I’ve got five lines on the account, all at crazy price plan levels. I don’t know which-is-which, apart from my main number. And Vodafone UK’s online account management is so dire that I decided I’d go into a shop and sort it out.

I liked the idea of perusing my account screen with the helpful Vodafone sales chaps. I didn’t like the idea of phoning up customer service because I couldn’t easily visualise the accounts. I figured it would take 3 times as long to go through the changes I needed to make via voice. I didn’t want to wind up the customer services agent and I reckoned, if I picked a Vodafone shop in London when they were reasonably empty, I could spend 10 minutes sorting things out in person.

That’s the beauty of Vodafone. It’s all connected. Setting aside the fact you can’t really *do* much with your online account management (i.e. change price plans — I always get errors), I liked the fact I could walk into any Vodafone shop, the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, and be able to discuss my account within seconds. It’s all so smart. All so connected.

Phone up and they can help you. Walk into any store and they can call up your account there and then and woosh, you can walk out with a new handset if you like. All you need to do is confirm your primary phone number, name/address or show some ID and bish, bash, bosh, you’re done.

It may not sound *that* amazing, but remember o2 stores can’t help you unless you can remember your account number. You literally have to stand in the shop phoning o2 customer service to retrieve your account number, THEN the chaps can help you.

And 3… don’t get me started on 3. They’re better now, but they used to be completely 100% unable to service existing customers. It was a dire experience if you were already a customer. You’d walk in, hoping to upgrade, then be told to phone customer service and do the deal via phone because their systems weren’t setup. Thankfully they’ve rectified that.

But something strange has happened to Vodafone recently, if today’s experience is accurate across the whole store network.

I walked into the Oxford Street (near Soho) branch this evening. They weren’t too busy and I was approached by a helpful chap within seconds.

“I’d like to make some changes to my price plans,” I said, “And possibly upgrade one of the lines — I’ve got five on my account.”

The chap did a ‘let me stop you there look’ before telling me, “Sorry sir, I’m afraid you have to call up for that.”

I looked at him.

In fact my look said: “YOU WHAT?”

“Yes,” he continued, “If we do it in-store, you’ll have to add an extra 6 months to your contract if you change price plans?”

I looked at him again.

You what?

“Er, well, can you tell me if any of my accounts are free of contract yet?” I asked, crestfallen.

“Sure!” he snapped with efficient politeness.

We headed to the back of the shop. I gave him my details. Within seconds he was telling me that one of my 12-month lines was out of contract.

“You can get a G2 for £90 on an 18-month contract,” he said.

Riight, I said, considering the 600 a month I’m spending. That’s a whopping 7,200 pounds a year. If you assume a G2 costs an arbitrary £400, I could buy 18 of them a year for what I’m blowing with Vodafone.

He came up with another option, “Or, if you’d like a 24-month contract on that line, the G2 would be just £5?”

Right.

I saw the manager — or a ’suit’ was standing nearby so I thought I’d try out the entrepreneurialism.

“So I’m spending at least 600 a month with you,” I prompted.

My sales guy looked at my recent bills.

“Er, yeah,” he said.

I glanced in the direction of the manager, standing next to him not paying any attention.

“So, you can’t change my price plans here…”

- “No sir,” he interrupted again, “You have to phone 191 [Customer Services]. Unless you’re upgrading, we can’t help [smile].”

“And despite the fact I’m paying 600 a month, you can’t just give me a G2, you need to charge me five pounds?”

“As I said,” he replied patiently, “You do need to talk to customer services.”

Right.

So it’s cookie-cutter time.

I’m exactly the same as someone paying Vodafone £15 per month. In fact given the amount of attention my brother gets on a month-to-month £25 contract (he’s getting how-are-you-doing-sir calls each month urging him to upgrade to a contract with special terms), I think he’s getting a better service level.

What’s the point of a branch network if you can’t service me and my £7,200 expenditure.

And at what point do I sit back and think seven grand is just a stupid, stupid amount to be paying.

That amount is a reflection of my relationship with Vodafone. I was hugely delighted. I didn’t mind the expenditure. It is certainly a business expense for the company — indeed, the Bold, the Dell Mini laptop, those weren’t entirely necessary for me personally but they were super-necessary for the business, to make sure I could deliver decent reviews and competent reporting.

But now, well, I think I could get by on £20-30 per month. Give me 600 minutes, unlimited texts and ‘unlimited’ data and you know what, that’ll work.

And it just takes one experience to really change your perspective.

What the hell am I doing paying them that amount of cash?

Well, obviously, I was going into their shop to reduce that down — to remove and reduce the unnecessary 65, 80, 90 and 45 (or whatever) price plans that I’ve got running. Throw in some unnecessary (but previously useful) Blackberry service plans on a few of the lines. It all adds up. Plus VAT. Add in a bit of international roaming and before you know it, you’re at 600 quid.

Deary me.

It used to be blowing this kind of money on an operator, you’d be sent phones, devices, whatever in order to keep your head in the sand so that you didn’t actually do anything. Indeed if Vodafone had called me last week and offered me a G2 for free, along with something else, and something else… you know, ‘goodies’, I’d have reacted emotionally: Yes please and er, don’t worry about those price plan changes. That’d have been worth the cash to me. I understand the commercial realities that the operator has to face. But I also recognise that I’ve been giving them a heckuvalot of business and… well… it’s the age old customer issue isn’t it? I now think I’m paying a lot, lot more than I need to be and can’t see a reason to continue.

Tomorrow, Vodafone Customer Services and I have a date. A rather boring and extensive date where we go through each account in sequence and reduce them down to their (roughly) 15 quid/month minimums. And I need to cancel that 12-month one that’s already expired.

Like many of the UK’s contracted mobile customers, I’ll take note of the contract expiry dates on each line and start clock-watching.

I am off to visit a Vodafone store to find out what’s going on with my five lines. I’m going to change around some of the price plans and decommission the lines I don’t need.

I’ve also finally recognised that I don’t actually use 3,000 mobile minutes per month, nor do I need unlimited landline minutes. That, plus 500 texts per month. This harks back to a time when Vodafone insisted on charging 12.5 pence (inc VAT) per text and a whopping 35p (plus VAT) per minute to talk to someone on another mobile network here in the UK.

Crazy.

Things are better. We’ve moved on. Whilst a lot of the old price plan penalties still exist, the pay monthly plans are a lot, lot more modern — for instance, £25 gets you 600 minutes to anyone and unlimited texts.

I’ve been mentally sticking my head in the sand every time the Vodafone bill hits my back account. Last month it was 600+ pounds. That’s just silly.

Now I’ve got a few days spare before the meetings begin in earnest, I’m going to sort this out.

It’s possible to do this on the phone, but I can’t easily visualise the lines, the price plans and so on — and I don’t want to waste the time of their expert customer services people.

I would use their online account management facilities but, as everyone on the planet knows, Vodafone UK’s online service is more or less bollocks. It looks to me as though it’s held together with a string of Oracle databases and some sellotape.

I’m able to browse the phone numbers of the lines on my account. I’m also able to see it’s related price plan. But if I try to change anything, I get an error message.

This error message has been particularly effective at preventing me from doing anything to my account for a good few months.

So it’s off to a store. I’ll let you know how I get on.

I might even pick up a new G2.

All of a sudden your common-or-garden E71 has been transformed into a hive of interactivity.

“What were you using before Gravity?” I asked one Nokia employee.

“I, er, was using mobile.twitter.com,” he said, head hung in shame.

“So Gravity’s changing your life then?” I ask.

Nodding vigorously, he proceeds to show me around the Gravity client with a mix of joy and pure excitement. He’d found out at Gravity only this week — tried it out and bought it the same day.

Here’s a screenshot:

But there’s been trouble brewing across the internet.

Mobileways have been more or less vilified in some quarters for daring to charge $10 for their work.

You pay $10 for the Gravity client and then it’s tied to your IMEI — so if you swap phones or operate multiple S60 devices, you have to shell out another $10 for each handset.

James Whatley over at All About Symbian posted a reasoned argument stating that this was too expensive:

How much?! £7?! £7.25 to be precise. That’s how much. £7.25 for a single application. One. One application. Seven. English. Pounds.

This – in my honest opinion – is too much.

James goes on to point out that the iPhone-crowd are used to paying around 0-£3 per application.

Take a brand new N95-owning average Joe and his iPhone-owning mate. They’ve both heard of this ‘Twitter thing’ and they both want the best app for the job. Your iPhone man goes for Tweetie and spends his $2.99, while our N95 friend goes for Gravity. Now, who’s actually going to tell me that the N95 user is going to be happy with the 400% increase in price for what is ostensibly the same app. Anyone?

That there is your Symbian tax.

It’s quite simple.

Downloading and paying for Gravity (or any other S60 application) is an absolutely 100% nightmare. It’s a total rigmarole and one that every single team member at the Symbian Foundation (and those responsible at Nokia) should be utterly, utterly ashamed of.

It’s pathetic.

Mobileways can’t get away with charging the $2.99 iPhone Tweetie cost. They can’t. It’s just too difficult.

If you REALLY want Gravity on your phone, then you’ll need to work for it. You’ll need to go online to www.mobileways.de and get out your credit card (or PayPal). You’ll need to download the application to your machine. Then you’ll need to transfer it to your phone — and make sure you choose the right one. Then you need to open up the application and lock it to your IMEI.

Then you’re good.

The reality is that next to nobody will do this. If you’re looking for proof, just do a Twitter search for Gravity and marvel at the amount of people admiring the app but who are not prepared to pay for it.

When even the most die-hard S60 fans cannot be bothered to fork out the cash for Gravity, despite having tried it and seen just how well engineered it is, you’ve got a problem.

Mobileways got it right. They have to price it at $10 because of the attrition rate. Because it’s *SO* difficult to sell it — because they need to get some kind of return for their hard work.

The Symbian die-hards should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

There’s a reason nobody in their right mind develops for S60 at the moment: You can’t monetise it.

And when you make a brilliant, brilliant piece of software for the S60 audience, what do they do? They don’t buy it.

This is all set to change with the introduction of Nokia’s Ovi Store. That is looking like it could well deliver significant iTunes-style results and bring about a renaissance in S60 development.

Meantime, if you’re a die-hard Symbian fan, and you use Twitter, let me ask this question and pose this instruction:

Would you buy Gravity for $2.99?

If you answer yes, then go and buy it for $10 (roughly £7). Buy it now. That extra money you’re having to pay? That’s the Symbian tax. That’s the danger money that the developer has to claim back. It’s your duty to support and reward the developer.

Use it or lose it.

Right now there’s a lot of money circling mobile applications. The overwhelming majority is going straight into iPhone development because of the guaranteed route to cash. There’s a lot of people I know looking at the Ovi Store and thinking. Thinking about whether or not to invest the cash, or whether to leave Ovi standing on it’s own outside the iTunes App Store party.

The last thing a mobile developer wants to read are S60 users complaining about the cost of buying applications.

I would hope that Mobileways will be able to reduce the cost of Gravity to compete with similarly priced iPhone apps once the Nokia Ovi Store goes live.

But meantime, support the developer. Support, support, support the developer.

Original post by admin and software by Elliott Back

Ever since the official carriers for iPhone 3G announced the pricing, there has been widespread disappointment among the people, thanks to the high prices set for phone. Hoping to cash in on this phenomenon, Nokia India had announced the launch of the Nokia N96 for the Indian Markets. People immediately started calling it the iPhone Killer, owing to the high feature set that it comes along. Compared to the other phones in its category, the Nokia N96 is so far the most powerful handset in the market and wins hands down over other through its fancy looks.

However, today’s announcement might come as a dampener to the public. According to Nokia, the phone will be available in retail outlets from September 15th, 2008 and will be priced at Rs. 34,999 (around 440 GBP).

Mr. Devinder Kishore, MD of Nokia India, said:

In the Web 2.0 era, the new Nokia N96 places the power to shape in internet in your hands. Nokia N96 offers the most personalised mobile internet experience to date and it defines convergence by blending phone and multimedia options seamlessly.

Nokia is the most popular handset manufacturer in the country and their N-series phones are becoming a popular trend among the youth.

The price rises, which go into effect next month, will see call costs rising by between 3p and 5p a minute. A Vodafone spokesperson The Sun that most customers shouldn’t see their bills rising by more than 10 percent.

It’s most likely the price rises – following hot on the heels of similar moves from T-Mobile and O2 – are a reflection of the wobbly economic situation at the moment, as well as a way of clawing back some of the cash lost as a result of the roaming regulation passed by the EC which cut the cost of using mobiles while abroad significantly. While it’s not a surprising move from the operators, it is a disappointing one.

The price change saw sales of the iPod go from 8.3 million to $32 million,says Apple Insider – so if the iPhone goes the same way, there could be 23 milion iPhones flying off the shelves, not taking into account any further subsidies from operators that could make the device even cheaper.

And how much are the devices costing Apple to make? According to iSuppli, the bill of materials is $173 per device. IT doesn’t look like Steve Jobs is going to have any trouble beating his 10 million sales goal a few times over.

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?

Gizmodo says the 3G iPhone will hit Spain on June 18 at the opening of the Telefonica megastore, with all the other iPhone-carrying countries in Europe getting the handsets around about the same time.

And there’s more good news: the 3G phone will no longer be flogged for a fixed price, with operators likely allowed to subsidise the device as they see fit for the first time. Phew. It looks like some good sense has finally prevailed over at Apple. The question is now: will O2 keep the exclusive rights? Answers on a postcard…

Sony Ericsson puts the slip down to a “slowing market growth in mid-to-high end phones in markets where Sony Ericsson has a strong presence”. At the same time, the company says it expects all the handsets that it announced previously but will sell in the next quarter will help make a difference in future – like the “high end” Xperia X1 and “high end” Walkman and HSDPA phones. If Sony Ericsson is having trouble shifting high end models and taking a profit hit, perhaps boasting about the slew of high end models coming soon is not the best way to rectify it?

The era of pan-European in-flight mobility will be ushered in by two measures announced by the EC this week: a “Commission Recommendation for a harmonised approach on licensing which will promote mutual recognition between national authorisations for mobile communications services on aircraft” and “a Commission Decision which sets out harmonised technical parameters of onboard equipment for in-flight mobile phone use throughout the EU that will allow member states to recognise each other’s licences for mobile communications on board aircraft without risk to mobile networks on the ground”. The EC will also make sure safety concerns are dealt with by the appropriate bodies.

Interestingly, after the EC has pushed so hard on cutting roaming charges within Europe, it’s remaining mum on how to regulate the cost of connectivity on planes, saying the market is too young for it to interfere and it will be up to the service provider to set pricing. It sounds like we could be in for some expensive calls and texts up there.