offer me alternatives I don't know, when the trouble starts and I definitely wouldn't pay for roaming in the States, exactly where it could be of benefits to me.

 

[canderson]

So "plus" was working off your data plan.

Well, yes and no ... or should I just really qualify that and say "Maybe".

For a lot of us, we didn't have a data plan back then -- nobody was doing data on the phone itself since our phones were incapable of anything 'data' beyond SMS messages (remember those black and white low resolution screens???), and many didn't even support SMS. However, many were still capable of 19200 data transmission if you could find a way to get to it. Many of those phones back in the day actually supported RS-232 data comms whether the carriers publicized this or not. Some carriers created special tethering plans that used the phone for PC connection at dial-up speed (19200 was about the max you could get over their networks back then) and sold you the RS-232 cable to mate the PC to the phone to make it happen. Some carriers didn't offer a tethering plan at all, but in many cases, it was still possible to get one of their phones to cooperate if some one would tip you off as to the login procedure. Nextel was a good example of that. If you had the magic decoder ring, you could use many of their iDen phones for 19200 dial-up.

Moving onward from that...

If you had a phone that also supported DUN, you could use a Bluetooth DUN capable TomTom to work through the same login procedure that you would if using a PC and RS-232 cable to the phone. The same login information that you would provide using a terminal emulator on the PC was stuffed into a few fields prompted by the TomTom dialup UI, and the TomTom sent them string by string just as if you were typing them on a keyboard. That's how Plus services connections were accomplished on a TomTom. It wasn't even as easy as that sounds. Since the TomTom didn't look for response strings the way a live user would on a keyboard/monitor, certain text responses from the carrier were assumed 'in the blind', and as a result, one had to add pause characters and the like to the login strings to be sure you didn't step on the server's response. It was all very untidy, loads of fun to figure out, and for many of us, eventually useful since Plus traffic was an improvement over RDS. It was especially nice to be able to set up the frequency (in minutes, as I recall) of polling the TomTom server by the GPS. Not only did that save you $ on a data plan (where you could get a legitimate tethered plan, it was usually metered service), but if the results weren't hurting your wallet, you could set it up to poll more frequently than the RDS system was able to cycle through the full list of 'events' in your geographic area. As I say, Plus was somewhere between RDS and Live during the time that the three have coexisted. 19200 was still a lot faster than RDS, though nothing like 2G service of Live. It was always my impression that Plus was the same as RDS data, only sent quite a bit more frequently, and a fair bit more precise and covering some additional roads since it was using coordinate data instead the very limiting 'intersection lookup tables' of RDS.

 

[OneTwoMany]

It was always my impression that Plus was the same as RDS data, only sent quite a bit more frequently, and a fair bit more precise and covering some additional roads since it was using coordinate data instead the very limiting 'intersection lookup tables' of RDS.

I am quite sure that with current maps there was and still is no difference between 'Plus' and 'Live' services. I would see every little 200 meter holdup on every little town road, coming and disappearing in basically real time, this being data definitely not transmitted by RDS. Of course, both services include the RDS data, but for all it's worth, I think that when it comes to traffic and weather, they are exactly the same.

 

[OneTwoMany]

I'm curious to know how you see tethering dealt with across Europe. It's been a while since I checked to see who the players were, but do you still have T-Mobile, O2, Vodafon, and E-Plus in Germany? How do they currently treat you regarding tethering there? In general, what kind of cost for data plans that include tethering (if any exist), and if not, how much extra for tethering for a data plan?

Well, tethering at least in Germany is basically no problem and in almost all cases is not prohibited by the providers. I think only the first iPhones sold on a very specific Telekom contract made this more difficult. Data itself was quite expensive some years ago, but by now has come down a lot. Many people today tether their laptops or tablets while away from home. Most contracts offer a flat rate with severe reduction from HSDPA to GPRS-speed when the paid monthly limit has been reached. This will be around 200 to 500 MByte on small contracts, 1 to 2 GB on medium contracts and 5 to (in some older cases) 10 GB on a large contract. The last cost about 25 Euro a month, around 35 dollars, but the former ones are much cheaper, starting at a few Euro or being included in a packet price. Roaming in Europe is far more expensive, which is archaic considering most providers are affiliated or offer services across many European countries. There is an optional limit of 60 Euro per month available for these cases, but after that the data rate is soon throttled to a few bytes per second. Still, the amount of data TomTom uses while tethering would be approximately 300 kByte for a 3 hour drive, which is not much compared to what some modern smartphone apps are continuously transmitting in the background.

BTW, I cannot really imagine GSM services going away in Europe any time soon, as many installed systems rely on transmitting small amounts of data via GPRS or Edge and would have to have their hardware exchanged. In fact, at the end of 2016 the current 900 and 1800 MHz frequency spectrums will, among others, be auctioned again. I think that is not a good idea after all the money providers have invested in their infrastructure (and reaped, of course). But as the people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are busy paying for the debts of the European upper classes, the money has to come from somewhere, I guess.

 

[Arno]

Still, the amount of data TomTom uses while tethering would be approximately 300 kByte for a 3 hour drive, which is not much compared to what some modern smartphone apps are continuously transmitting in the background.

With data and phone switched off, my HTC One V usage still shows 100 KB/day.
A 3 hour drive puts me over 1 MB.

 

[OneTwoMany]

With data and phone switched off, my HTC One V usage still shows 100 KB/day.
A 3 hour drive puts me over 1 MB.

Well, that would either mean Live uses more data than Plus, or that services are different in different countries, or that I am wrong on my data usage.

 

[canderson]

BTW, I cannot really imagine GSM services going away in Europe any time soon, as many installed systems rely on transmitting small amounts of data via GPRS or Edge and would have to have their hardware exchanged.

I certainly don't expect GSM to go away there, and it's not going away here either. It's the packet switched 2G GPRS data service over GSM that's going to be going away here (ouch!), and yes, we have a whole lot of devices that depend upon it, too -- not just TomTom units, including a lot of little telemetry devices that are better served using a cellular connection than a dedicated point to point RF connection. Those folks are going to be SOL when AT&T pulls the plug on GPRS here, though they're so niche oriented that you don't hear a lot about it.

 

[canderson]

Well, that would either mean Live uses more data than Plus, or that services are different in different countries, or that I am wrong on my data usage.

Live devices have no mechanism for setting the update frequency. Your Plus arrangement does, and you are able to control data usage that way if you wish. Again, since Plus came out when everything here (and there) was being metered for usage, some people were a bit touchy about data usage, and TomTom was nice enough to allow control of that.

The amount of data being received in Arno's case may also be different than your experience due to where the two of you live, and the amount of actual data needed to represent all of the 'incidents' within a fixed geographic radius of your location. While I know the traffic in the Hanover area can also be pretty miserable at times, Toronto generates a lot more traffic incidents since it's a much larger city (with about 5X the population). That may explain why Arno sees higher data usage. Having driven in both towns, I'd rather drive in Hanover (well, except during CeBIT, of course!).

 

[dhn]

One doesn't drive in Toronto these days. One 'crawls'.