A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which actually covers two weeks because of various distractions.

Articles

• Vodafone’s infosec balls-up a symptom of wider problems, for Crikey, all about the telco’s “little security problem” exposed last weekend. Dealers had one login to Vodafone’s systems shared between all staff, it seems!

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 71, “Avoiding Vodafone’s Wikileaks moment”. Paul Ducklin, who is Sophos’ head of technology for the Asia-Pacific region, reckons Vodafone’s problem is much like the US government’s with WikiLeaks: too many people have logins which give them access to too much stuff. Our conversation covered what organisations should be doing to avoid a disaster like Vodafone’s happening to them.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday my comments on Twitter about Bing Lee’s less-than-generous Facebook-based fundraiser for the Queensland floods were picked up by David Ramli at ARN: Bing Lee uses Queensland floods to boost Facebook fans.

Corporate Largesse

• Donations to the Artemis Medical Fund included $100 from online accounting software provider Saasu and $50 from an elected NSW politician from the Australian Labor Party.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Apparently Not, a no-stopping sign demolished by a vehicle that didn't stop. Stanmore Road, Petersham, on 6 January 2011.]

The cheque is for the $9.89 credit remaining on my account when I stopped doing business with Vodafone in November 2008. That it took so long to get that money is a story in itself, and it’s told over the jump.

The stupidity, however, is that after all this hassle Vodafone has made out the cheque to “Stilgherrian Pty Ltd”, as if I’m a company.

How does any competent organisation do that? Especially when there was no “Pty Ltd” in my account details? Especially when I specifically requested in writing for the cheque to be made out to “Stilgherrian”?

Fortunately I’m known at my local Westpac bank branch, so maybe they’ll allow me to deposit the cheque. I’ll let you know how I go.

Other people have told me they’ve had trouble getting Vodafone to refund money too, and had to drop the magic words “Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman” before they saw any action. While in my case the figure was less than $10, if Vodafone is consistently failing to pay out credits then it would amount to a significant scam.

Not good enough, Vodafone. If you owe people money, you return it to them. Promptly. Without questions. And if it takes longer than a couple of weeks you apologise for the delay.

Stilgherrian vs Vodafone

Back in November 2008 I closed my account with Vodafone and moved to Virgin Mobile. After everything was settled, I was left with a credit of $9.89.

No big deal, I figured they’d send a refund in due course.

However Vodafone had other plans. Over the following months they continued to invoice me, charging me $2.20 each month for mailing me a paper bill and nothing else.

My credit declined from $9.89 to $7.69 to $5.49 to… well, into the red again.

I figured that at this point Vodafone would notice that it was a closed account and stop being so silly. Surely they have a system that notices this sort of thing?

Alas no.

In December 2009 I decided to get in touch. Since life’s too short to deal with telco call centres, I sent them a letter.

[G]iven that I ceased being a customer of yours in December 2008 [it was actually November, but I was working from memory], I reckon it’s probably time you caught up with that fact and stopped sending me bills at all.

I reckon your next communication should be to wipe out this tiny debt – given that there was actually a credit owed to me, and you were just billing me for sending me bills. Yeah?

Vodafone never replied.

Then last month, instead of a $2.20 charge for a paper bill, Vodafone invented something new. A $9.91 “account admin” fee.

WTF?

I was not impressed. I sent another letter.

It’s getting beyond a joke now. Not only have you continued to bill me after the account was closed for more than a year, not only have you ignored my letter of 30 December (copy attached), you’re now just making up charges!

“Account Admin” for $9.91?

Bollocks.

There was $9.89 owing me when we ceased doing business. I was going to let that slide but, now that I think about, why should you get away with incompetence?

Please reverse all charges you’ve claimed since we stopped doing business in December 2008 and send a cheque for the amount owed of $9.89 made out to “Stilgherrian”. I expect this to be done within 14 days.

Well, 12 days later I got an email. Buried in the masses of confusing text generated by Vodafone’s customer service system was this confusing message:

I have adjusted the paper bill charges that appeared on your closed account.

The balance is now $0.00 and you will not receive any further statements from Vodafone.

Please note we are unable to refund the amount that was once on the account as Finance Team have noted the account that the refund was not applicable as the Bank was authorised to reverse the payment to Vodafone.

Unimpressed, I replied by email:

This sentence … “Please note we are unable to refund the amount that was once on the account as Finance Team have noted the account that the refund was not applicable as the Bank was authorised to reverse the payment to Vodafone.” … makes no sense.

There was once an accidental payment which was indeed reversed, but that [is] not what I am talking about.

I refer to the amount of $9.89 credit on the account as at 20 December 2008. I do expect that to be paid.

I know it’s a small thing, but if this sort of activity happen[s] across many customers it soon adds up, and it’s not acceptable. If you owe someone money, you pay it. You don’t make waffly bureaucratic excuses about “Finance Team have noted the account that the refund was not applicable”. You fix your processes, apologise for the inconvenience, and return the money.

This should be a simple matter, surely?

Also, your standard email response form is rubbish. “Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support centre”? No, I did not.

When will your cheque be arriving?

The cheque arrived yesterday. Made out to “Stilgherrian Pty Ltd”. Arsehats.

Over the last few months, I’ve been trialling Telstra’s Next G mobile broadband as part of an experimental “technology seeding program”. Despite my initial doubts, I’ve been impressed.

Previously I’d been using Vodafone 3G, tethering my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth to a Nokia N80. It worked just fine. I subsequently moved to a Nokia N96 and Virgin Mobile, which uses the Optus network under the hood. It’s terrible. I made a big mistake.

But that’s a story for another time…

Sure, Next G is the most expensive mobile broadband out there. But it’s also the best. Clearly.

On our road trip, we could use Next G almost all the way from Cowra back through Bathurst to Sydney. Yes, the signal dropped out as we drove through hilly areas, as you’d expect. But the data link automatically reconnected once it found a new cell — with the same IP address!

Seriously. Here I was in a moving car, running a ping and watching YouTube videos. The link dropped out. It reconnected. And when it did, perhaps six minutes later when the terrain sorted itself out, the video started playing from where it left off. Pings resumed with the very next packet number in the sequence — albeit with ping times of over 370 thousand milliseconds.

In another test, the data link kept the same IP address while I caught a train from Newtown across Sydney Harbour to Pymble. In CityRail’s loop under the Sydney CBD, there was no signal in the tunnels, but the link came back up within seconds of arriving at a station.

Somebody did some great network engineering. They deserve a pat on the back.

But what else?

The Good:

• Next G is fast. My card was set to use HSUPA, i.e. increased upload speed at the expense of downloads. In central and inner west Sydney, I consistently got 6Mb/s download and sustained 1M/s upload. The network was nominally rated at 14Mb/s
• Coverage is good. As an example, we got a clean data link while 7km out of Cowra in a location where Vodafone was marginal and Hutchison/3 was dead.
• Dropouts were minimal. I could rely on being able to do sustained uploads or downloads.

The Bad:

• It takes two attempts to connect. PPP authentication usually times out on the first attempt. It’s usually fine on the second. But it is irritating.
• The Mac user interface is pig ugly and lacks vital features. This isn’t directly Telstra’s fault. Sierra Wireless, who make the card, need a good hard slap. There’s simply no excuse for not providing a full-featured Mac interface for a mobile product. Telstra, please make that a selection criterion!
• Occasionally, you’ll roam to 3′s network. There’s a peering agreement whereby 3 Mobile users roam to Next G cells when their own aren’t available — great outside the major cities. But the downside is that you can also roam off Next G to 3 if you’re closer to a 3 cell — as shown in the picture. Apparently you can turn off this feature by setting the card to only use Next G’s 850MHz frequencies — but that option isn’t available in the Mac interface, only Windows. The card is now stuck on 3 and I can’t change it back. Fail.

The Unknown:

• What’s the customer service like? I dealt directly with a Telstra market development manager, so I was spoilt. If you use Next G, do you also get Telstra’s traditionally-shitful customer service? I have no idea.

Yes, Next G is one of those cases where you get what you pay for. But if you want to actually use mobile broadband instead of swearing at it, it’s probably worth the cost.

Dear Optus, Vodafone and 3, if you’d like me to re-visit my opinions of your own products, I’m more than happy to give them a trial too. You know where to find me.

• The Australian Sex Party: “The Australian Sex Party is a political response to the sexual needs of Australia in the 21st century. It is an attempt to restore the balance between sexual privacy and sexual publicity that has been severely distorted by morals campaigners and prudish politicians.”
• Measuring the Information Society: The ICT Development Index 2009: Australia is ranked #14 based on figures from 2007. In 2003 it was at #13.
• Ho Hum, Sweden Passes new anti File Sharing Legislation | Perceptric Forum: Tom Koltai’s analysis of that new Swedish law: It’ll make no difference long term.
• As Sweden’s Internet anonymity fades, traffic plunges | Ars Technica: A new Swedish law that went into effect 1 April makes it possible for copyright holders to go to court and unmask a user based on an IP address. Sweden’s Internet traffic dropped 40% overnight.
• Study: online sexual predators not like popular perception | Ars Technica: This survey rejects the idea that the Internet is an especially perilous place for minors, and finds that while the nature of online sex crimes against minors changed little between 2000 and 2006, the profile of the offenders has been shifting — and both differ markedly from the popular conception.
• What Is Fail Whale?: The complete history of the Twitter’s error-bringing Fail Whale, along with all the art and craft it’s inspired to date.
• Voda/Hutch merger rattles ACCC | ZDNet Australia: Australia’s competition watchdog tonight issued a strongly worded statement of concern that the proposed merger of mobile carriers Hutchison and Vodafone could lead to increased retail prices on mobile telephony and broadband services.
• All the news that’s fit to tweet | guardian.co.uk: The Guardian has also announced a new 140-character commenting system. “You’ll never again need to wade through paragraphs of extended argument, looking for the point, or suffer the unbearable tedium of having to read multiple protracted, well-grounded perspectives on the blogs you love.”
• Share This Lecture! | Viddler.com: Mark Pesce’s annual lecture for “Cyberworlds” class, Sydney University, 31 March 2009. About the significance of sharing across three domains: sharing media, sharing knowledge, and how these two inevitably lead to the sharing of power.
• Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink | The Guardian: One of the better April Fools’ Day pieces. I particularly like the extracts from the Twitterised news archive. 1927: “OMG first successful transatlantic air flight wow, pretty cool! Boring day otherwise *sigh*”
• Flappers, wine, cocaine and revels (Pt II) | The Vapour Trail: A few hours after five Melbourne girls were arrested for vagrancy in late March 1928, the headline of Melbourne’s Truth broadcast their misdeeds: “White Girls with Negro Lovers. Flappers, Wine, Cocaine and Revels. Raid Discloses Wild Scene of Abandon”.
• A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia | TIME: Time‘s take on the leak of the Australian Internet censorship blacklist portrays it as a joke and a scandal. There are some factual errors in the story, but this looks like how it’ll end up being perceived internationally.

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.

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…

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.]

• The State of the Web – Summer 2008: A million people mentioned this fine commentary on the current state of the web. Nice work.
• Future of Media Summit 2008 | Future Exploration Network: The third annual Future of Media Summit will be held simultaneously in Silicon Valley on 14 July and Sydney on 15 July. Why was I not told about this? OK, time to scam…
• TuneRanger | Acertant: A tool to synchronise, copy or merge multiple iTunes libraries and iPods over the network. Available for both OS X and Windows. US$29, with 30-day free trial.
• Mercury Messenger: Client software for MSN Messenger written in Java and runnable on OS X, Windows and Linux. Allows you to use the Mac's built-in iSight camera for video chats, unlike Microsoft's own software.
• Scrivener | Literature and Latte: Word processors are for processing words. Like processed cheese. If you CREATE words, then you need a writing tool. Scrivener is just that, for OS X only.
• iPhone in Australia – now for the bad news | Web Directions: A comprehensive analysis of the available data plans to support iPhone in Australia. Recommends NOT getting an iPhone yet to force carriers to lift their game.

Last night I managed to publish to the Internet while trapped in a stairwell and from a moving train. Tonight I can prove that it also works while travelling at high speed in a moving car.

It’s the same workflow as before — Nokia N80 camera phone, Bluetooth image to PowerBook, then use the phone’s data link to publish back via WordPress. But it’s still fairly clunky because it’s hard to type in a moving car in the dark, and I haven’t set up any actions in Photoshop so everything has to be done manually.

And I hate to think what this is costing me!

So, what do I do for my next challenge? Any suggestions?