Broadly speaking, it wasn’t good news back then.

365 days later, how much has changed?

I’d go so far as to say things have got worse.

If anything, I suspect our tolerance for poor network speeds has increased. Am I right in saying that in the UK at least, we tend to put up with poor network speed now? There’s not much you can do in terms of recourse, beyond calling up and demanding a bit of credit from your operator.

It’s a given that you’ll often encounter stupid-slow connectivity, especially in heavily congested areas of key metropolitan areas. Indeed, I feel it’s more likely that I’ll get faster service in the wilds of the countryside provided I’m reasonably near the cell tower.

I’m astonished that, as an industry, nothing much seems to have been done. Emphasis on seems, obviously. Anecdotally it feels worse. What’s the real story?

And what’s the future going to look like across the next few years? I do wonder. In the UK at least, we’ve generations of people upgrading to smartphone technology now. Is it really going to get better before it gets worse?

I still see people streaming videos via their operator connections when they clearly shouldn’t be. I almost have to grimace when I witness it. Last week I saw one chap trying to stream what looked like iPlayer on his iPhone on the train. It was obviously stopping-and-starting every 30 seconds and, I can only imagine, hosing the network capacity in each cell.

Perhaps, though, the ridiculously low data allowances now routinely sold with contracts are encouraging users to ration their data usage? I hope not. Well, I hope it’s had some effect. But the last thing we need — as an industry — is to breed legions of users who, afraid of billshock, simply avoid using data, period.

I’m afraid all I’ve got at the moment is anecdotal evidence though. I don’t think anything’s got better. I don’t feel like the networks have improved anything. If anything I feel they’ve gone backwards. Has anyone implemented traffic shaping to speed Youtube videos to my handset? If so I’ve not noticed a better service. Bad news or good news?

I can’t help but think we’re still at the start of this capacity crunch.

So I’ve decided to do a bit more research. Some of it will appear here, some of it will just help me to be better informed. I would like to meet and hear from anyone that has some perspective — particularly:

- Operators – what are the problems you’re facing right now? Does it affect you at different times, locations etc? What are your predictions for the future?

- Developers – how is this affecting you? Are you aware of it when developing (do you use less video for example)? Please reassure me that you don’t collectively view the handset as an ethernet terminal and that you *are* considering cellular connectivity into your application infrastructure!

- Brands – more and more big name brands are rightly getting into mobile, but if you’re from one of these brands, is this issue putting you off? What kind of SLAs are you demanding from your mobile partners?

- Analysts – I’d love to hear your predictions for the future, let me know if this is all effectively scaremongering, or should we all be really concerned? Surely it’s not just about putting up with it until 4G arrives in the UK in about a billion years?

- The mobile industry – I’m just as happy to hear from the rest of you too. Many of you have got solutions for this, so what are they, how do they work, how will it affect me as a consumer? Or are you just hyping this up?

Get in touch if you’ve got a view and let’s try to thrash this one out. As always, I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Meanwhile, hear’s the Data Capacity Crunch series from last year. Looking through them, most of the points discussed still stand today (you can flick between episodes — there’s 5 in total).

So as I wrote earlier, I’m waiting for my BT Infinity service to be connected tomorrow so I’m using my all new 3 E586 MiFi that I got last week. (Do read about the rather frustrating circumstances of that.)

I thought I’d do another post about the MiFi just to illustrate how good I’m finding it.

I’m sitting on the third floor of my property. There’s a full ‘H’ signal on the device. Data is screaming through it.

I have to upload a 170.41 megabyte video to Youtube. I was thinking of waiting until I got the fixed-line connection to upload, but then thought it would be worth a shot to see how painful the experience was. I had no doubt the MiFi could do it — it’s certainly possible — the issue is throughput.

I wasn’t expecting miracles.

But goodness me it’s rocking.

See that image above? That was just as we started. Youtube reckoned the upload would take about 17 minutes. That’s pretty accurate.

Here it is at 30 odd percent.

And now, almost half way through the 170mb upload:

Very, very impressive.

That image there highlights just how good the all new 3 MiFi (Model: E586) is when it comes to offering a usable internet connection. Indeed, this connection isn’t just usable, according to Speedtest.net, it’s actually better than 65% of the rest of the United Kingdom. Love it.

I’m using this at home in Ascot and anecdotally, the speed and responsiveness feels a lot better than your standard fixed-line broadband connection. It leaves the shared (i.e. slow) connections of BT Openzone and The Cloud in the dust — so once I’ve got my fixed line BT Infinity installed tomorrow, I’ll most definitely still be using the MiFi unit.

I’m particularly pleased with the updated model (I previously had the E585 — very good). The 586 has a nice little button on the side you can press to immediately get a reminder of the MiFi’s access code. Very handy. And it’s super, super fast.

I’ve used 700mb this morning already.

You can pick up one of these from 3 now from £71.99 — which includes 3GB of data to use right-away.

Update: As per the comments, just to be clear, the £71.99 model is the E585 — that’s about a year old now. You can pick up the new E586 that I’m talking about for £84.99 including 3GB of data.

Now then, what happens if operators were to deploy these rather innovative plans such as the one mentioned above? It’s a topic I’ve been exploring whilst I’ve been on-site at MACH Insights 2011.

I explored this question in another video thus:

I could imagine many consumers simply loving the flexibility of being able to upload photos, reply to messages, add status messages and so on, whilst on holiday. There must be millions of people who simply do not bother because they are afraid to bill shock — or they’ve already learnt an expensive lesson about roaming abroad.

If operators charged for the service fairly and transparently, I think consumers may well respond positively to it. One of the key points about service-based charging (i.e. Youtube, Facebook, Google Maps Navigation) is that consumers understand it. They get it. They know what it means. Nobody knows what 1mb means.

However, let’s just assume one particular operator was really, really successful with a Facebook-style roaming offer. Remember it’s stupidly-easy to target consumers. You just need to modify your introductory welcome text message accordingly. You could even prioritise customers on higher price plans or who have a history of using Facebook domestically but who suddenly stop using it whilst abroad.

Assume that, I dunno, 2 million customers go on holiday in a given month.

1 million of them opt in for the service and actually end up spending a tenner each (say 5 days x €2) for Facebook. That’s a cool €10,000,000. Factor that up across an operator group with, say, 10 similar geographies. We’re now at €100m additional revenue.

Still with me? Suspend your disbelief whilst I continue the example, I know there’s plenty of holes. Let’s assume that the operator can achieve these revenues fully during one quarter (the summer months) and then only 25% during the rest of the year.

3 summer months = €300m.

9 months at 25% of €100m (9 x €25m) = €225m.

Stick it all together and we’re over half a billion Euro at €525m revenues.

Now as I said, there are plenty of holes. Plenty of holes. I’ve made a ton of assumptions.

But I think the point is still valid.

At what point does Facebook think it deserves a bit of that revenue?

Thank you Vodafone. Thank you for the £2/day-for-25mb deal. It’s good enough to make posts like this possible. The photo I’ve attached here (snapped on-the-go from the taxi window) is 1.6mb. Sending this to the web would normally cost me £2-3 once you take into account the surrounding data overhead.

Thanks to Vodafone’s opt-in European data policy, I can use my BlackBerry without having to panic. I’m just billed a simple £2 each day. Manageable. Reasonable. I’m content.

If you travel often to Europe and you’re a Vodafone customer, phone up and check you’ve got this option added. You need to opt-in otherwise you’ll pay the quid-a-meg rates.

The big arse of course — there is an arse — is that once you go over 25mb per day, you start racking up the quid-a-meg rates.

This is because some bright spark at Vodafone thought it was a good idea to almost get it right. It’s like the company has a built-in screw-it-up register to guarantee no matter how smart and how exciting the original concept, some committee, somewhere, votes to hamstring it.

I’ve already opted-in, right? By doing this, I’ve told you I’m live to your stupid standard data rates. I’ve told you I care. I’ve made it clear I will pay — but not the crazy rates. Ergo, why not change the price to £2 for 25mb blocks? So if I use an arbitrary 42mb in a day, you’ll charge me £4.

Sounds like a good idea? No? Yeah. I know. Those executives and those committees don’t like it. They don’t like the ‘revenue limitation’. You can practically guarantee that at one of these price plan setting meetings, a chap called Colin with a company supplied Nokia 3310 has actually voiced the words, “25mb for £2! That should be enough for anybody going abroad!”

Keep ramming the Vodafone fist up the proverbial enterprise arse to extract silly roaming rates. Those guys have factored the roaming-arse-extraction into their 5-year budget forecasts.

But for everyone else? Why not do a bit of delighting? £2 for 25mb blocks? Go on.

The most distinguishing feature of this hotel for me? Well, it’s opposite the Reed Midem headquarters where I’m doing quite a lot of work for their Connected Connectivity event. It takes about 60 seconds to walk there from the hotel reception, so it’s convenient.

Everything else about the hotel is fine. It’s perfectly satisfactory. The rooms are generally fine. The beds are good, the food in the restaurant is good, the service is prompt.

But the internet connection is utter shit.

Let’s be clear: It’s tripe. It’s bollocks. It’s worse-than-rubbish. It is even slower than a BT ‘Broadband’ connection — and that, dear reader, is saying something.

I do have particular demands I suppose. Peculiar, I suppose. Let me run them by you and then tell me if I’m a total exception. I’d also welcome your recommendations.

I use the internet in real time. I have multiple browser windows live at any one time. Typically speaking there are up to five applications actively ‘doing something’ with the internet. I mean properly doing something (not just passively having-a-look online now and again like DropBox). Uploading video. FTP sessions. SSH/telnet sessions. Spotify. A cornucopia of IM systems. TweetDeck. Sparrow. Firefox background-syncing my email (with attachments). Youtube streaming.

I think ‘live’. I don’t limit myself. I have ideas and thoughts that I let run riot across my mind with the internet dancing along supplying the information at my fingertips. Google’s live results search facility helps that along.

I cannot stand waiting for my computer to do anything. My cardinal rule is to upgrade the moment I start discerning a visible delay in my computer’s ability to process and deliver information to me.

Internet speed plays an integral part in my ability to transact business at lightspeed as apposed to donkey-plodding-slow-speed. I don’t judge ‘speed’ in terms of those speed testing sites. I judge it in terms of an iTunes or Apple Update. Apple are amongst the heaviest investors in connectivity online. There are others, but Apple are particularly attuned to this kind of thing. So provided I’m getting 1-2mb *downloaded* per second (or, at a push, 900k/per second), I’m ok.

And that’s throughput. I don’t care what ‘speed’ the line is running at. 50mb/sec line speed is fracking irrelevant if the Youtube video I want to watch is downloading at 12 kilobytes per second to my machine. I need the basic connectivity to be as good as possible. And ideally I’d like to be a trillion miles away from the fifteen year old with his hacked botnet-controlled machine leeching 99% of the 2mb connection installed by BT to serve the whole town.

So I use Be Unlimited in the United Kingdom. I’ve found them to be pretty sweet.

The problem I have is when I try and adopt the same working methods when I’m abroad.

Hotel internet connections are shit, aren’t they? I can’t avoid the wry smile when I read ‘high-speed internet’ or ‘Free WiFi’ as a key offering of a particular property. We all know it’s nothing but the sort. It’s either free and dog-slow. Or it’s $15 for 24-hours and… dog-slow.

I don’t mind paying. I really don’t. I object to the $15-20 per day mark, especially when I don’t quite know what I’m paying for. I think I could be persuaded to part with a fee around that level if the internet connection was amazingly fast. If the hotel had peered directly with Telecity. If I was connecting into a 255mb direct internet link with next to no other traffic on the circuit.

The Pullman, then, gets some points for offering free WiFi, powered by dog-slow Orange. You get 6-hours free. Then you need to re-connected. Fair enough. It’s still stupidly slow. I can, for example, upload a file at a variable rate of 10-18k per second. I can download at around the same speed.

So email is fine.

Google searching is… well. It takes about 10 seconds for the Google Mail page to actually pre-load and then display. Searching produces results in 3-5 seconds.

I think you’ve got the point.

I have to be in Paris two-days a week for at least another four weeks. The Pullman is opposite the office but it’s internet is simply unworkable for actually doing anything beyond occasional email usage, therefore I need another solution. I know it sounds crazy but it would be worth the taxi fare if I could get 2-hours an evening of proper fast internet connectivity.

So here are my questions to you:

1. Are you aware of any services online that rate hotel internet connections? You know? Fast/slow/stupid? That sort of thing?
2. Do you have any recommendations (or even memories) of good Parisian hotels that also offer phenomenal fixed/WiFi internet connectivity? As long as the hotel is somewhere in the city of Paris I’ll consider it!

Thanks to the reader who DM’ed me this afternoon on Twitter to highlight this page on the Orange UK website.

If you happen to be a ‘Monkey’ customer and you top up more than £5 once a month, you’ll get a whopping data allowance.

Please make sure you are not eating any cornflakes before you read the following sentence:

As a Monkey customer, you can get a free internet pass everyday through Orange World.

All you need to do is top up by £5 or more each month to be eligible for a 2MB daily allowance. That’s enough to update your Facebook status around 3 times a day.

Better than a poke in the eye, I suppose.

By default, 3UK insist you spunk £1.28 per megabyte. Period. No ifs, no buts, no bundles. £1.28. And then they’ll happily switch you off after they’ve taken £45 from you in a calendar month, so as to try and, you know, look as though they care for your wellbeing.

This, by the way, from the network that claims it’s the best go-to operator for smartphones in the United Kingdom, offering ‘truly unlimited data’. Until, that is, you go abroad and the cash spunking begins.

Thanks but no thanks Three. It’s utterly ridiculous.

We have a chance – let’s kill ‘unlimited’ once and for all

The word ‘unlimited’ has been abused too much and too long by telecoms companies to be rehabilitated. It should be killed off now we have a chance.

via Opinion: We have a chance – let’s kill ‘unlimited’ once and for all | Wireless Worker.

What do you think? I reckon he makes a very good set of points, particularly around defining related terms like ‘fair use’.

3 have announced their rather competitive deals for the iPad. Here are the simple choices:

- 1GB monthly rolling contract: £7.50/month
- 10GB monthly rolling contract: £15/month

Now that sounds pretty good, right? Well it’ll sound even better when you check Vodafone’s iPad price plan which tops out at £25/month for 5GB. Vodafone would have you believe that their network is a heck of a lot better than 3′s. I’ve always found 3 exceedingly good, especially in the case of mobile data speeds.

I think, on balance, I could be persuaded to get a 3 MicroSIM on 7.50/month for my iPad.

But then again, I got the WiFi only version. If I can give that one to the wife then upgrade to the 64GB+3G version, then I think it’s time for 3. That said, there’s a lot of love in the room for Orange too. o2 need to do a bit of work on their network still.

The chaps over at Broadband Genie took USB dongles from each of the major UK networks and tested them out during a two-day 350 mile road trip. They then subjected the dongles to a series of real-world tests (podcast downloads, youtube/spotify streaming and so on).

T-Mobile came out top in the download speed test — knocking back a top speed of over 3Mb. Nifty. This score led T-Mobile to trounce the competition on average across the other tests. I’m pleased to see Vodafone ranked reasonably well in most of the tests but managed only a miserable 0.3Mb upload top speed compared to 3UK’s shocking 1.6Mb top speed.

You can read the full analysis on the Broadband Genie post.

If you’re on the hunt, T-Mobile will give you a Mobile Broadband USB dongle for £8.99 plus a tenner top-up. Data will cost you £2 per day, £7 for the week and £15 for the month. Entirely reasonable. Plus, for the month of April, if you do a £2 top up, you’ll get 30 days free data.

Goodness me the cost of broadband has come down quite substantially hasn’t it? If you’d like to pay monthly, T-Mobile will give you a free dongle and unlimited (3GB fair use) data for a tenner a month (for the first 3 months) then £15/month.

I’m still turned on — in a geeky way — by 3UK’s PAYG MiFi deal. £69.99 buys you the MiFi unit bundled with 3GB of data usage valid for 3 months. Again, that looks very reasonable to me.

MiFi makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. I’ve been using this Novatel MiFi unit I was given to test for ages and it is a simply fantastic experience. I love the fact that more than one device can connect to it — and that I don’t have to mess around with connection screens and software installations. Just press the ‘on’ button and your devices are ready to connect.

Here they are:

- 3MB for £1 with about 15 minutes online checking email (lasts 24hrs)
- 20MB for £5 with about 2 hours online usage (lasts 24hrs)
- 50MB for £10 with one days use (lasts 24hrs)
- 200MB for £40 with 30 days usage

What’s rather interesting is that you enable these ‘boosters’ by simply opening your laptop browser when you’re abroad. I imagine that when you try typing into Google, for example, you’ll be redirected to a T-Mobile access page. I do like the certain and predictable nature of this — like buying a WiFi connection — I like the fact that as a user, you’re not going to get absolutely nailed for your data use. The system will simply bring you back to the ‘buy more’ page when you’ve exceeded your allowance of allotted time.

This is aimed at people taking their laptops with mobile broadband dongles abroad. So the next question in my mind is: What about my iPhone / Android / Nokia / BlackBerry device? What if I want to do this on my mobile handset? I wonder if T-Mobile have built a mobile-formatted version of this. If they have, simply fantastic. If not, well, that’s a bit of a shame.

I’ve dropped an email to the T-Mobile PR chap, James at Brands2Life, to find out and I’ll update this post when I’ve more news.

Meanwhile you’ll be able to enjoy these new boosters from the 1st of March.

I’m demonstrating some mobile applications this week. Some of the applications that I’m showing off rely on a decent internet connection. They’re not asking for terabytes of capacity, just a good sustained 10k/sec throughput now and again.

Unfortunately I’m in America: The land of rubbish GSM mobile data speeds. AT&T’s network runs like a tired old hamster is powering the backend and T-Mobile is — in New York City at least — nothing short of *slow*.

To put it in real terms that many British readers will understand, using AT&T and T-Mobile data is like using 1/10th of an overloaded o2 data connection. And that’s saying something.

Push email just about works.

For everything else, like Google Maps, I found myself feeling like a total numpty standing on 5th Avenue in the centre of the Almighty United States of America.

You’d think they’d know how to build decent data networks here, wouldn’t you?

Turns out they do.

Enter Verizon (and Sprint).

I came up with a cunning plan whilst in England. A plan so cunning that — if you’ve got a moment, and with due deference to BlackAdder — it’s got a PhD from Cambridge. I brought my Novatel Wireless MiFi unit with me and I bought a SIM from T-Mobile yesterday. I then fired up my iPhone’s WiFi connection and tried out some apps: Rubbish. Whilst the Novatel unit performed perfectly, the dismal T-Mobile data connection was holding it back. Think ‘Edge’ network. As in ‘edge of almost being GPRS’.

Connections do work. You just need to wait tens of seconds for anything useful to happen.

So I took a trip to the Verizon and Sprint stores. CDMA networks. I know, I know. I felt dirty even walking into the stores. Despite CDMA being an apparently superior technology, I — like millions of Europeans — thoroughly appreciate being able to lord it over ‘dumb’ Americans trying to use their CDMA phones in a GSM-only continent.

Who’d buy a CDMA phone? You can’t roam!

But it turns out, you can get super, super fast reliable data.

I walked into the Verizon store next to the Empire State Building and headed straight for their Novatel MiFi 2200 unit. In tests I’d done with my iPhone’s AT&T roaming connection and through my own MiFi unit running a T-Mobile USA sim, the average network response I’d got when using one of the mobile apps was thus:

T-Mobile: 15 seconds
AT&T: 12-20 seconds

I asked permission from one of the sales people and connected my iPhone to the Novatel unit in the shop. I fired up the app. 1.5-2 seconds.

Shocking.

“I’ll take one,” I said, handing over my credit card.

Of course I wanted it pay as you go. Turns out Verizon’s keen to do business. Two years ago I’d have been laughed out the shop.

The Verizon MiFi unit set me back $269 including the $50 mail-in rebate. $15/day gets you 75mb/day usage. I opted for $30 for 250mb across a week. Or you can get 500mb for $50.

Back at the hotel I setup the unit in 180 seconds and boom my iPhones and my Android devices are connecting at blazing fast speeds.

I don’t even know what kind of network speed we’re talking. It just works, and brilliantly.

To all the frustrated American iPhone AT&T customers out there, I hope there will soon be a CDMA iPhone to ease your pain.

That said you can experience the super-fast Verizon network via the Motorola Droid Android device right now. If I was living in America for any length of time, I think I’d do that. Or run my iPhone through the Verizon MiFi.

I kid ye not, it’s fast than my hotel broadband connection.

More information on the Verizon data plans here.

Sprint also have a MiFi unit (similar price) and I’m sure they provide a very good data service in New York. I’ve only tried them in San Francisco and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mr Operator is a very senior mobile industry executive working for an international mobile operator. His identity — like that of the Top Gear Stig — is a closely guarded secret.

Some say he bites the heads off live chickens and never, ever sends text messages. All we know is, … he hates WiMAX with a passion (the Mobile Industry Review shop’s ‘WiMAX My Ass’ T-Shirt is a real favourite of his).

You can review Mr Operator’s back archive of biting insight here.

Meanwhile, over to his latest contribution.

- – - – -

Interesting read over the last week or so – just as Vodafone 360 goes as sour as an acid-tinged lemon, the mobile data harbingers of doom flock to announcements that Vodafone is to trial network prioritisation for premium customers.

I and many others have been portenting ourselves into holes in the ground for years over the coming mobile data apocalypse…but there’s a big missing piece here. The MNO’s themselves.

Everyone is assuming that they are sitting back, hands held up in horror at the coming avalanche.

The guys that I know in CTO depts aren’t. They have plans. Ideas. Their vendors have products. Their marketing wallahs (the smart ones) have dark files in dusty folders in the bottom of drawers, just waiting to see the light…

…the real story is going to be how, after 5 years of battling each other into the ground over the definition of ‘unlimited‘, we rewind the marketing clock to read: ‘Capped‘.

Capped by volume, speed, location, time or content. All these factors and more have a part to play in using the existing hardware and spectrum as efficiently as possible. They don’t want to offer a crap experience, they don’t want to drop calls and they don’t want to seem stingier than everyone else with the allowance. But they know they have to do something.

This is the 3-wire tightrope that CTO’s, CMO’s and CFO’s must walk over the next 5 years. The corner they painted themselves into was the result of 5 years having spent billions on spectrum they couldn’t sell to users because the handsets and apps were rubbish. Then within 18 months, along came devices, products and content people wanted to use and — stone me — they *did* use it. In spades. Cue hockeystick graphs and long nights at the network planning tools.

But the answer is staring us in the face (well, if you are a Londoner anyway) – it’s called congestion charging.

You want to download a 5MB email on the bus at 8am in the CBD (“Central Business District”)? That’s gonna ‘cost’ you as much as the 500MB iPlayer program you have queued on your laptop late at night back in the ‘burbs.

There’s no way out of this one.

Spectrum is finite, Shannon’s law still holds regardless of what the WiMax people say, and now that the Great Unwashed can get themselves an iPhone, the game’s up. The party’s over early adopters, sorry.

You ain’t the cool kids anymore.

We will soon see devices get smarter – for example, queuing data requests from multiple apps on the device then sending them all in one session instead of bit-by-bit, therefore using the allocated HSPA channel much more efficiently. This will also be much kinder on battery life.

But truly unlimited? Do anything, anywhere, anytime? Not until true 4G is around, networks AND mainstream devices.

Until then, sideloading or more likely — downloading after hours — outside CBD areas will become the most cost-effective way to use your credits up.

Expect to see those with the most advanced billing systems move first – but it’s tricky, as the first mover to the necessary new world of data charging will have to sweeten the pill. Otherwise they risk bleeding customers to the dinosaurs still offering (or trying to offer) ‘unlimited’. Vicious circle, that one. e.g. 3 make me think about what/where/when, the alternative is O2 and their wet-string-bag of a network, Voda somewhere in the middle. Other networks are available, you get the idea.

So long Unlimited, it was nice knowing ya.

See you back in 2015.

- – - – -

Thank you Mr Operator — I hope we’ll hear from you soon. If you’d like to ask Mr Operator a question, drop me a note and I’ll put it to him.

You can also keep updated with his columns via @MrOperator on Twitter.

So, what are my first impressions? This is a fantastic device; it’s incredibly simple, easy to use and just … well, works.

You can read his whole experience here:

Three MiFi (Huawei E5830) 3G and WiFi access point all in one, first impressions.

As Liam points out, you the device is available PAYG for £99, or £69 on a £15/month contract.

This week 3UK announced that the MiFi unit is also available on an 18-month contract for just £39 and then £12/month (1GB data/month) or £17/month for 5GB of data.  Nice.

This is the link you need: 3UK MifI Mobile Broadband

MIR reader, Derosnec, posted a comment this morning on yesterday’s iPhone operator poll discussion.

He linked to a public Google Apps document showing his data usage plotted by month. He also further highlights when he got his iPhone and when he swapped to using it as his primary device.

Have a look:

There’s a second slide that extrapolates his usage for the rest of this year — and it’s not good news for the operator. He reckons he’ll go well over a gig/month shortly.

Check out his slides here.

(If the iPhone ran background apps, some bright programmer could make a piece of software to track and plot my data usage in real time…)

If you’re thinking about upgrading your mobile broadband experience, you might take a look at the Novatel Wireless MiFi unit. We’ve reviewed here on Mobile Industry Review (see the video) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I actually managed to sit and work on my Apple Air for a good few hours in the pub via the connection it supplied.

You’ll be able to pick up one of the units from Carphone Warehouse this week (although I recommend calling ahead to see if they’ve got them in stock) thanks to an arrangement between Carphone and manufacturer, Novatel.

There’s a deal on the table with T-Mobile — although I don’t have specifics. I suspect T-Mobile will be financing the device… free on an 18-month contract? Something like that.

Do also consider the 3UK MiFi offering — which you can also get from Carphone Warehouse or from any 3UK store.

So, who’s getting a MiFi unit from Vodafone, then? The above image is from Vodafone Germany, where the MiFi is already available. I understand that UK pricing and availability is also going to be confirmed very soon.

The MiFi is a personal, portable WiFi router that uses a mobile network 3G connection to provide connectivity for up to 5 WiFi enabled devices. Essentially it’s portable broadband for anything with WiFi (iPhone/iPod Touch, laptops, digital cameras etc). The MiFi has been available for a while now on the Verizon network in the US, where it’s been highly praised for being both user friendly and fast!

I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these, especially on Vodafone’s HSDPA network.

If you’re interested in the MiFi, JK On The run has a great review (and pictures) of the Verizon version.

And once again — want to see a video of Ewan playing with the MiFi unit? Here it is.

Well, 3UK are launching their own version. This month.

September 18th to be precise. (Or the night before if you’re talking with the telesales/online people).

Have a look:

It’s rather nifty, eh?

Here’s the release from 3:

Mobile Wi-Fi, also known as MiFi®, is a new service from 3 which connects to 3′s network allowing you to create your own mobile Wi-Fi connection. You get a small device, called a wireless modem. This sends out a Wi-Fi signal so that you can connect a range of Wi-Fi enabled devices to the internet without the need for wires or a USB connection. No fixed-line is needed; you simply need coverage from the UK’s biggest 3G network to connect.

You can connect multiple devices to the internet at the same time, so while you are checking e-mails on a netbook, you can also download a track from iTunes onto your iPod touch.

You don’t need to install any software. Just insert a 3 UK SIM, switch on the wireless modem and connect to the Mobile Internet using a Wi-Fi signal. A Wi-Fi enabled device will automatically pick up the signal and ask for an eight-digit network key which you will have to put in just once for every new device you want to connect.

Marc Allera, Sales & Marketing Director at 3 UK says, “Mobile Wi-Fi is the future of internet access on the move and we’re bringing it to customers at price points that make it accessible and affordable. It’s the perfect gift for people after genuine wireless internet access on the go to complement the laptops and iPod touchs that will undoubtedly make their way onto Christmas lists across the UK this December.”

The specs… 86 x 46 x 10mm and 99g weight.

7.2Mbps HSDPA, 5.76Mbps HSUPA.

Supports micro SD 32GB. Quadband. 802.11b/g.

Up to 5 hours worth of ‘active usage’.

Now then…

The best bit… costs. You’ve got two options —

* ‘Broadband 5GB 1 month’ is a one month contract which includes 5GB of data for just £15 a month. With this deal the wireless modem costs just £69.99.

* For an upfront charge of £99.99, Mobile Wi-Fi will also be available as a ‘Ready to Go’ kit. The deal includes a wireless modem and 3GB worth of data which can be used over a 3 month period. After the data has been used up, the modem can be used on a Pay As You Go basis.

Genius.

Who’s going to be wandering out to buy one of these then?

I will.

If you’d like a reminder about just how brilliant these types of devices are, here’s the Novatel vid again:

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Way back when, 3 completely surprised the other operators with the success of it’s tenner-a-month deal for mobile broadband (including a dongle on a 12 month contract). The dongles FLEW off the shelves and ever since then, 3 have never looked back.

But with more than a million mobile broadband users, that’s actually a rather ripe audience. Indeed the 3 mobile broadband dashbord receives 30 million impressions a month.

Brands have been clamouring to get stuck in — and the first to do a deal is Yell UK.

Here’s a screenshot:

Nifty, eh?

Brands will need to be quick. It’s a super opportunity to hit users when they’re a) connected to the internet and b) able to click to buy/view. 3′s sister network in Austria has already been doing this for a little while with brands such as VW, Suzuki, Kia, Peugeot, Mazda, Honda and Land Rover. And they’ve been seeing click-through rates of up to 6%. Absolutely shockingly good compared to the industry average of … let’s be honest, next to nothing.

So 3UK is on the hunt for a set of exclusive partners who will each receive in the region of 1-3m impressions a month. So if you’re interested, the chap you need to speak to is Neil Andrews, Head of Advertising at 3.

And for the mobile ad agencies reading, seriously get stuck into 3 and add them to your inventory options for your clients.

First, Vodafone. They announced a cut in roaming charges across the EU to £4.99 a day for up to 25MB. That works out, as the press release helpfully says, at the equivalent of 20p per MB. But wait, in true operator fashion there’s a little bit of a complicated twist.

That £4.99 a day deal is just for mobile data. Under 1MB Vodafone will charge you a per KB rate, with 100KB costing 50p. Go above a meg and you’ll instantly be charged £4.99 for the remaining 24MB. What happens after 25MB? You get charged another £4.99, and get another 25MB. And so on and so forth.

If you’re planning to use your mobile broadband dongle, that price doubles – but so does the inclusive data bundle. Whether the per KB charging for dongle usage remains is a little unclear, but you’ll be charged £9.99 for 50MB chunks of data. Again, this is all on a daily basis – so if you use 2MB of data every day for a week on your laptop it’ll end up costing a rather hefty £69.93.

If you venture outside of the Europe (Vodafone have defined all of Europe – whether it’s in the EU or not – as ‘zone 1′), it’s £14.99 per day per 25MB on your phone, or £29.99 per day per 50MB on your dongle.

At this point, I’d imagine even the more maths-savvy consumer is a bit lost in figures. Why can’t things just be simple – one price for data per megabyte whether it be on your laptop or mobile?

Cue 3 and their new charges. £1.25 per MB – no minimums, no bundles, no 24 hour windows and no differentiation between your phone or a dongle. A pricing model so simple that it takes one sentence to explain, versus four paragraphs. OK so it may be more expensive per megabyte if you’re a heavy user, but at least you don’t need a calculator and a calendar to work it all out.

I used to live there (for work purposes) as it was the best place to live to be near one of my major clients.

Now I’m resident in Chiswick, W4, London. But not formally. Not yet. I don’t have internet you see. And I can’t function properly without decent internet.

British Telecom have taken a whopping 2 weeks to find, identify and switch on the landline in my new property, despite the house having had a line from BT for, I’m sure, upwards of 50 years.

The line was activated today. Be Unlimited has been ordered.

Meanwhile I’m at my parents’ place in Billericay.

And there’s next to no Vodafone signal. It’s crazy, absolutely crazy. Clearly, the nearest mast is out of action and the whole family (all of them on Vodafone, except mum on her o2 iPhone) are going nuts.

Text messages are arriving at weird and wonderful times, delayed by hours, because although your phone says ‘Vodafone’ and has one bar of service it’s only joking. It’s not actually connected. Voicemails are piling up and I’m feeling like a total chump because I pride myself on having the best mobile connection. Vodafone and Nokia is, I think, the best possible telephone audio you can buy.

It’s the same thing that happened precisely three years ago. In June. On almost the exact date. Here’s the post I wrote on the subject: Vodafone deactivates service in CM12 0– postcode

What my parents — and everyone else in the CM12 0 postcode section — is a new shiny Vodafone Access Gateway.

That’s right! It’s a wicked new Femtocell that plugs in to your existing broadband service (doesn’t need to be a Vodafone broadband connection) and gives brilliant, brilliant 3G service across your house.

Up to four people can use it at once and, provided you’re not living in the sticks, this should mean that when you’re at home, you’ll always get a decent connection, irrespective of the Vodafone reception in your area.

The Access Gateway is launched formally on the 1st of July (and you can order here).

If you’re paying over £60 a month, you can have the Gateway for free. Let’s face it, why wouldn’t you? You might as well. And it’s another gizmo you can stick into your router and feel good about. (Forget the fact you’re helping augment Vodafone’s network capacity and saving them having to keep installing more million-quid cell masts).

If you’re not paying £60+ a month, you can get the Gateway subsidised for £5/month on a 24-month contract. Or double that for a 12-month contract. Or buy it outright for £160.

Are you going to be investing in one? I’m pretty sure my parents will, if my father hasn’t already swapped to o2 in the meantime out of annoyance.

Richard Lai is the author of the set of instructions — and looking through them, I reckon it’ll take maybe 10 minutes to complete the steps. I’ll have a play of this later on.

Interestingly you can either tether via Bluetooth or USB — although Richard points out that you’ll kill the already rubbish iPhone battery by Bluetoothing — so you’re better to use the USB cable.

There’s no need to jailbreak or do anything untoward to your device and Richard has tested this on an iPhone 3G 16GB on o2 UK and also on an iPhone 3GS on o2.

Richard also recommends avoiding using your newly tethered iPhone to watch/download too much streaming video — or do anything that might quickly take you over your fair-use ‘unlimited’ data allowance.

It looks like you’ll be able to do this on with almost any official iPhone. There’s a link from Richard’s site to grab the AT&T config file (as well as the o2 UK and European ones).

Thank you for posting, Richard — and nice one Josh.

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 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.