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Pogo "loses GSM" - angry users complain

With exactly one day's notice, Pogo has told its users that the wireless PDA will "lose GSM connectivity" at the end of the day, and they have to switch to GPRS. Andy Doran reflects on the mood of users - especially those whose phone contract doesn't provide GPRS!

The Pogo was a 2G GSM internet gadget with messaging, phone and mp3 playback sold at a reasonable price to start with, that came down with time and that worked as advertised!

Pogo Technolgy or Pogo Mobile Solutions ( as they are now called ) sadly now seem as if they are giving up on GSM connections and will only provide GPRS net access. This is supposedly only while they are setting up new contracts with their telecom supplier after an office move but the implication is that they may not restore GSM access after all.

Pogo Technology was a British company that came up with a concept, hardware and software, and actually brought it to market themselves and as a novelty didn't sell out to the big guys.

Usually, of course, this results in the product getting taken in by a bureaucracy, and lost down the back of some corporate sofa (EO Personal Communicator anyone?). Pogo was a small business that tried to take on companies such as Handspring, Nokia, MM02, and even Microsoft and provided a product that outperformed the competition and actually was fairly reliable (take note Orange and Microsoft with your puny SPV).

The whole raison d'etre of Pogo was to provide web access at 3G speeds over a GSM connection and without the costs of a 3G handset package. High speed was provided through a server that strips out information that the small screen can't handle and isn't needed in a mobile product. They even had a revenue stream courtesy of a £7.99 access fee for their WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider). If they could provide GPRS access (2.5G) this would give a bonus of much higher speed of course. The Pogo device couldn't access every web-site but could handle a surprisingly high percentage.

Since their re-launch and re-financing, they have waived the WISP fee for users and their main corporate effort is being bent towards licensing their server and compression technology to other companies, an obvious source of income without the hassle of supporting a hardware product.

Pity in all this the poor user, the schlub who shells out £300 plus and now has a gadget that doesn't perform as advertised (I won't go into details of all the problems experienced by users during the re-launch of the company) but now, as of today, the Pogo will not access the internet over a GSM connection. I'm sad and have to try and figure out how I can afford a GPRS contract. Any ideas which is the cheapest service or should I just give up and try some other internet/phone doodaa?