Open Letter To Vodafone
Published by Rudy De Waele March 15th, 2006 in Operators, Mobile Web, Mobile Lifestyle, 3G, Analysis Tags: 3G, Analysis, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile web, Operators, vodafone.Date: 15/03/2006
To: Vodafone Management
Reference: Surfing the mobile web at a fair price.
Dear Vodafone Staff,
Yesterday I received another MMS advertising from you. Normally I don’t put too much attention to them because they are mostly services you promote I’m not interested in, but this one this time took my attention.
The ad went something like this: “You can now subscribe to a monthly flat fee for only 3 Euro/month to navigate Vodafone live!”
At first I thought: this is it, the first ad I receive that fits my needs for browsing the mobile web, so I decided to call your customer support. I must admit I was a bit misled by interpreting the Vodafone life! as accessing the Internet from my mobile.
I am a regular user since 2001 of your voice and SMS services and have 4 other accounts for my wife and daughters using the same services. I am not interested in browsing the Vodafone life! services to download ringtones or wallpapers or receive sports news or whatever’s there. However, I also use your 3G Mobile Connect 3G data card - with 384 kbps UMTS & up to 85.6 kbps GPRS/GSM connectivity - and I’m really happy with it, it’s great to be able to connect my laptop anytime, anywhere.
So I called Vodafone customer support and asked for the details. The flat fee rate appears to be for navigation ONLY within Vodafone life! portal and services. I explained the girl on the other side of the phone I need to surf the mobile web for my professional activities and asked if you had any plans like this. Since I also use your 3G Mobile Connect 3G data card, to me there is no difference accessing the web from the mobile or through your data card on my laptop and I have a fixed rate for the data card I use. The girl answered me that the default option to navigate outside of Vodafone on my mobile is 0,50 Euro (!) per connection and there are no other existing flat fee rate plans yet.
I think there is something completely wrong going on here… For my work and research I surf (connect) the mobile web at a minimum average rate of 10 times a day at 0,50 Euro/day, resulting in an excessive 150 Euro/month extra added to my bill just to surf the mobile web (!)
Let me ask you, do you really think this a fair price for being able to surf the web anytime anywhere?
That’s nearly 4 times the price of my high speed ADSL connection I have at home and which we share with the whole family? I am not interested in surfing Vodafone live! but I’m your customer with a need to browse the mobile web (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). You will probably consider I’m an early adopter but isn’t it about time to create plans for people like us? I cannot remember having paid such excessive pricing to acces the internet as an early adopter in 1995.
I would like to suggest it’s maybe better to start embracing the people who want to push the mobile web forward? In the end, we are all existing customers who can even bring in other ones (which of course I consequently do when I’m happy with services). In the end we will create the services and/or applications that people will acces through your networks in the near future. Or then I should just use the data card chip on my phone to surf the mobile web and have a separate account to handle my phone calls? At least this option might be more reasonable in price for me.
I really would appreciate, as a 5-year loyal customer, you will consider my request to find a better solution then what currently exists.
Yours sincerely,
Rudy De Waele, Barcelona, Spain.
Tags: mobile web mobile+web 3G openletter vodafone
3G, Analysis, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile web, Operators, vodafone
21 Responses to “Open Letter To Vodafone”
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Well put Rudy!
Here in Israel we have ridiculous prices for surfing through the mobile as well…
No, it’s not a fair price! I hope you get a response from them, Rudy.
Brilliant letter. I totally endorse it and agree personally also with all of it.
Hopefully someone at Vodafone is drawn to this open letter and maybe we can have the various bloggers link to it and draw attention to it. One of the mobile operators will eventually get it right. Maybe this is the time, and Vodafone could take that step, to make it happen now.
Thank you.
Tomi T Ahonen
four-time bestselling author on mobile telecoms
founding member Forum Oxford, Carnival of the Mobilists, and the Engagement Alliance
blogsite www.communities-dominate.blogs.com
website www.tomiahonen.com
Tomi T Ahonen lectures at Oxford University’s courses on advanced mobile telecoms technology, business and marketing
Hi Rudy,
We are currently working an a data-only MVNO and we hope to find Host MNOs in many countries. We know your problem, everybody has it. We just want the Open Mobile Economy. We are happy to pay for mobile GB and that’s it.
From our bus plan:
“OPEN is the first data-only MVNO in Europe for Digital Lifestyle Customers. OPEN is a 100% focused Mobile Data Retailer. OPEN will lead the mobile industry in the migration to All-over-IP.
OPEN wants to cooperate with MNOs that follow a wholesale data strategy to fill the 3G networks with happy mobile data users. Thus, OPEN becomes a partner for MNOs and not a competitor.”
If you want to work with us in Spain please get in touch with me.
Rudy, I hear your pain.
Come to the US where talk is cheap, literally. So is data! I have Sprint’s 1xRTT service that is faster than dial-up, and it’s $10 a month for unlimited service. Cingular offers unlimited service too on their EDGE network, which is comparable to UMTS.
UK & EU rates for mobile calling and data are criminally high. It’s time for consumers to revolt!
Rudy
You go girlfriend!!! Go Rudy Go Rudy!!!
as you know Vodafone are my client - they are so out of step with the move towards mobile internet (using it as a communication tool to promote themselves) and in developing a user friendly service (outside of Live!) so people can surf the internet at anypoint in time and any location for a fixed flat fee - but I can tell you now that is a long way off happening!
Get this - I surf the Internet on the Vodafone company account - one of the perks of being their ad agency!
But recently I have had complaints that my bills are too high - why because I have been using the Internet as a test and research facility - going outside of Vodafone Live! and free surfing! - so we as an agency can adopt a mobile internet strategy for Vodafone! I am told I can’t do it as its too expensive by the client themselves!!!!
Go figure!
Andrew Berglund
ex Creative Director Interactive PPGH_JWT
Thanks all for your comments!
Keep them coming, it’s really interesting to see I’m not the only one having the same need
Anyone from Vodafone out there?
The sum total of your comment is: “I want X and I don’t want to pay what you charge”. So? How is this new information? And why do you think POTS internet pricing is relevant? I know - I’ll go to my nearest car dealership tomorrow and tell them that I want their product but I don’t want to pay their price, so they should halve their prices. D’you think they’ll say yes? How about if I mention that a bicycle only costs $100 and does the same job, so the car should cost the same?
Do you know anything at all about how cellular networks work?
To the last anonymous commenter:
1. It’s always nice to have a name if you leave comments that lead to discussion, I’m not used to talk/discuss to people without faces or names.
2. Yes, i know how cellular networks work
3. We are not talking POTS internet here but 3G, and I’m not inventing it. Check this from the Vodafone website:
“Vodafone Internet Access gives you full Internet access on your laptop, PDA or handheld anywhere. Surf the internet …all without the need for a fixed phone line.
You can access the internet using either a dedicated Vodafone Mobile Connect Card or using your 3G mobile phone as a modem.”
4. I didn’t said I don’t want to pay the price - so far I’m just paying it, I’m just asking for a fairer price, it just looks ridiculously high to me (and apparently I’m not the only one)
5. I’m just asking for some clear pricing model, something I can control, as I have with my 3G datacard from Vodafone. I have a flat fee to consume a monthly 1Gb, at least that is clear and I know how much I have to pay the end of the month, surfing outside of Vodafone - for professional use (I’m showing Vodafone brand to all my prospects and clients, hey!), that’s all I’m asking, is it that complicated after 2 years of 3G subscription (!) to propose a plan for people like me?
6. If I want to do what I need to do for professional purposes, I need a phone with a 3G-only card (and plan) to surf the mobile internet AND I need another one to do my voice calls and be reachable (and that’s not really what 3G all-in-one-and-everywhere advertising makes us believe!)
I completely agree with you Rudy.
As I see it this is preventing the true mobile web from taking off.
Internet didn’t take off until we got flat rates and hi speed connections. Now you can even get free wi-fi access in a lot of places.
I remember the campaigns against Telefonica for a flat rate at the begining of the internet (we got flat rate access from 18h to 8h at the beginning).
I’d like to tell anonymous that we don’t need reasonable rates just for the sake of it. We need them in the same way we’re using internet’s access flat rates: to build relationships, value and ultimately business.
Vodafone listening?
Definitely worth raising Rudy.
Let me give you some more detail: pre-pay Vodafone customers in the UK are charged £7.50 per Megabite! That’s 3 to 4 times what any other operator is currently charging.
Rudy,
3 euros a month just for the ‘privilege’ of being able to access Vodafone Live! What a joke. Especially when you hear that some Vodafone subsidiaries including Vodafone UK have made browsing on Vodafone Live! free already!
You might be pleased to hear that T-Mobile UK are starting a flat-rate data service for £7.50 per month - so it looks like there may be hope yet! Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/t_mobile_unlimited/
Jan Kuczynski is right - it’s been free to ‘browse’ Vodafone live! in the UK for some time now. I also think it’s free for Pay-As-You-Go customers here, too. After all, Vodafone get tidy revenues from sales on the live! portal for doing very little work.
I currently use the Hutchison ‘3′ service, and they still use a walled garden approach - I can’t access ANY websites via the phone’s browser, only WAP sites which they allow me to. Up until 6 months ago or so you couldn’t access anything beyond their own ‘Planet 3′ portal (their Vodafone live! equivalent).
Operators are slowly coming round to thinking more about their users, but are also slowly being bullied into action. The cost of roaming in Europe is a good example. It looks like they’re going to be forced by the EU to stop ripping people off. They shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but while there’s money to be made they’re happy to take it to cover those huge 3G license fees most of them paid…
Ken
http://kiwanja.blogspot.com
good move rudy, some one had to tell that a little louder. vodafone live is just as hell as america online. its invented walled gardens to catch ignorant occasional users who dont know that email is available for free.
in the meantime lets all intall fon.com on our routers (and all taxi cabs
), get us some wifi handsets (aint the n91 from nokia coming with wifi?), install skype and make your own live portal.
heck.
Thanks again all for your comments, two weeks have passed now and still no sign from Vodafone itself…
I would like to update on a post Russell Beattie published yesterday on the same issue. In $1,154.99 in Mobile Data… Ouch he explains about the Cingular bill (yes you’re reading the numbers right!) his collegue received after having spend a couple of weeks in Europe for 3GSM …“essentially something happened when he swapped over from Cingular Blue to normal Cingular a month or so ago, and they, um, forgot to move his unlimited data plan with him, so he was off in Europe for several weeks and using Yahoo! Go Mobile the entire time, paying per kilobyte of data.”
Is this really the way we want to push mobile business forward?
I went to the Mobile Monday event in London this week and met with someone who told me that T-mobile currently charges its customers over £20 per megabyte!!
At first I didn’t believe him so I spent some time searching on the T-mobile website.
Let me tell you it took a long time to find anything, but hidden deep in a PDF file somewhere was a quiet mention of data charges - at 2p per kilobyte! That’s £20.48 per megabyte!
Hi!
Greetings from Sweden.
Last week I started accuiring the WWW via 3G Mobile Broadband max 384Kbits. I had ISDN 64kilobits before. Company’s name is Tele2-Comviq. 1 GByte/month up+down free + one free SIM-card/number for mobile phone; SEK10.20 an hour to all copper-connekted phones in Sweden etc.
I pay SEK165 a month for the service. More than 1 GB a month is priced extra per each 1 MB - quite high, but is no problem yet for me, as my statistics is around 800 MB/month. The card/modem I use is a Huawei 220 USB2 which costed me SEK1000.
———————-
Cheapest of all but ending 31/12 is:
Telia Wireless Broadband
Surf as much as you can from 1900-0700 weekdays, whole sundays, christmas eves etc (I do not know how they are looking on saturdays!)for just SEK89 per month
Entrance-price, that is starting fee (ordinarely SEK250)+ PMCIA card Huawei E 620 - probabely locked to operator - for SEK 595.
That is a total cost over one year of SEK139 or some £10
a month all inclusive.
SEK700 = $100
This stated to illustrate how impossible the VODAFON-prices are - also in Sweden.
regards,
laurentius
Hello all,
I am aware that this is an old thread, but I just wanted to share my extremely unpleasant experience with Vodafone Spain today.
I have had an account with them since september 2005 and everything was pretty much as expected-until I got the bill for the last month! 822 Euros!
Some two months ago I got a new phone from them - Blackberry Pearl 8100, and no data plan or blackberry service. I didn’t want the extra services simply because I don’t use them and prefer to surf the internet on the computer. First month everything was fine, and the bill was in the usual 60 Euros range I normally get every month. From this detailed specification that they faxed me today, it seems the phone started connecting to the Vodafone server all the time some 2 weeks ago. So, not only is there this 822 Euro bill, but the next one will have 500 Euro+ of the same charges! That is over 1300 Euro for no service at all.
CAN ANYONE PLEASE SHARE THEIR OPINION? What am I to do?
All the connections are few seconds and about 5-30 kb of data! That is practically no data - meaning it was just connecting to the Vodafone server and then disconnecting.
I do NOT have email or blackberry services setup on the phone, and I have just connected about 5 times to the internet KNOWINGLY, since I am aware there is a 50 cent charge every time.
It seems like a device malfunction to me and I will be taking the phone to the shop later today. In the meantime it is switched off, since I am absolutely paranoid now.
BESIDES, there is a “feature” on the “Mi Vodafone” website that allows the user to check the usage. IT CHARGES 13 CENTS EVERY TIME YOU CHECK YOUR USAGE - AND it showed 36 euro GPRS charges, and 6euros for the last and this month respectivelly. Where are these 800 Euros and why did nobody contact me to tell me there is abnormal activity on my account?
I am absolutely beside myself and am thinking about canceling the account (Cliente Oro-gold client with 2 lines) AND not paying these ridiculous bills.
Please, anyone’s opinion is welcome, what are my rights in this case?
Regards,
Alen
Alen,
I sympathise with this experience. I’ve been a VF customer since 2003 and have home broadband, home telephone, Mobile Service and a 3G card for my laptop. Needless to say my monthly bill is quite large. The mobile is used for company calls and regularly I’ve bills in the £200-300 range. However after getting a new handset it appears that the phone was making connections to the Vodafone Edge service every 15 minutes for a period of about 4 days. This pushed my montky bill to an extrodinary £779! I rang Vodafone expecting them to see that this was a mistake and that actually no real data had been downloaded but they only agreed to make a gesture payment of £200 which means I’m out of pocket for £380 for a service I didn’t want, didn’t know I was using and is available through my 3G card on the laptop anyway!
Since then I’ve written to Vodafone asking them why such a problem could of occured, why they did not check the network useage and ring me to see if I meant to be doing it. They do this level of pro-active checking for voice calls as they recently spotted some calls to India I made (within 12 hours) and saw a possiblity of x-selling me an international dialling package.
I’m clearly incredibly dissapointed with Vodafone at the moment and am looking at moving all four of the producs I use to another company.