Prague Journal

Saturday, January 08, 2005.

We escorted Aditya and his suitcases to his new accommodations near Republic Square and set him on his own to get a mobile phone that would accommodate an internet connection. The flat is in a convenient location, has plenty of space, complete kitchen, bathroom and washing machine, and has satellite TV that gets tons of English-language programming. If the mobile telephone works as promised, he’ll be set. There are not only lots of options (all of which are, of course, expensive), but most of the information is in Czech. Even the English-language websites are confusing, especially regarding what is included, what costs what, and what each option will actually do (voice, data transmission, tri-band, GPRS, WAP, Bluetooth, etc) – way beyond my current knowledge about technology interfaces. Several of the websites claim to have some unlimited-usage monthly fee structures, which would be preferable to a per-minute cost for internet data transmission, but most plans sneak in separate charges for voice transmission and messaging. Rick and I use our mobile phones mostly for SMS (short message service) that cost roughly one half the price of a one-minute phone call. Our telephone bill, which includes the broadband connection, runs about $70/month. Our mobile charges (excluding the amortized cost of the actual handsets) probably run less than $10/month for both of us. Considering the convenience, both are worth the cost. Long-distance calls from here, on the other hand, are not. So we rely on e-mail or calls from the US to us, since there are many cheap international services for calls made from the US. If we were in the UK, however, calls anywhere in the world would be cheap.
So we all attended to business this afternoon, Aditya bought his phone and hooked up his computer, and Rick and I went to the train station to get discount cards, in preparation for our trip to Jetĕtice next weekend. Walking through town was lovely, since the sun was out and the weather mild. In fact, Prague set a 230-year record high of 13.7-degrees C (56.7 F), beating the 1998 record of 11.4 (52.5F). Still, I hope it snows for our trip to the countryside.

posted by JWinn @ 8:51 PM