As so many people flock to buy the iphone, the telcos think they have a captive audience, so there is no incentive for them to “fight” for our custom, thus Apple are offering us up like rich juicy fruit off a vine, plump for the picking. Long, expensive and inflexible contracts is the result … and for those of us who travel the world either for short or extended periods of time, we are given no choice of purchasing an iphone outright so that we can have mobile service locally in the countries that we move to. International Roaming is so expensive and the cost is a hard pill to swallow particularly when we know the price that the locals pay in the country … it’s time that our world have global telco’s (using satellites or something), but that’s a whole other story.

As much as I’d love to have an iphone, I can’t justify being locked into one Telco for the life of the phone (it’s not just the 12 or 24 month period that they bind you to). Too bad that someone couldn’t just invent technology that used everyone’s wireless transmitters to facilitate a free communications network to teach these Telco’s a lesson!!

Please, can someone organise a global partition or something for everyone to send to Apple to change their way of dealing with regards to the iphone roll outs. Maybe it could be subcategorised by countries to also send to the Telecommunications Ombudsman in each country to get them to force the Telco’s to open up the devices to accept any service provider.

3G & 3.5G, despite the ‘mobile broadband’ moniker is based on technology that doesn’t scale with increasing users. With too many users, quality of service degrades fast and no one is happy.

Their core networks and operational support systems are still carrying the legacy circuit-switched paradigm. Yes, they’re moving to all IP cores and all that but it’s a risky and complicated business; look at BT 21CN.

Billing is one of the major pains when trying to roll out new services. I’ve seen the inside of billing systems: they aren’t pretty.

Second wall is the capital expenditure. Telcos still have a massive hangover from the spectrum license fees. Also high is rent of land for towers and cables.

So, it’s not easy to roll out true mobile broadband but it’s just a matter of time.

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My experience so far this year on an 02 contract:

Egypt - 7 days - Monthly Bill over £200
Washington DC - 4 days - Monthly Bill over £150
Australia - 11 Days - Monthly Bill over £125

When in the UK I rarely spend more than £45 a month… to be fair there is an off switch for data roaming, but I kinda bought the phone to be able to stay connected - irrespective of where I am.

The iPhone does have a parallel for mobile internet - it’s called Opera Mobile 9.5, and IMO it’s a technically superior browser and just as usable if not moreso (contrary to what Apple fans think, a stylus and a hardware keyboard are great for usability). Fair enough that it’s only been around for several weeks, not months, and only on the HTC Touch Diamond - but it’ll be generally available next week in beta for all Windows Mobile devices (and Symbian to follow shortly after).

Aside from this, for the last 6+ months I’ve also had the pleasure of using Opera Mini 4 for the nominal fee of $10 per month for 300MB of data with Virgin Mobile. Let me say that if you haven’t done much browsing on your mobile before, you will *struggle* to used 300MB in a month. The only things that will tip the scales are podcasts or YouTube videos. That said, they have now brought back 1GB plans for $15 per month.

So the answer is simple… Don’t get an iPhone on a Telstra contract - buy from Optus, unlock it, and use Virgin Mobile.

Either that, or don’t buy an iPhone at all - other good devices do exist too :)

Stephen Collins rounds up the community disgust at the ridiculous pricing plans for the new iPhone in Australia…