Not news in itself but the context IS news. North Korea is slowly opening up its borders by introducing limited mobile phone coverage with Internet. The purpose, as it looks like, is for the network to allow access to information about the republic and act as some sort of cash cow with handset plans costing more than $100.00

More than 20,000 people had signed up for the service by April, according to a report by Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan.

It said the network could provide voice and SMS services to as many as 126,000 customers in the Pyongyang area and along the highway between the capital and Hyangsan 120 km (75 miles) to the northeast.

It was unclear how many local people were being given access to the network but the phones would be outside the price range of many, at 110 euros (153 dollars) for a basic handset. [Yahoo News]

[image c/o Zuma Press]

Announced yesterday, Alltell Wireless is pushing their new Rev-A technology that does 3.1MBPS for downloads and 1.8 MBPS for uploads. This service is spread across 18 areas including Little Rock, Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa in urban and rural areas.

Here’s a quote from the press release:

Alltel’s existing broadband Wireless Internet service enables remote access to corporate intranets, productivity enhancing applications and a variety of consumer products, such as Alltel TV and XM Radio Mobile. Rev. A will enhance the performance of all of those services. Alltel plans an initial rollout of Rev. A to 18 market areas and dozens of cities, including Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa. Customers using Rev. A will experience average upload speeds of 500-800 Kbps with bursts up to 1.8 Mbps. Upload speeds on the company’s existing broadband network average 50-70 Kbps, with bursts up to 144 Kbps, so the enhanced network will be five to 10 times faster.

Download speeds also will increase. Rev. A download speeds average 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps, with bursts up to 3.1 Mbps. By comparison, downloads on the existing broadband network average 400-700 Kbps with bursts up to 2.4 Mbps. Using Rev. A, customers can expect to download a 1 Megabyte e-mail file attachment – the equivalent of a small Power Point® presentation or a large PDF file – in less than 15 seconds and upload the same file in less than 25 seconds.

How much, pray tell? Alltell Wireless’ EVDO service only costs $59.99 per month for unlimited use. So if you have a laptop or a mobile phone that is EVDO compatible, this new service may be the end-all for your portable needs.

[image from newscom]