I’m working on a summary of 2006. While I am doing this, I was moved to wonder how many times I had used the word ’shit’ in a blog post.

I rarely use the word — I’m always concerned about finding myself standing in front of a board of directors and someone asking, before they award me a £3m consulting contract, if I could explain why I referred to their company, product, or a particular decision as ‘being shit’ on SMS Text News. Or something like that

Now and again I just can’t stand reading or hearing about particular news about the mobile industry. Most of the time I use the phrase ‘arse’ or, on occasion, ‘absolute arse’ / ‘total arse’.

But sometimes that just won’t do, and I have to delve deeper — all the way past ‘neolithic incompetence’ right down to the base four letter word of ’shit’.

I reckoned I’d used the word about four times.

Nope.

Do a search yourself, you’ll see that, in fact, there are four pages worth of blog posts thrown up by the search function for the word. Heh.

It was an enlightening experience. ‘Ah yes!!’ I whispered under my breath as I flicked through the posts, remembering some of the industry’s stupidest decisions or announcements.

Here are some of the SMS Text News blog posts that caught my eye:

February 8th 2006
Survey: MMS Use still disappointing
In-Stat’s recent survey reporting that less than a third of cameraphone owners share pictures with their friends.

BUT NOT at GBP £0.50 per shitty picture.

May 16th 2006
Motorola need to get with it
I was really annoyed that despite buying the SLVR L7 in early 2006, almost half a year later, Motorola hadn’t bothered updating the handset software. I see there’s FINALLY an update available for download!

I don’t want to think that my SLVR is actually a defunct piece of shit that Motorola have moved on from years ago. I’d like to see more stuff to add to it. At the very LEAST I’d like to see an operating system update or some funky little toy I could download to the phone.

June 22nd 2006
Jo & Nat Redux – Vodafone ARPU issues
My ‘normob’ (normal mobile user) friend Jo had a problem with her Vodafone handset and got a temporary handset sent out to her. The issue here was that since Vodafone gave her a crap handset to use, she didn’t use it as much — decreasing her ARPU (by my calculations) by at least £3 a day for about 2 months.

Style is exceptionally important. Style and functionality. If you recall, Jo is a sporadic text and picture messager. Well, the ‘totally shit Nokia’ that they gave her short term must have reduced Vodafone’s revenues by about £3 a day. She was still texting her boyfriend, but recently they’ve been whacking each other picture messages all day.

June 22nd 2006
Vodafone deactivates service in CM12 postcode area
Another Vodafone story, this time about them deactivating service in the CM12 postcode area for months because they had a problem with a transmitter. My dad was hopping mad. Still, it meant he got peace and quiet when he returned home — and about 10 voicemails every morning from colleagues who’d been trying to reach him when he got back into a signal area.
I found dad stood at the master bedroom window. He was standing on a stool and had the phone handset half out the window.

He was screaming into the handset: ‘YES ITS A SHIT SIGNAL, SORRY, SAY AGAIN..’

June 23 2006
Vonage, VOIP, realities
Not necessarily about Vonage, this post was more about the abysmal state of the country’s broadband infrastructure.

In fact I’ve seen countless bullshit presentations from British Telecom senior executives over the years — most recently a few months ago — telling me about their massive bandwidth pipes and strategies. Absolute nonsense. There’s a key difference between talking and delivering. Every time someone from BT or a broadband ‘telco’ like Bulldog tells me about their capabilities, I just ask them why I’m still stuck on 100 odd kilobytes a second.

Their first response is ‘Ah, get a business broadband connection’.

‘It is’. Their face drops a little bit. We continue to play the game for a few minutes longer until they finally admit that, behind the press releases and the grand visions, we’re nowhere near as advanced from a broadband perspective as we should be.

July 27th 2006
Too geeky it hurts
This is me outraged by a total geek poncing about with his Vodafone 3g card in a hotel lobby.

What the hell are you doing with that piece of shit laptop?

July 31st 2006
Prince Harry pictured with bog standard Vodafone Nokia
I was also annoyed to see Prince Harry kitted out with a crap handset:

When Prince Harry walks into the local Vodafone shop, don’t give him the shittest one in your range. Offer him a N70 or a N91 or something…anything better than a Christmas Cracker phone.

2nd August 2006
Orange launches unlimited plan. Kind of.
ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. If you want a reminder about how SHIT the mobile industry has been in 2006, check out Orange’s UNLIMITED (‘off peak’) data plan offering. What’s even worse though, is that some of you reading this are STILL using Orange and STILL paying a few quid a meg for data. Heh. Some people don’t believe me when I tell them that Orange seriously launched a plan that gave you unlimited off-peak data.

It’s not good. It’s nothing short of appalling that any mobile professional in the UK should feel constrained by their data usage because they’ve got a shit service plan from a smart operator charging them through the nose.

9th August 2006
Gomobo.com launches pizza delivery via mobile
I’ve nothing but the highest regard for Gomobo – however in this post I was lamenting the absolute arse it is having to TELEPHONE my local pizza place to make an order.

It’s a total arse for me sat in Shitsville (my affectionate name) here in the UK having to use 1900s technology to make my pizza order. Hurry up and launch in London, Noah! No pressure!

22nd August 2006
Marks & Spencer launch MVNO
I was not impressed.

Put a few cardboard boxes of our shit Nokias on the stand. Array them casually — we want to show the customer that we’re hip, cool.

22nd August 2006
Ewan gets stuffed by Vodafone
Say no more.

5th October 2006
Getting hosted by UK mobile networks
I can’t take the fact I’m billed 36p a minute to talk to another UK mobile user.

I have a huge problem paying 36p a minute for such a shite bog standard commodity.

12th October 2006
Vodafone Treo 750 MicrosoftHell
This has to be one of the most commented posts on SMS Text News. There’s ’shit’ words all over the place in this post!

Steve isn’t having a good month. If you recall, he recently had a whale of a time trying to get his new Blackberry operational via Carphone Warehouse.

Well the phone bug bit him last week and he impulse bought a Vodafone Palm Treo 750. Here’s his experience.

28th October 2006
Three UK: £0.99 for a music track, £3.49 for a realtune???
I didn’t react positively to discovering this reality.

This is outrageous. Ridiculous. Stupid. Pathetic. And you know what, it tells you everything you need to know about how shit the mobile industry still is. They just never seem to get it.

6th November 2006
Is it me or is Fresh Mobile the shittest UK MVNO?
Yes.

13th November 2006
Mobile Data: Genius stratey and why you’re screwing up the mobile industry
THREE POUNDS PER MEG?

8th December 2006
Property Boards – we’re almost in 2007 – has it come to this?
Oh don’t et me started…

Look at this rubbish. Has it come to this? I was walking down one of the back streets in Covent Garden yesterday and saw this Winkworth for-sale sign. The ‘2 bed’ shitty little sub-label attached to the sign really, really winds me up.

And thus ends the 2006 SMS Text News whirlwind!

Check this user-story from Jim Black, head honcho at MX Alliance.

My wife sent me a picture that my daughter had sent her. My wife is on Voda and my daughter is on T-Mobile. So my wife sent it on to me over at T-mobile, and when I tried to retrieve it I received an error message about not being able to locate the remote server etc, etc.

Oh dear – six years after launching MMS it’s still hit and miss. Now we don’t use picture messaging as such, but as a family we might now that our twin daughters are at university. But I doubt if we will now.

Absolutely shocking. Shocking.

Link: Telegraph | Money | Pay-as-you-go or monthly charges? Finding a package that will fix the problem of your children’s mo

More than 5.8m families shell out for their children’s mobile phone with little or no control of how much is spent each month, according to research from mobile operator T-Mobile.

I reckon if I had children, I’d probably put them on one of the Three UK monthly contracts — that or a £60 T-Mobile Flext deal.

However been a total mobile geek, I wonder if my children will completely rebel against that and adopt tin cans and bits of string to communicate with their friends, just to wind me up.

Have you got children? What mobile strategy did you adopt for them? Monthly contracts? Pay as you go?

Link: World Chatter: Tricks of the Trade: Cell Phones Abroad – DailyCandy

I was sent this by one of New York’s finest hotshot property developers. Not only does she have a First in Law from King’s College, she also ONCE kept a new Blackberry (gift from her brother) under her desk for a year. A YEAR. Before opening it up, using it, and discovering that actually, she did like it.

A mobile expert she isn’t.

However she is a regular subscriber to the DailyCandy newsletters and sent today’s over to me. They track cool, hip, fashionably poncy things going on around New York, London and other less important cities too

She reckoned today’s feature would be of interest. She wasn’t wrong, as it’s all about using your ‘cell’ (i.e. mobile) phone abroad.

I am always interested to see how ‘normal people’ discuss and react to mobile, so if you too would like to see how they treat it, go ahead and click on the link above.

It costs ten times as much as it does at home — when it works. And all you wanted to do was phone home. We found the best options for all travelers and all budgets (billionaire to backpacker).

I had this experience sent in from a reader regarding Phones4U. Had a read and see if their experience sounds familiar.

I went into Phones4u and purchased the new SonyEricsson W850i from them, which was on the Orange Canary 40 Price Plan.

I was initially told that I would get 600 texts, 600 cross net minutes, 1 magic number to any network, and I was also able to change my price plan after 6months.

But after activating the phone and calling Orange customer services, I was told that I only get 400 texts instead of the 600 originally specified to me, also was told that the magic number was to Orange numbers only instead of been any network as told instore, then to top it off I was told by Orange that I had to wait 9mths to change my tariff!

I was quite upset that I had been given incorrect information to take out a contract with them, and decided to return the phone the next day, as I was advised I was able to cancel the contract within 14 days.

To my surprise I was literally hassled in the store – asking for reasons why I wanted to cancel, in which they were almost adamant I was told the correct information. After arguing with them for almost an hour, they agreed to phone it through to cancel it. I received a receipt to say everything was cancelled and I would only be billed for the 2days plus any calls I had made.

Unfortunately, I received a bill from Orange yesterday for £45, which included line rental from 12th – 14th October, and 15th – 14th November. I phoned Orange to advise them that I had already cancelled the contract with Phones4u last week only to find out that it hasn’t been cancelled with Orange.

So I am still stuck in the contract – Orange advised me to go back to Phones4u to get them to cancel it with them… I don’t understand how this has happened as they have given me a receipt to say that the contract has been cancelled, yet Orange have stated that I am still stuck in the contract with them???

Well I’m going to contact the CEO now to see what he can do as those sales people are just ridiculous!

It’s simply not good enough for Orange to wash their hands of the affair. This reader’s account is with *Orange*. Orange should be HUGELY annoyed that Phones4U caused so much trouble by allegedly dispensing inaccurate information.

The right thing to have happened here is for Orange to have solved the reader’s problems. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to knock up the texts by 200, for example, which would potentially have gone a little way to placating their customer. Obviously they can’t be doing this for everyone who phones up saying ‘wait a minute?’

Orange should also have cancelled the contract and deleted the bills. No questions asked. THEN they should have engaged the customer to say ‘ok, right, what can we do for you directly?’

Instead, they’ve referred the customer back to Phones4U… what a total arse.

And OBVIOUSLY Phones4U aren’t interested in you unless you’re wanting to buy a new contract. There’s no incentive whatsoever for a Phones4U sales person to talk to you about anything other than a new contract

At all these swanky conferences I attend, I keep having to sit through fancy presentations from operators and retailers telling me how good their service levels are and how happy their customers are. And how they’ve done X or Y to really lower churn and so on. I really have to stop myself from yelling, RUBBISH, at the top of my voice. This is a super example of where it’s still not working. 20 odd years on, you think the industry could have sorted it out.

Won’t somebody plesae think about the customer?