Anyway, agreed, there is some room for maneuver depending on a plan. But most/many people aren't on flat rate plans and even more have a fear of large billshock whether founded or not. And if you go abroad it's magnified 10 fold (the problem and the perception).

This all needs to change radically, which won't happen because it's operators we're dealing with here…

Anyway, agreed, there is some room for maneuver depending on a plan. But most/many people aren't on flat rate plans and even more have a fear of large billshock whether founded or not. And if you go abroad it's magnified 10 fold (the problem and the perception).

This all needs to change radically, which won't happen because it's operators we're dealing with here…

er….are you sure about this Alex? I thought that every UK operator had a flat-rate internet add-on for around the £5-10 mark. Hardly bankruptcy. Or have I been asleep and dreaming for the last year?

Granted the roaming situation is fraught, unless you are on 3, in a 3 sister country. In coverage

VF passport nations have data at £5/MB/day, but you pay per 10KB. They estimate 1MB = 40 pages. 25KB per page. 50p = 4 pages = 12.5p / page.

And once you've hit that £5 mark, they throw in another 14MB free.

Now I'm no mobile packet data wizard, but I imagine you could shift a lot of location co-ordinate updates into 25KB.

With 15MB = to play with, per day – 600 pages – that's a shedload of browsing, map updates, etc.

But yeah, I would be rather spooked firing up an app in somewhere dodgy.

/m

These guys seem to be really where it’s at, at least in terms of good, open, reliable services. You should do an article on them Ewan

The first MNO to offer a sensible data roaming package (alerts when you are getting close to your expected limit etc), possibly with dual sim (so one can be used in one of those 3G USB modems that are so popular now) should get killed in the rush.

The other issue is a fundamental discomfort I have with relying wholesale on a closed system from a single company. It’s about control. We should not have a situation where the whole (or most of the) world relies solely (or mainly) on Latitude for their location related services. Then one company has too much power. Open standards are a lot more comfortable because it’s a democratic agreement, and power sharing. How that gets implemented in practice I’m not sure, but it’s entirely possible for Google – Android has proved it.

Alex

Very good point. I was explaining Latitude and it's potential to an (older) colleague last week -

“That's very clever, but it sounds really creepy.” was his comment.

“How did you feel about Faceboook 2 years ago?” I asked,

“Uh, good point – I felt pretty much the same and I guess I'm using that now.”

Mr Operator is right – give it about 2 years to cross the mass market acceptability tipping point and Lattitude (or Fire Eagle if Yahoo can get in the market) platformed services will be everywhere. Once operators start to offer free tariffs in exchange for accepting targeted location aware advertising this model will become inevitable.