UPDATE: Despite the fact that it was rapidly pulled down (and is not yet back up as at 6:00PM AEST on 9 July), Vodafone finally published their pricing this morning. Realising my worst fears, Vodafone have produced the least competitive plans in the market. By delaying, they actually had time to implement a market-dominating approach, but seem to have utterly failed to do so. They will certainly lose me as a customer.
For those countries that already have the iPhone, and those people using it, this groundbreaking device has proved to be a watershed in their ability to remain connected to their social graph. In the UK, Euan Semple is lamenting the death of his first-generation iPhone and notes with more than a little dismay that:
It has been an efficient, aesthetic and emotional delight since I first turned it on and now it lies there without a pulse.
I feel much the same about my iPhone (except that mine still works). To maintain that sense of connectedness, and despite the cost of mobile data in Australia (I currently pay Vodafone $49 per month for just 300Mb of data for my iPhone on top of the $49 I pay for calls and SMS), I happily pay up every month. Having this device, even in a country where it isn’t supported, helps me maintain a level of connectedness that I simply didn’t and arguably couldn’t have before I got one.
With the impending launch of the second-generation, 3G iPhone in Australia and many other countries, I and many others have been hoping for another watershed moment. One where mobile data in Australia would move to commodity levels as it has in the US and UK. Unfortunately, it appears that Australian telcos simply don’t understand the nature of this device and the way it will be used. Optus (post paid and prepaid plans) and Telstra have both announced pricing that fail to recognise data as a core part of the iPhone experience, charging serious rates for data and providing very low bandwidth allowances for the privilege.
I hope that the telcos all realise very quickly just what a big mistake they’ve made and couple reasonable call and SMS charges with decent data. Certainly, I’d be more than happy to combine my current call and SMS costs of $49/month with the Vodafone Mobile Broadband cost of $39/month for 5Gb of data. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that the first Australian telco that releases an iPhone plan along those lines will own the market.
Bingo! You’ve hit the nail on the head as usual Stephen.
We (the tragically self-proclaimed digiterati) already know in our bones what a watershed device the iPhone really is, entirely focused on the mobile *data* experience.
This and future devices allow us to reveal the previously opaque digital layer that overlays almost everything we do and almost everywhere we go.
Indeed it is tragic that the data plans we have so far been (ahem) privileged enough to be allowed to see have been woeful at best. My personal hope is either that Optus will see the light after their first month free data offer and come good with real plans or that Three/Vodafone will make a serious offer to the market.
To me it seems like the Telcos almost want people not to use too much data. The networks wouldn’t be able to cope with the expected high volume so they price data ridiculously high to put people off.
After all, they can’t be that stupid to not have analysed the iPhone’s impact and data usage in the US and UK, can they?
So it sounds as though I need to bin my account with Vodafone. The question is, will there be a better offer anywhere else. Sadly, it sounds not.
I used to use Virgin Mobile (“used to” because I’m overseas at the moment) - $10 a month for 300MB data!
If you need more data and you have Three coverage, they have X-Series plans which include $30/month for 1GB and $40/month for 2GB, but it’s about twice as much as mobile should cost IMO.
P.S. Opera Mobile 9.5 is shaping up to be an amzing browser… Finally, the web on a 640x480 res mobile device is verrryyy nice. Watch out iPhone :)
Of course there’s another, perhaps radical option: You don’t have to have an iPhone on Day One. Lust can be controlled…
Or, as I saw someone else suggest, get an iPod Touch and glue it a WiFi-capable 3.5G phone handset from another manufacturer.
Stil, based on the current pricing (assuming Vodafone aren’t undertaking a dramatic rethink), I’ll be sticking to what I’ve got - although I will probably churn to 3 for a better combination of phone+data and mobile broadband pricing.
At Reboot I was lamenting data costs in Germany, and how roaming in Denmark totally kicked my ass. Compared to Australia though, we’re in heaven here. And Thomas Vander Wal told me with glee that in the US he pays $25 for unlimited everything and nothing extra for roaming. *groan*
The Aussie telcos are just pure greed machines. It almost sounds like they have a non-competition pact, doesn’t it? It’d be so easy to totally take over the market by offering a half fair plan.
The way I use my current phone and way I am likely to use an iPhone is almost purely data, so in the near future I will ditch my phone plan, get a data only plan. Sure I will pay through the nose for any calls I make, but I can take incoming calls and there is always the Skype option on my WM6 beast for outgoing calls.
An iPhone without a contract is an option, give me Skype or similar and a cheap data plan on 3 (Vodafone is not 3G at my house) and I will be set.
@Nick I’m thinking the same thing, except that the call charges on Vodafone against mobile broadband SIMs are pretty insane. I can’t find equivalent pricing at 3.
@Stephen according to the 3 website
I’ve always said that the carrier with the largest data plan would get my contract… it’s as simple as that.
Hi Stephen,
It is very disappointing, I’m blogged about it from an eGovernment standpoint, asking if it’s time for a Federal mobile broadband guarantee
If anyone knows people in the appropriate department, please pass it on!
Has anyone tried to use 3G data in the same room, at the same time as say 10 other people? It doesn’t work - the cell infrastructure doesn’t scale. Why on earth would any telco introduce an attractive data plan and invite customers into a lousy experience? It makes much more sense to use market dynamics to limit take up, bolster the infrastructure and slowly scale up.
I am convinced that the Australian Telcos have painted themselves into a technological corner with the current broadband mobile data networks.
First, the network infrastructure was expensive to implement. Second (as has been indicated in previous comments) the mobile data network appears to not scale well and would not be able to provide anywhere near the published speeds if it was suddenly being used but a very large number of customers.
The telco’s shareholders demand rapid return on the huge investment and the “supermarket” (sell cheaply to many people) approach will not work so the telcos are left with an approach that requires a small number of customers paying extremely high prices. This means that the only people who can afford or justify the cost are mobile business people or the early adopter digerati who are prepared to the pay the high price just because it is “cool”.
Ian Lyons might have a point. I know quite a few 2G Blackberry users who’re experiencing a great many dropped calls in crowded areas like the city, North Sydney, and Chatswood. One used to work for a mobile phone company, and says it’s pretty obvious Telstra’s network is out of capacity.
@Ian : interesting point about capacity. Have a look at this map of all GSM & 3G cell towers in The Netherlands:
http://www.mapserv.nl/osmohloh/
Zoom in to any city in the Netherlands (its in Europe, close to England) to street level and you will see that they are pretty far in between if you consider population density; hundreds of people per mast.
iPhone plans in the Netherlands are quite affortable (iPhone 8GB : $132, unlimited 3G , 24 months: $50) so it will be interesting to see what speeds my friends get.
In the mean time, I stick to old fashioned GSM for calls and Wifi for Internet.
I guess I should use this as an impetus to get back to my own blog and finish it.
What short memories we all have. When ADSL launched in AU, plans were very definitely aimed at business. It wasn’t until a good 6-12 months after ADSL started that ‘home’ plans truly began to emerge.
The telcos do not (currently) care about you individuals, unless you work for a large corporation that is going to purchase en masse for it’s employees. Why? Because business (big business in particular) will pay the premium prices they are demanding.
They will start to court the individual user market if, and only if, the business market begins to ebb away. I wanted a (cheap) iphone as much as the next person, but sheesh, the world will still be spinning on July 12, you’ll have food on the table and roof over your heads. AND we’ll be a day closer to saner pricing, but I find this bleeting from the IT community about how they’ve been done wrong is a bit self indulgent.
Yes, we’re gonna miss out on an opportunity here to truly advance the way Australians use data and interact wirelessly. So many people seem surprised by this, and for me, that is truly the surprise.
Ben, you’re right. But as counter to your position (at least, partly counter), this issue should have been resolved by now.
We should all have cheap (I don’t expect free) access to high speed data - from our offices, homes and whatever our Third Place happens to be.
The failure of the telcos and government policy to make that happen makes us a digital banana republic.
News have a piece out on the topic I suspect they’re been reading twitter, trib and stilgherrian!
Stephen I don’t deny that the situation should’ve improved by now, but the reality is we’re a backwater in every sense of the word.
We’ll never have something comparable to the US, Europe, or parts of Asia because we’re a large landmass and a small population.
And to ‘cap’ it off, we’re “at the arse end of the Earth”. It’s a double whammy of having to spend lots of money connecting each of us in the country, and then upgrading the infrastructure to connect us outside of the country.
Business may never invest in the kind of infrastructure needed (though I have seen recently that PIPE and Telstra are both running out new deep-sea cables), nor provide the prices we’re expecting, unless we dramatically increase our population, or we’re enroute to another market that will make the investment/prices worthwhile.
China and India do not sit between here and the US/Europe - perhaps we’d do better if we moved to sit somewhere on the India-China border.
Government won’t engage on this, because they know that if they flap their hands and lips about it too much, the onus will be on them to fund the infrastructure improvements needed, and they’ll have to subsidise the ongoing maintenance costs (if not carry them completely).
IMHO I think we’ll ALWAYS lag behind the rest of the world with anything that has high input costs over long distances, so I don’t see things changing…ever.
Saying we *should* have it by now is like asking why we haven’t seen Hal floating around the traps - wasn’t he due to go mad nearly a decade ago?
@Ben : I partially agree with your argument, but keep in mind that because Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, the network infrastructure in the cities should not be this medieval.
When broadband was introduced where I lived (Eindhoven, 1997), as far as I remember we had 1500 Kb download speeds *locally*. Over 10 thousand people were sharing a 2 Mbit line to the rest of the world, but at least local downloads were fast.
Locally should however not mean “premium payed content”.
[…] The community responds on iPhone gouging in Australia 07.10.08 | No Comments Hello! Welcome to acidlabs. If you’re new here, you may want to read about Stephen Collins or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!As I said yesterday: Unfortunately, it appears that Australian telcos simply don’t understand the nature of [the iPhone] and the way it will be used. # […]
Trib - it still amazes me that my phone provider “3” won’t allow users to buy data for their phones at the same rates as they provide it for their mobile broadband customers - sometimes the same people - the distinction is ludicrous when you think about it - why not let people make the most a device - phone and broadband model instead of mandating the carrying to a usb modem and phone! makes no sense that I can think of. - what am I missing?
@Ben - 15 months ago “3” where letting (ok forcing) you to sign up for data at the mobile data rate if your phone was not one of those supported on the X series (which had cheaper rates at the time). I know I investigate getting mobile data for my phone (a DOPOD 838pro) on “3” and from January to May 2007, it was mobile data at the mobile broadband rate.
This why we really need a co-op alternative in Australia. The prices Vodafone, Telstra, etc. charge for both iPhones and general phone use are outrageous.
An org called FAUC is going to start a cheaper company if 10,000 people show their interest:
https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/fauc
Lets let the telecom companies know they can’t hike up their prices!