Mobile broadband? Hhhmmm....
My dongle is telling me that mobile broadband isn't an appealing proposition. Why? Well, because I made a big mistake, and used it. I've been in Asia recently. When I got to Seoul, where there is no GSM network, I switched by iPhone to use the free wifi in the conference centre, and elsewhere, but didn't use it for calls or for data. But when I was at the airport, waiting for an hour before meeting someone, I was having a coffee and I noticed that a couple of guys sitting at a nearby table were using Vodafone dongles. Since I'm a nerd, ultimately, I took out my 3 (Hutchison) USB dongle and plugged it in to my Macbook. I was astonished that it connected, and worked. There must a be a 3G data cell just at the airport -- amazing. Anyway, I picked up my e-mail and sent a few messages, browsed a few pages, had a pleasant cup of coffee and an hour soon passed.
A day or two later, I flew into Singapore. My iPhone 3G sprang back into life again. Even before I got a text message from O2 warning me that would charge me an astonishing SIX QUID PER MEGABYTE for using my iPhone's data capabilities, I had already turned off the data roaming, mindful of the stories I had seen of unsuspecting consumers receiving phone bills for tens of thousands of pounds. I don't understand the pricing policy, since if O2 had sent me a text message saying something like "Welcome to Singapore, you can carry on using your data service as normal here but we'll charge you a tenner a week" then they would have earned a tenner from me, as opposed to the 0 they earned from me under the current tariff.
Back home, I've just opened up my bill from 3. Getting my dongle out for an hour in Seoul has cost me FIFTY THREE QUID. For 8.8Mb of data (Microsoft Exchange sends megabytes of data backwards and forwards even if you are just picking up half a dozen e-mails) the charge is £53. That's £1 per 166K of data, or to put it another way, outrageous. I certainly won't make the mistake of plugging in my dongle outside of the U.K. again and since my IPhone works inside the U.K., I'll be chucking away my dongle when the contract runs out.
By way of comparison between mobile voice and mobile broadband, consider the mobile phone I rented in Seoul. Since my iPhone 3G didn't work in Korea, like every other incoming traveller I rented a South Korea Telecom mobile phone at the airport. I used it for a week, calling the U.K. three or four times and calling local numbers in Seoul maybe half a dozen times. I also took a few incoming calls from the U.K. When I returned the phone on the way out, the bill came to about a tenner. For a week. Including some international calls. The net result of all of this is that next time I go to Korea, South Korea Telecom will earn another tenner from me, 3 and O2 will earn nothing. I don't understand the mobile broadband business, I really don't.
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Posted 20 Sep 2008
Last edited 20 Sep 2008
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1. At 22 Sep 2008 12:10, Philip Sheldrake wrote:
Dave, like you, I don't understand these tariffs. May be they're just going for the business traveller with an expense account and consequently little concern for the rate?
I too was in Seoul earlier this year, working with the Internet technical community at the OECD Summit on the Future of the Internet Economy. I was fortunate enough to be given complimentary access by Korea Telecom to their roaming WiBro service (see my post at http://tinyurl.com/wibro).
This 18mbps service (to be twice that by the year end) costs £5 per month capped, or £10 per month uncapped. On the basis that the cross-charge to O2 could not have been much more than that (accepting it's 3G rather than WiBro), O2 made a whopping margin out of you! But like you say, just the once.
2. At 23 Sep 2008 16:35, Dave Birch wrote:
I agree that they are aimed at business travellers, but as from now I refuse to turn on data roaming, even though it is my employer that pays and not me, because it's an outrage! If we all refuse to pay, they'll have to change the tariff.