Yes, episode 8 of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be recorded tonight at 9.30pm Sydney time. See you then.
Vodafone delay
I’ve been too busy during business hours to phone Vodafone about their surprise bill. That’ll have to happen on Monday now, unless today goes remarkably well. However there’s plenty of discussion in the comments, including links to new iPhone plans from Virgin Mobile, Telstra and the 3 Network.
Vodafone, are you completely brain-dead?
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.
Actually, what DO Vodafone’s plans mean?
There was plenty of discussion on Twitter last night about Vodafone’s iPhone plans. Yesterday we thought that data outside the “included” amount was still billed within the cap. But then people started reading Vodafone’s confusing and legalistic Terms & Conditions and got confused. I contend that failing to clearly state the price of your services is in breach of the Trade Practices Act — and if a dozen smart people can’t answer the simple question, “What will I be charged for 5GB of data?” then the T&Cs are misleading, I say. Stay tuned.
Vodafone’s iPhone plans better?
Is Vodafone Australia so stupid that they didn’t promote the most attractive part of their iPhone plans? Mark Pesce went a-hunting today and found that on the business plans, yes, the “included data” is a small 250MB or 500MB or whatever — but data usage after that point is billed at 12c/megabyte inside the monthly cap. He Twittered this news [1, 2, 3, 4] earlier today, but you should check the Terms & Conditions yourself before signing up. [Update: You should definitely read the follow-up post before proceeding.]
[Update 19 December 2012: The link to Vodafone’s July 2008 iPhone plans has been edited to point to the Internet Archive’s copy of the page. Why? There’s a reason for this.]
So let’s just start our own telco, eh?
While my piece about iPhone data plans brings you the disturbing imagery of Telstra’s Sol Trijillo bending over for Steve Jobs, Mark Pesce’s iPhail is blunt about telcos’ data plans and offers another possibility — creating our own data-friendly telco.
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.