When are we going to learn that letting telcos run the network is a really, REALLY bad idea? The shocking cost of smartphones.
Here's the news, most of us don't speak "telco" any more than we speak sanscrit. Apparently telcos don't speak plain English either.
Apsrt from the gee whizz factor, which is currently being hammered out of its customers very quickly, the fact is that WE don't distinguish between voice, SMS and data, in fact you'd be hard pressed to get a distinction from 70% of all users and 95% of those over 40.
We. Just. Want. To. Use. The. Damned. Phone. In the ways in which it has been designed, but we DON'T want to have to recalculate our bills every time we make a decision about what we are going to use it for.
There's a reason those contracts are so mind-nuimbingly complicated, its the same reason your credit card is full of hidden charges until you step over some otherwise trivial line.
Profit.
The more "mistakes" you make, the more often you step outside the limits of your contract, the more money they give themselves the right to make. We are at war with too many of the people who want to sell us stuff.
And they CAN'T explain the contract to you honestly, hell I'd bet most people selling them couldn't explain it accurately if their life depended on it, because IF you really undertstood what it meant you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
So once again the telcos swap short term numbers for long term customers as we all get the idea that network access should be a flat fee and the traffic should be charged at a bulk rate, and what the hell we do with that traffic is entirely our business.
Whether we want to use Skype for voice calls or transferring files or whether we are twittering, or web browsing or watching a movie we have downloaded or filing our tax returns or doing the banking or any damned thing at all, makes no difference to us. None. Zero.
While the telcos see our seamless communications as ways to rort us for a couple of thousand on one bill as a great idea, their road to hell will continue to be greased by their own slaver.
The phenomenon known as "bill shock" is racking up new victims as mobile users succumb to the temptations and traps associated with next-generation smartphones.
Popular devices such as the iPhone and the HTC Dream provide one-touch access to internet and social networking applications which can prove far more costly to access than voice services.
A bewildered mobile phone user recently sought advice on a technology user forum after being hit with a bill in excess of two thousand dollars. In his post entitled: "Virgin shocker bill $2458.67" he said he had accessed the internet while on holiday in Cairns, and hadn't realised his $450 cap plan applied only to voice calls.
Christoph Dwertmann, a technology research engineer, also experienced a substantial increase in his monthly bill after he bought an Android G1 phone which had been shipped from the US by a specialist local supplier. Mr Dwertman said T-mobile, the original distributor of the phone, had programmed the handset to send out automated SMS messages, which were then charged to him at an international rate, resulting in a $120 bill.
[...] The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) said mobile user complaints for 2008 rose by 50 per cent over the previous year, with a large percentage of these concerned with billing and payments. Much of the confusion among consumers stemmed from misunderstandings over the term "cap", said the TIO.
In telco speak that is the maximum value you can use per month before you are subject to metered call or data charges. Depending on the plan, it may apply only to voice, SMS, or data, or cover all three.
Popular devices such as the iPhone and the HTC Dream provide one-touch access to internet and social networking applications which can prove far more costly to access than voice services.
A bewildered mobile phone user recently sought advice on a technology user forum after being hit with a bill in excess of two thousand dollars. In his post entitled: "Virgin shocker bill $2458.67" he said he had accessed the internet while on holiday in Cairns, and hadn't realised his $450 cap plan applied only to voice calls.
Christoph Dwertmann, a technology research engineer, also experienced a substantial increase in his monthly bill after he bought an Android G1 phone which had been shipped from the US by a specialist local supplier. Mr Dwertman said T-mobile, the original distributor of the phone, had programmed the handset to send out automated SMS messages, which were then charged to him at an international rate, resulting in a $120 bill.
[...] The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) said mobile user complaints for 2008 rose by 50 per cent over the previous year, with a large percentage of these concerned with billing and payments. Much of the confusion among consumers stemmed from misunderstandings over the term "cap", said the TIO.
In telco speak that is the maximum value you can use per month before you are subject to metered call or data charges. Depending on the plan, it may apply only to voice, SMS, or data, or cover all three.
Here's the news, most of us don't speak "telco" any more than we speak sanscrit. Apparently telcos don't speak plain English either.
Apsrt from the gee whizz factor, which is currently being hammered out of its customers very quickly, the fact is that WE don't distinguish between voice, SMS and data, in fact you'd be hard pressed to get a distinction from 70% of all users and 95% of those over 40.
We. Just. Want. To. Use. The. Damned. Phone. In the ways in which it has been designed, but we DON'T want to have to recalculate our bills every time we make a decision about what we are going to use it for.
There's a reason those contracts are so mind-nuimbingly complicated, its the same reason your credit card is full of hidden charges until you step over some otherwise trivial line.
Profit.
The more "mistakes" you make, the more often you step outside the limits of your contract, the more money they give themselves the right to make. We are at war with too many of the people who want to sell us stuff.
And they CAN'T explain the contract to you honestly, hell I'd bet most people selling them couldn't explain it accurately if their life depended on it, because IF you really undertstood what it meant you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
So once again the telcos swap short term numbers for long term customers as we all get the idea that network access should be a flat fee and the traffic should be charged at a bulk rate, and what the hell we do with that traffic is entirely our business.
Whether we want to use Skype for voice calls or transferring files or whether we are twittering, or web browsing or watching a movie we have downloaded or filing our tax returns or doing the banking or any damned thing at all, makes no difference to us. None. Zero.
While the telcos see our seamless communications as ways to rort us for a couple of thousand on one bill as a great idea, their road to hell will continue to be greased by their own slaver.
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