Open Letter To Vodafone – Update
2 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele April 5th, 2006 in UncategorizedTwo weeks have passed now since I posted my Open Letter To Vodafone and still no sign from Vodafone itself, not that I had any illusions… They definately have other priorities than to worry about my flat rate dataplan of course.
The good thing about my concern was that my original post initiated a lot of reactions and comments, not only on my blog but other blogs too and specifically at the Oxford University Next Generation Mobile Applications Panel forum moderated by Tomi Ahonen and Ajit Ajokar where some comments on the complexity for operators to manage 3G and voice where really instructive and insightfull.
Apparently Vodafone is completely abscent in the blogosphere or maybe it’s just better for them not to react and initiate more reactions about the topic.
Today I got some surprising little help on this case to aim for flat rate data plans from Russell Beattie in a post he 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 coworker Jonathan Strauss received after having spend a couple of weeks in Europe for 3GSM:
“Check out his blog for the details, but 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.”
It really seems it’s about time operators change their attitude towards heavy mobile web users like us, no? Russ continues:
“But imagine you’re just some Joe who just got a new phone and didn’t bother with the data plan because, hey, what’s one cent a kilobyte, right? Or maybe they think they’ll never bother with that stuff. Then they end up using the phone for something and start racking up a huge bill, and the operators do nothing about it. It’s outright negligence and fraud if you ask me, and every operator in every country does it. The worst thing is that once this happens to a normal person, they are pretty much sworn off mobile data for life and will try to make sure everyone they know is as well. So not only did the carrier screw their customer, they screwed everyone in the Mobile Internet business as well. Nice, huh?”
Is this really the way we want to push mobile business forward?
Tags: mobile web mobile+web 3G openletter vodafone
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It’s really strange how mobile operator strategies despite being the same company differ from country to country. In Italy, Austria, Germany and France there are either full 3G flatrates or volumes of 1-5 GB ranging from 20 to 50 Euros a month. And then in other countries they keep insisting on their walled gardens and overpriced data charges. Really strange. Not to speak of what operators charge if you want to use 3G abroad…
Rudy, just a note to say that from the 1st of April, T-Mobile UK’s Web’N'Walk plans now give you ‘unlimited’ (within reason) mobile data access from your handset.
It can’t be long before other operators adopt similar price plans!