China’s Static Mobile Phone, And Its Mobile Static Phone

One of the things I noticed at last week’s CommunicAsia expo in Singapore was the range of phones. And not just fancy handhelds touted by dancing, skintight woven women, although that did claim some of my attention. But China, for example, is pumping out machines that run the gamut of needs, including desktop GSM phones.

Guanri, for example, of Shenzhen, sells several phones that use either CDMA or GSM wireless technology for phones that either sit in your office, or work as payphones, both for public places and ‘supervised locations’, which I take to mean shops or kiosks where someone can make sure you don’t run off with the phone and where they rather than the phone takes the money you owe for using it.

I realise this isn’t anything new: Africa and poorer regions do a lot of this kind of thing. But I guess this idea of a GSM phone masquerading as a desktop phone is kind of new, and represents a challenge to China’s quasi mobile market, where a technology originally devised for Japan called  Personal Handyphone System (PHS) uses a Wireless Local Loop (WLL) to offer a sort of mobile access, at least when you’re in range of an antenna.

The idea, I guess is one of applying the principle in reverse — where you can only use the cellphone when you’re near a loop — so that your use of the phone is limited by the fact that it’s physically stuck to your desk. Either way you’re making the most of what is available — a network that is not particularly farflung, but more accessible than a landline for which you’ll have to wait several blue moons.