Living on the EDGE

This is the view I’m enjoying right now. Looking out living room window of our holiday-flat in a little village in the mountains south-west in Switzerland. This is a really small village, some 1300 inhabitants and almost non-existent tourism. But there are sheep and goats and this village happens to have the highest vineyards in Europe, so the supply with cheese, meat and wine is endless and excellent. And the people are extremely friendly. Great area for quiet holidays or working days.

And of course there is no internet connectivity. Trying to war-drive the village were fruitless. But a couple of weeks ago, Swisscom Mobile rolled out EDGE over GPRS, which theoretically gives up-to 200kb/s on a mobile phone so equipped. I have been using GPRS/EDGE with my Nokia 9500 (one of the few phones to handle this) and in general it has been very tolerable. I see downloads of 15-20 kB/s which makes working on the web acceptable. I fear the invoice for the GPRS services though.

Working in the quiet, without my family is very productive but the weather has been gray, raining and snowing. I was hoping to do some hiking too - now I just worked (and that of course helps to pay the bills from Swisscom – and others)