After five years, palmOne has decided to discontinue its Palm.Net service for the Palm VII, VIIx, and i705, and web clipping along with it.
With little fanfare, palmOne has announced via its Knowledge Base that the Palm.Net service will be discontinued on 31 August.
The Palm VII, VIIx, and i705 data-only communicators ran on the Palm.Net pager network-based service. Although their non-wireless functions will of course continue to function, their wireless capabilities will cease to function as of the end of August. Although the hardware will of course still function, those models were designed to work on an older pager network rather than on more recently-built GSM/GPRS or CDMA 1xRTT networks, and no other carriers have plans to continue to support the Palm.Net pager service.
In addition to the end of life for the Palm.Net service, palmOne is also shutting down its Web Clipping (PQA) service, which debuted with Palm.Net but has also been available on selected other models since then. Web Clipping worked by installing small applications on the handheld that worked almost as micro-browsers, using a common library, to access specific web applications via a proxy that tightly-compressed the data stream. The result was what appeared to the user to be a wirelessly-enabled application.
The proxy server, however, was integrated into the Palm.Net service and will be discontinued along with it. The palmOne gateway proxy for its WAP Browser service will also be discontinued, although the client is able to work with a 3rd party gateway if the user so chooses.
Existing Palm.Net customers will be notified by e-mail, and the final billing cycle for Palm.Net will cover through the end of August. Subscribers may optionally transfer their Palm.Net e-mail accounts to USA.Net, who ran the Palm.Net wireless network itself and will be offering an introductory price of $19.95 USD per year to transferring customers. Users who choose to transfer their accounts will have their stored email, address book, and filters migrated to USA.Net automatically.
Although it was the first wireless handheld network, Palm.Net was long crippled by the slow speed of its pager-targeted network. Most later services opted for GSM/GPRS or CDMA 1xRTT networks when they began to appear. palmOne did as well with the later release of the GSM/GPRS-based Tungsten W, and has not released a Palm.Net handheld since the i705 was launched in early 2002.
For Palm.Net customers wishing to remain wirelessly-enabled, palmOne recommends upgrading to a smartphone or communicator, naturally suggesting the company's own Treo 600.
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