Mobile Phone Bills That Kill

Too Much Free Time

from the if-you-look-at-it,-you'll-die dept

This has all the makings of an urban legend, so we’ll assume it’s false (or there was more to the story) until proven otherwise, but there’s a news report going around that someone in Yemen died of shock after seeing his mobile phone bill. The man apparently did suffer from heart problems and had a heart attack after seeing the bill, run up nice and high by a chatty daughter who apparently liked to talk to her fiance quite a bit using her father’s mobile phone. Now, fathers everywhere can tell their chatty teens to stop running up super high phone bills, or it might kill them. Failing that, they can just (1) make the kids pay the phone bill themselves or (2) sign up for a prepay service. But, of course, that doesn’t make for quite the same sensationalistic story.

How Badly Does Microsoft Want To Control The Triple Play?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the anyway-possible... dept

Think Microsoft is serious about trying to shove their software into every possible aspect of the backend for various triple play services? Just as stories are coming out about how dreadful their IPTV software is, the news comes out that Microsoft wants to power business-level VoIP offerings with AT&T. Beyond the jokes about your TV and phone getting the blue (er… red) screen of death, again it seems a bit odd that companies would believe Microsoft has very much competence in these areas.

UK Looking Seriously At GPS-Based Driver Taxation

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the driving-while-intaxicated dept

In the US, every so often, we hear about plans in places like Oregon and California to explore the idea of taxing drivers based on how far they travel using GPS systems enabled in every car. While these discussions generate a lot of publicity (much of it negative), they never seem to go anywhere. However, over in the UK, it sounds like they’re a bit more serious about implementing a nationwide system for taxing drivers based on GPS data. Of course, aside from the very serious privacy implications of such a plan, previous complaints pointed out that, unlike a gas tax, a GPS tax does nothing to encourage drivers to use more fuel-efficient vehicles. However, the UK response seems to be that they’re going to keep taxing petrol (as they like to call it) on top of this GPS tax. Also, part of the GPS tax would be that it was variable based on time and location. That is, the purpose is more about decreasing congestion, rather than worrying about road wear and tear or too much gas guzzling. So, drivers in the city during rush hour, will find themselves taxed at a much higher rate than the Sunday afternoon driver out in the country. Of course, in some sense, this is a regressive tax as poorer laborers are probably the least likely to have flexibility in setting their work schedules for the sake of avoiding the higher taxes. And, yes, of course, it is worth mentioning the privacy issues we glossed over earlier. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea that the government have access to data showing where you are all of the time? The plan is still being discussed in the UK, but it certainly sounds a lot further along than the pie-in-the-sky plans heard about in the US. Of course, should this ever pass, is anyone taking bets on how fast a new industry will open up in the UK for hacking these GPS systems to provide false data?

The Mobile Broadband Data Pricing Conundrum

Predictions

from the encouraging-data-usage dept

While this article paints a somewhat simplified view of the state of the Japanese mobile phone service market, it is accurate in stating that US mobile operators should be watching carefully how things are changing in Japan. Last year, as it was struggling to get subscribers to its 3G data service, NTT DoCoMo moved to offer flat-rate data offerings, which helped the service finally take off. However, competitive pressures have driven the price of service down — to the point that it’s cheaper than voice, encouraging users to use more data than voice to communicate with people. This has cut into revenues for the Japanese mobile operators, and DoCoMo has even said they wished they never introduced flat-rate pricing, even though it’s questionable if the company would have been able to keep signing up as many new subscribers without it. The situation in Japan is only going to get trickier, now that up to three new entrants are expected in the market — with one being Softbank, who shook up the broadband market in Japan with its very cheap YahooBB service. So, how will this impact the US? The mobile operators here have a standard pricing scheme they like to use — with early offerings costing a prohibitive $80/month — but that price drops as other services get more competitive. With more offerings about to hit the market, it’s likely that Verizon, Sprint and Cingular will all be forced to drop their prices on wireless data somewhat — and the situation may eventually mimic the Japanese one. Of course, the flip side of this, is that operators have a fine balancing act that they need to figure out. They want to encourage more usage, with cheaper prices, but they also don’t want to overload capacity constrained wireless networks with too much usage. So, the operators are likely to try to lower prices slowly as they make sure their networks really can handle the usage. Unfortunately, once they offer flat-rate pricing, it’s tough to back down — and the amazing thing about high speed mobile data networks, is that people will come up with applications and services for them that no one ever expected. There’s a good chance those apps will be bandwidth intensive and that could be a real problem for mobile operators who just can’t handle the traffic, but promised it with their flat-rate “unlimited” data plans.

United To Be The First Domestic Airline With WiFi In The Sky

Wireless

from the finally... dept

In 2001, a bunch of US-based airlines bought into Boeing’s vision of internet in the skies. However, in the wake of September 11th, 2001, they all pulled out of the project to focus on things like, well, surviving. Boeing did still manage to sign up foreign airlines, but the US airlines all managed to avoid offering real internet access in the skies. When they did offer any kind of internet access it was extremely limited and ridiculously pricey. However, it was only a matter of time before US airlines jumped on the surf-while-you-fly bandwagon, and apparently United now has regulator approval to offer real WiFi in the sky. The good thing for the airlines, of course, is that more people now have WiFi equipped laptops, which should increase the demand for such things. What’s not at all clear, though, is how United intends to price the service, and if it will be as ridiculous as many people expect. Considering that the plan is to piggyback the data on the ridiculously over-priced seatback phones, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to find this service priced out of usefulness for most people. To be honest, it’s a bit surprising that some of the more innovative domestic airlines weren’t the first to move on WiFi in the sky — but hopefully this jumpstarts others to get into the game at more reasonable price levels.

The High Price Of Data

Wireless

As if this one was hard to predict… Mobile operators, desperate to increase ARPU are scaring off users by charging ridiculous fees for content. The latest example, as found by MocoNews is that 3 UK (who has an amazing knack for doing the wrong thing) is charging 75 p per minute to watch episodes of some TV show on phones. Remember, this is a technology where it’s not at all clear if people really want it, and ringing up a huge bill to watch a single show certainly isn’t going to encourage much usage at all. The best part, though, is the excuse given by 3’s spokesperson: “We don’t think people will watch for hours.” Ah, right, you’re just offering the shows for the hell of it then? I guess it’s not surprising from the company who once told its own customers they had to be nuts for wanting to surf the internet on their phones.

More Evidence Of Mobile Portal Pointlessness

Wireless

Earlier this week, I predicted that companies rushing to get included in various mobile portals would regret it, in the same way that plenty of dot coms regretted spending all of their VC cash on internet portal deals during the boom years. It appears that the crash may be coming faster than expected. Russell Buckley points out that 70% of all mobile content is purchased “off portal” these days.

Harper Collins Believes So Strongly In WiFi, They'll Hook Up Any Bookstore Without It

Wireless

While there are various arguments for and against having WiFi in places like bookstores, apparently publisher Harper Collins is a huge fan of the idea. While Borders and Barnes & Noble already offer WiFi (via partners), HarperCollins is now offering to help turn any unconnected bookstore into a free hotspot to try to get more traffic. The only additional feature is that the publisher gets to control some of the splash screen page when users login.

Filed Under: wi-fi, wifi

How Come No One Sues WiFi Equipment Makes For False Advertising?

Wireless

from the not-true-at-all dept

It’s widely known in the wireless industry that the “speeds” listed with WiFi equipment are greatly exaggerated. However, no one seems willing to list more realistic speeds, because that would make them look slower than the competition. Of course, this isn’t anything new for the wireless industry as a whole — who has always used the sneaky “up to” before describing the maximum possible speed (as in, “speeds up to 1 gazillion gigabytes per microsecond” thereby making anything well below that fair game). This maximum possible speed is usually under absolutely perfect conditions in a vacuum if you were somehow obscenely (we don’t want to know) close to the antenna/tower in question and no other living being was within 300 miles. Reality has a way of making those speeds much lower — often by more than 50% of the claimed speeds. With companies like Gillette getting slammed for false advertising concerning its razors that don’t actually lift hair away from your skin, why is it that no WiFi equipment vendors get sued for false advertising? The best guess reason is because everyone does it. Posting the theoretical maximum speed is just “how it’s done,” so no one within the industry expects any different. Meanwhile, customers never really notice because their 802.11g routers that are supposed to give them 54 megabits per second are usually used to connect to the internet over a pokey DSL or cable connection that don’t reach anywhere near the speeds of the local network.

Who Cares That It's VoIP?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the just-what-is-it? dept

Vonage and Skype are two very different things. However, since both are considered “VoIP,” it’s confusing plenty of people and making them shy away from anything having to do with VoIP. It is a problem for the industry that the idea of “telephone replacement” services are being lumped in with PC-to-PC software apps. There are some areas in which they overlap — and that should only grow over time, but there’s clearly a lot of consumer confusion in the market. People are increasingly aware that VoIP exists, and that it might be useful, but they’re worried that it could mean giving up their phone or having to make calls via their computer, when that isn’t necessarily true. To be honest, it’s still not entirely clear why the VoIP industry has focused so much on selling “VoIP.” The average consumer doesn’t care: sell the real benefits of the service, whether it’s cheaper phone service or simpler communications. Selling “VoIP” by itself is just adding to the confusion. A few companies seem to get this (plenty of cable companies refer to their offering as “digital telephone service” rather than VoIP), but it hasn’t gone far enough. Also, in forcing VoIP companies to focus on selling the benefits, maybe they’ll finally realize that they can offer a lot more in terms of features than traditional telephony, rather than just trying to replace it.