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I’ve previously called Vodafone “brain-dead” because they don’t redirect the misspelt version of their web address and couldn’t respond intelligently when I told them about it. But now… [sigh]

A fortnight ago there was confusion over Vodafone’s plans for the iPhone. Were data charges included in the cap or not? Vodafone’s “explanation” seemed to contradict their published terms a conditions.

Even though all their previous plans allowed data to be included within the cap, billed at $1 per 5 minutes of connection, Vodafone reckons that for the iPhone it’s billed separately. Can anyone give a rational explanation for why the data should be more expensive if the device happens to be an iPhone?

Other than price-gouging, that is.

After all, if your mobile device is a laptop they’ll sell you 5GB/month for $39! Given that Telstra and Optus had already announced their pricing, Vodafone could have scooped them both with a better package, rather than looking like a greedy also-ran.

So with this background, I was…erm… thrilled to receive my phone bill this month.

Here’s a picture.

Yes, instead of the usual $79, a busy month saw me go over cap. I’m up for $476.91.

I reckon Vodafone should have given me a warning.

I do realise that I signed up for the deal and I’m supposed to know what I’m spending. I do realise that telcos make Big Fat Profits from mistakes like mine. It’s in their short-term interest not to warn me. But I reckon it’s customer service FAIL. Particularly as I’m not on a contract and I can switch carriers tomorrow.

Vodafone could have made this a customer service win. Noting that my data usage was climbing, noting that I’m a business customer who’s not on contract, they could have called. “Hi, you’re going over cap. Would you like to upgrade now? It’ll save you money, and if you sign a contract we’ll throw in a new phone.”

As it stands, though, I’m unhappy. I used what felt like “a bit more than usual” but have a bill six times more.

I’ll be calling Vodafone tomorrow. Let’s see if they can make me happy again.

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Mark reckons all three carriers offering iPhone have completely failed to recognise the pent-up demand for the device, and the way it will change network usage.

A typical example is Optus’ plan (general consensus holds that Optus has the most generous plans of the three carriers), which provides a maximum of 1GB of internet usage per month — for a hefty $179.

Let’s run some numbers here. The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald clocks in at just about a half a megabyte. That’s fat, but also fairly typical. The widespread deployment of broadband has lead to a proliferation of media-rich pages. Now, if I hit the SMH page (or a similar site) sixty times a day, I’d reach my 1GB cap. Add in any Google Maps activity, or push email, or what have you, and the figure could easily double. Now, instead of $179/month, I’d have that bill plus potentially hundreds of dollars in data charges.

On the other hand, if I wanted to buy 3G mobile data service for my MacBook Pro from Optus, they’d give me a cute little USB dongle with the Hauwei 3G/HSDPA modem and SIM card, plus 5GB of data — and it would cost me only $39.99 a month.

Have I missed something here? After all, data is data. The network usage for the dongle is completely indistinguishable, as far as the network is concerned, from the iPhone 3G.

Mark’s conclusion is that there’s an “iPhone tax”.

Not only are we asked to pay a premium to purchase iPhone 3G, we will also be paying a premium to receive every bit of data on iPhone 3G.

The solution, he says, is to start our own MVNO, or Mobile Virtual Network Operator.

It’s not as hard as you might think,…

If we put the word out through our various social networks (both human and electronic), I’m sure that in practically no time at all we’d have 10,000 or more subscribers ready to sign up for an MVNO. I don’t know how many subscribers we’d need to get to a break-even point, but I doubt it can be many more than that. Given the amazing facility of many members of the community for setting up and running online services that scale to handle many users, I suspect that much of the infrastructure for this MVNO can be created by the community, for the community, at very low cost. The power of social networks — as has been endlessly pointed out by Clay Shirky — is that it allows large numbers of individuals to self-organize quickly and effectively.

I’ve heard people complain about the mobile carriers since before I moved to Australia. I suggest that it’s time to put up or shut up. Passive resistance is no longer enough. It is time to show the carriers that we can do this ourselves. We can service ourselves and our needs. We will do this because doing anything else is abhorrent.

We could name our MVNO the Future AUstralian Carrier, or FAUC.

Don’t like your plan from Telstra, or Vodafone, or Optus? Well, get FAUC.

As I write this, the Facebook group FAUC (Future AUstrailian Carrier) Interest Group [sic] already has 127 members…

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Australia’s mobile phone carriers may not completely grok Apple’s new iPhone 3G, but they know it’ll bring them customers — because they’re all scrambling to be Steve Jobs’ iPhone bitches. It’s an embarrassing spectacle.

Three carriers have announced packages available from tomorrow: Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. (Presumably 3, who’ve been asking their customers to beg for iPhones, haven’t bent over far enough.) There’s a comparison over at news.com.au.

According to my sources, all three Aussie telcos have bent over even further than US carrier AT&T. Apple already demands a bigger subsidy from carriers than other smartphone manufacturers. In the US, for example, AT&T pays Apple US$325 per unit compared with the usual $200 or so. However two individuals working within Telstra confirm that all three telcos offering iPhone here are also paying Apple an ongoing percentage of revenue. AT&T has escaped that revenue-sharing deal, but not the Aussies — and that’s presumably reflected in the somewhat disappointing plans on offer.

All three Australian carriers have missed the key point. Yes, iPhone can make phone calls. But its true role is a pocket-sized internet-connected computer.

In May, by my count 80% of the audience at Australia’s Mobile Content World conference were so out of touch they’d never even seen an iPhone screen. “They were deer in the iPhone’s headlights,” wrote entrepreneur Rand Leeb-du Toit. “The full browser experience is going to shake their businesses to their foundations.”

Overseas, data from the first year of iPhone users bears this out. They conduct 50 times more Google searches than other phone users. In Germany, they consume 30 times more data.

Australian iPhone plans are all skewed towards cheap voice calls and expensive data.

As John Allsop’s analysis points out, on Telstra’s data packages just looking at the smh.com.au home page would cost you $8!

When Vodafone release its pricing yesterday morning, comments on Twitter were scathing. “Vodafone gives you 5GB on modem. but all telcos have weighted plans for calls, not data. Wrong wrong wrong,” said one. “Nice to see Vodafone continuing the theme of gouging iPhone customers,” said another. And: “Boo Vodafone Australia iPhone plans, Optus here I come!”

Without a doubt, Apple’s new iPhone 3G is sexy. It will be a huge hit. But it does have flaws.

Just one of the Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G is the sealed-in battery. A year from now, when you no longer get a full day’s usage from one charge, your choice is $100-odd for Apple to replace the battery or $199 for the new model. Like the iPod, consumer replacement cycles get ever shorter, and the mountain of toxic used electronics grows — just like Apple’s profits.

[Note: This article is based on material I wrote for Crikey yesterday and today.]

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I’ve written about this at length previously, both here and in Crikey [1, 2], with plenty of interesting comments from readers. And I’ve just written a piece for Crikey today, to be published around 2pm Sydney time.

Meanwhile, you can read some overview pieces at Auction Bytes and The Sheet. And you can see eBay’s full 15-page response at the ACCC website: it’s the second submission on the page, from “Applicant”.

To make things just that little bit more interesting, yesterday Telstra’s Sensis division announced a free auction site at Trading Post.

[Update 1250pm: The story will now run in Crikey tomorrow (Thursday). Busy news day, apparently.]

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Professor Clarke reckons the response is “reasonable enough (as far as it goes)”, and he won’t be taking the matter any further. His article on Lawyers’ ‘Nastygrams’ re Trademarks reminds us that lawyers’ letters often make inappropriate demands on behalf of trademark-owners.

It’s vital that people stand up for their rights, and resist corporations getting away with claims that go beyond the already excessive rights that corporate welfare laws in the ‘intellectual property’ arena grant them.

So, we all should say “the Yellow Pages® directory” to help Sensis prevent their trademark turning into a generic word. Sensis is our friend.

The funniest bit, I think, is that the lawyer’s response reckons the original letter was intended to “encourage the proper use of Sensis trademarks”. Lawyers must have a funny idea about “encouragement”: their “nastygram” was a three-page letter in pompous legalese containing veiled threats [PDF file].

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Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that owns things like the Yellow Pages and Trading Post, has kicked off a legal attack on small websites for “trademark infringement”. Why? Because they haven’t got an ® after every mention of “Yellow Pages”.

Apart from the daftness of attacking little fish, which only makes your company look like a bully, you’ve got to wonder why they’re doing it.

1. They’re re-branding as “Yellow” anyway. yellowpages.com.au identifies itself as “yellow.com.au”, and their new logo just says “Yellow”. Here’s a screenshot of their site as of a few minutes ago.
2. There doesn’t seem to be any actual trademark infringement. At least not by my reading of some material I’ll mention shortly.

I found out about this yesterday when Professor Roger Clarke posted to the Link mailing list. I’ve become more and more astounded at the stupidity of it all as I’ve read people’s comments…

Professor Clarke says:

I am requested to:
— “use the [R inside a circle] symbol next to the trade mark …”;
— “use the name of the product as a noun (eg “the Yellow Pages
[R inside a circle] Directory”.

He points out that the web page in question receives bugger all traffic, and observes:

I find it absolutely extraordinary that [Sensis] would fund a partner in a law firm to waste time and money searching out harmless pages and writing ‘nastygrams’ of this kind — energy that could instead be invested in improvements to the product.

Note that the use of the term on the page is quite general, and there is no evidence of any attempt to appropriate the term, nor to benefit commercially or otherwise from its use, nor to denigrate the IP owner. In fact it promotes your site, and speaks in a complimentary manner about it. Under the circumstances, the letter is not only inappropriate, but oppressive.

Apart from this bullying, it would appear that there aren’t actually grounds for Sensis to complain. According to the Arts Law Centre of Australia (quoting IP Australia, who handle trademark registration)…

To be successful in an infringement action it is necessary to show that:

• use of the infringing mark was use as a trade mark. That is, the infringing trade mark was being used to indicate a connection, in the course of trade, between goods or services and the (infringing) trader or service provider; and
• the infringing trade mark is identical, substantially identical or deceptively similar to your trade mark; and
• the goods or services (or both) in relation to which the infringing trade mark was used are the same or at least similar or closely related to the goods or services for which your trade mark is registered.

Professor Clarke’s mention of Yellow Pages doesn’t fit any of those criteria!

Rick Welykochy dug up an example of Sensis’ “nastygram” [PDF file], and Eric Scheid found another stroppy recipient of Sensis’ legal largesse.

In my opinion, and I am not a lawyer, Sensis probably wants to generate consistency in the way people use their product name. But instead of asking nicely, they’re using aggressive, bullying language and implied legal threats. The reaction, naturally enough, is “Screw you!”

I recently moved my landline phone from Telstra to iiNet and bundled it with ADSL2+. A couple of weeks later, a Telstra rep phoned to ask, “Is there anything we can do to get you back?”

My reply was, “No. Because it’s not about the service or the price. It’s because I don’t want to do business with an organisation that’s run by a pack of arseholes. Please make sure that specific message is passed up the line.”

This Sensis attack on small website owners is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.

[Update: I've just thought of a possible reason. Sensis want to separate "the Yellow Pages Directory" from the Yellow brand, possibly with the aim of offloading the presumably-expensive business of printing phone books which no-one uses any more.]

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1. The Joy of Chairman Rudd’s Iced VoVo Revolution will be dulled by the end of January when they take some stupid actions which demonstrate that they are, after all, politicians like all others. Actually, this has already happened with the announcement of mandatory Internet filtering by ISPs. I’ll write more about that soon.
2. At least one member of the (former) Howard cabinet will be charged with a criminal offence over something they did in office. I’d like it to be Brendan Nelson, because that deal to buy $6 billion worth of Super Hornet fighter aircraft stinks — mostly because the air force doesn’t want them and the process was, erm, rushed to say the least. However I suspect it might be something to do with the AWB scandal.
3. Channel 7 will continue to win the Australian TV ratings. Channel 9 will fail to reinvent itself now that its owned by an investment vehicle and not a media proprietor.
4. Telstra will be forced to separate its wholesale and retail businesses. Meanwhile the Sol Trujillo-led management team will continue to play nasty with the government, causing them to be increasingly sidelined — especially over the Rudd government’s new broadband rollout.
5. Barack Obama will win the US Presidential election. I know Hillary Clinton is currently the favourite, but I have the gut feeling that the Oprah factor will be important, and that Hillary’s dirty washing will be aired.
6. When former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns from self-imposed exile on 14 February the new government, which is a coalition led by a Thaksin-supporting party, will somehow drop the corruption charges against him. Another military coup will follow.
7. At least one Australian company will suffer a major leak of its customers’ private data, prompting new laws on dealing with such things (like they already have in California).
8. We’ll finally figure out what the Storm Botnet, the world’s largest network of hacked computers, is for. My guess: whatever the hell the designer’s paying clients want it to be for.

You might also like to read the interesting predictions from The Australian (not really predictions, but obvious events following on from their news calendar), advertising agency JWT, Peter Black and Rachel Polanskis, and predictions about toy names for 2008.

What are your predictions for 2008? And how do you think mine rate?

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As mentioned last week, Friday morning I’m having breakfast with the ICT minister Senator Helen Coonan and her ALP counterpart Senator Stephen Conroy — along with some many members of the ACS.

That’s Senator Coonan on the right. In every sense of the word.

While the discussion will be chaired by some bloke from Channel 7, I’m assuming there’ll be a chance for questions. When I asked on Link last week, here’s what popped up. What would you add?

[In no particular order, numbered for reference.]

1. ICT as a critical “enabling” element in our response to climate change, which will require lots of distributed access to lots of information and the tools to evaluate it.
2. Protecting children online.
3. Increased broadband capacity at affordable prices.
4. What happened to the Information Economy? Why are all the information jobs going off shore to India?
5. What is going to happen to the CDMA network?
6. Why does the government continue to behave like they own Telstra?
7. Programming for digital TV.
8. What would each do in government to facilitate remote/teleworking?
9. Reducing Australia’s reliance on monopoly software — particularly in government; promotion of the use of open standards; and the development of a national software industry based on open standards and open source.
10. ICT security — do we want to develop critical ICT infrastructure with (how can I say this diplomatically?) levels of security commonly associated with user platforms?
11. An enforced split of Telstra’s retail and infrastructure divisions

I think I’d pull back to a Big Picture question about teh Internet. In 1995, Australia was 3rd on the planet in terms of Internet bandwidth and computer power per population, now we’re not even in the Top 10. What are your thoughts on that? Is it important? If so, how should it be addressed? If not, why not?

What are your thoughts?

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Optus: “Optus congratulates the NSW Government on its innovative plans… Optus looks forward to seeing more details of the plans and to participating in the expression of interest process.”

Telstra: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch anymore so it will be interesting to see how it is proposed to be paid for.”

I don’t understand why it’ll take so long to set up a few Wi-Fi access points though.

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