With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?
Ok… so it’s not quite what you might have been thinking.
Thank you to Mr P for sending this in.
Why the chap pictured is walking about with an ‘internet’ sign on his head, I do not know.
I suspect the service level is a lot more consistent than your average mobile broadband experience, though.
I’m posting this on the 5th of March 2009.
I’m doing it for posterity’s sake so I can look back and remark just how shit the UK’s infrastructure is.
Some people in the country are lucky enough to have nice fast connections. It seems that wherever I tend to choose to live, the infrastructure is actually rubbish.
The next place I choose to live will be WHOLLY, WHOLLY based on how fast the internet *ACTUALLY* is. I’m not sure how I’m going to discover this. I’m actually connected at about 8megabits per second. The throughput is about 15-20k a second upload and about double the speed download.
I’ve been uploading 200gb of data to ZumoDrive. I’ve been doing it for almost 24 hours.
Here’s the current status:
Read that and weep. It’s managed to upload about 2,000 files so far.
But FIVE months? FIVE?
Goodness me.
I look forward to reading this post in 10 years time when hopefully something will have changed.
By the way this is not representative of ZumoDrive. It’s my connection.
At Mobile World Congress, we made a b-line for the mBlox stand to find out more about their Sender-Pays Data offering. It’s highly, highly innovative, still a trial — and only for the UK networks at the moment (with the exception of T-Mobile UK!). Andrew explains the concept in the video, but briefly, here’s the issue:
If you’re a content provider selling, say, a video or a music track via mobile at a cost of £3 — that’s not usually the final cost paid by the user. Data isn’t typically included. So you might end up having to pay £3 to the content provider — and then something stupid like £10 or more — to download the actual content.
Ridiculous and hugely, hugely problematic when you’re trying to encourage the market and prevent user bill shock. Well, mBlox have worked out a model whereby you, as a content provider, can pay for the data downloads of your customers (at, one imagines, a decently advantageous rate) so that the price you advertise your content for is the price the user pays. Rather smart.
Anyway. Over to Andrew to explain.
Find our more about Sender Pays here.
If you’re a woman and you’re working in mobile data, I reckon you should be checking out the Women In Mobile Data Association.
They’re having a relaxed get-together during Mobile World Congress. So if you’re heading there, you might find this event of value. More details on their Facebook page.
It seems Europeans just can’t get enough of mobile data at the moment. According to the GSMA, the market for mobile data skyrocketed by 40 percent to by €7 billion in 2007 while in the year to April 2008, the number of 3G users in the EU doubled to 112 million.
And guess what’s spurred all this take-up? Yep, cheaper prices for both the necessary kit and for the connection itself, with the GSMA reckoning that the cost of data roaming in the EU dropped by 25 percent in the year to April 2008 while European roaming traffic jumped by traffic grew 75 percent in the same time. The GSMA is also predicting that prices will fall further.
All good news, obviously, but with mobile broadband now definitely mature, I’d like to put in a request for the operators: can we have more tariffs where a single data bundle can be shared between a number of devices (phone, dongle, laptop, 3G-connected digital camera etc) with just one bill? Please?
I’m in Co Kerry, Ireland for the bank holiday weekend, visiting the girl’s family. Good food, good drink and good company - all is well. Except that Three’s data here is abysmal.
The images at the top of this post are the maximum and minimum speeds I’ve achieved over a 3.5G connection… and have validated with multiple other tests. Noting close to the 3.6Mbs that Three say can be achieved. If I weren’t roaming for free I certainy wouldn’t pay for this…!
It seems I’m not alone. How do the Irish mobile firms cope? There’s quite a cluster in Cork.
Gahh. Electronista has news of a new M:Metrics study that puts Britains in their place when it comes to mobile data…
Americans browse the web on their cellphones almost twice as often as their British counterparts even without the help of web-friendly devices like the iPhone, according to a new study by M:Metrics. Despite the reputation of Europeans as more openly embracing smartphones, Americans in March were known to spend an average of four hours and 38 minutes per month on websites using their phones versus almost exactly two and a half hours for British users. The difference is largely attributed to the prevalence of flat-rate data plans in the US, which give customers either a block of data or unlimited access instead of the metering that more often exists in Europe.
No wonder when you recognise that a whopping percentage of the UK runs on Orange and it’s ultra backward, ultra shit, ultra piss-poor data price plans. That doesn’t actually work at the moment.
Gahhh.
Seriously. El Reg has the story…
Orange mobile broadband takes six-day break | The Register
Orange mobile broadband customers have been without internet access since Thursday, and the company cannot tell them when it will be restored.
First to go was access to secure websites like Hotmail and Amazon on Thursday of last week. By Saturday there was no internet access at all.
