In today’s environment, what you really want is the customer’s money, every month, like clockwork. You can make a lot more cash out of the customer in other ways, for example up-selling smart services or taking a cut of other transactions. Of course, when you’re entire operation is obsessing over how to take an extra twenty pence from me for a particular phone call, they’re not bothering focusing on taking tens of pounds in revenue from other activities.

All operators know this. They know they’re spunking their efforts up against the wall, most of the time. Witness, for example, the numerous industry executives I meet regularly telling me that they’ve no flipping clue what voice revenues they’re going to make this year. Yup. What they do know is that the majority of consumers are doing their level best to stick-one-in-the-eye of the finance bods and be very, very careful about what they do with their phones, so as not to overpay.

Why not stop fighting with the consumer? Why not zero-rate everything for a fixed monthly fee on a 24-month contract? Then at least the finance bods can relax and you can then focus on creating added value services that add significantly to the revenue?

Well that’s what T-Mobile has announced this morning.

It’s called The Fully Monty — and yes, it is absolutely unlimited everything. And before I go into detail, I should point out that this is potentially hugely damaging to Three. We’ll get to that in a moment.

There are four price ‘brackets’ thus:

As you can see there, at £36/month, you’ll get 2,000 minutes to other networks and a fairly good deal on the key smartphone offerings. Beyond £36, it’s now about how much you want to pay up-front for your handset. For an extra £5, you can advance to unlimited everything. And if you jump to £61/month, the 32GB iPhone 4S is free — and it’s just £29 for the 64GB.

Now then. It’s not truly ‘unlimited everything’. No. The finance bods obviously stuck their pins into Ben Fritsch, T-Mobile’s Head of Propositions, preventing him from zero-rating calls to number ranges such as 0800, 0808, 0845 and so on. They’re still a bollock-crushing 40 pence a minute. A FLIPPING MINUTE! And if you’re calling Jersey, that stlll-doesn’t-count.

However let’s stay positive.

Finally, one of the top operators in the UK has decided to dump the “minutes”. For quite a while, unlimited texts has been a popular add-on for most price plans, but usually you’ve had to pick and choose your ‘add-ons’ to try and get, for example, unlimited landline calls, but only 200 cross-network calls. It’s made the whole price plan decision process a bit annoying for everyone for the last decade.

It’s a landmark gesture to just make it all (or, most of it) unlimited.

I think this will appeal to quite a lot of contract customers.

Let’s hear from Mr Fritsch of T-Mobile:

The Full Monty has been designed for customers who want the peace of mind that there are absolutely no limits placed on their allowances, whilst also knowing they’re getting market leading value for money. We believe our Pay Monthly portfolio offers plans to suit anyone’s needs, all at accessible prices – and we’re really proud to be the first to offer a plan like The Full Monty in the UK”.

And for those of you reading, wondering whether there’s a fair-use policy on the data? There isn’t. Here are the words direct from T-Mobile’s release:

Customers signing up to The Full Monty 24 month plan will not only have the reassurance that there are no caps on their calls, texts and internet, they will also have access to unlimited WiFi, and can use their mobile internet for whatever they like – including tethering (using a smartphone as an internet connection for a laptop or tablet), streaming and downloading.

And here, for the sake of clarity, are the little footnotes:

Minutes and texts unlimited allowance apply to all UK mobile networks, voicemail and numbers beginning with 01, 02, 03 (excluding Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man). Calls to 08 (including 0870) or 070 numbers are premium rate numbers and excluded from your inclusive allowances. Calls to 0800, 0808, 0845 and other 08 numbers cost 40p/min. See www.t-mobile.co.uk/help&support/priceplans. Picture messages are not included within the allowance.

The Full Monty plan provides access to our preferred WiFi partner’€™s WiFi network; presently this is BT Openzone network excluding any sites providing access to any organisation or location which is part of the Olympic Games in London in 2012. The BT Openzone terms can be found at www.btopenzone.com/terms-and-conditions/index.jsp

So, this is good news. It’s about time we had this kind of action from the big operator groups in the UK. I’m interested to see just how long Vodafone will be able to cling-on to their “minutes” obsession as a result.

But there’s a few issues to consider.

First, T-Mobile and Orange have 28 million customers in the UK. Yes, their networks are shared, but just how well can they support data? Is this likely to turn into a One2One-style free-evening-and-weekend-calls arrangement whereby yes, it’s unlimited, but you can’t actually *access* the network because of congestion? That’s going to be interesting to see.

Second, if you’re paying a metered £1 or £2 per megabyte for data on T-Mobile, you’re hardly likely to react very well to other people paying ‘nothing’ but sitting on the internet watching iPlayer from their handsets all day, “cos it’s free”, especially if your data speeds go from good to super-slow.

I suppose that by limiting the spend to £36+/month, T-Mobile will be hoping to avoid the yoof community who are likely to spend a lot of time doing this.

Third, I worry for Three.

Their whole marketing campaign and message has been about their “The One” plan which has been trampled all over by today’s announcement. There’s still some juice in Three’s offer (their plan starts at £25/month, 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts with unlimited data). For instance, the company’s “Text 500″ plan comes with 500 minutes, 5,000 texts and 1GB of data. For £2 more on T-Mobile, you can get everything unlimited. This is a bit of an arse for Three.

I trust the rest of the UK operator community will now sit up and start dusting off the “what happens when someone else does unlimited, properly” strategy plans.

Good work T-Mobile.

Meanwhile, if Ben Fritsch and his team could see their way to introducing TMOGOLD (full details here), I’d be even more delighted.

Everything Everywhere CEO Olaf Swantee continues restructure policy axing 22 senior positions including VPs of strategies, networks and propositionsEverything Everywhere EE CEO Olaf Swantee has axed a further 22 senior executives as he looks to streamline the operator’s functionality.

via Everything Everywhere cuts another 22 executives | Mobile News Online.

Every single one I’ve used recently has been a pile of stinking shite. I’ve ended up using my BlackBerry’s EDGE connection rather than dick about with my iPhones clunking away on these hotspots.

The signal strength is invariably strong — it’s the data throughput that I can only compare to surfing the internet on a Compaq iPaq connected via infrared to an Ericsson T68i using very early GPRS data.

I did set out to try a speed test on the Boingo Hotspot at Houston Airport earlier today. I didn’t have the ‘Speedtest’ app on the phone and intended downloading it but after about a minute of waiting for the App Store to load, I gave up.

A pants, pants experience.

What is the point?

I suppose I feel good that I’m connected by WiFi because I’m tricked into assuming that this should be heavily superior to anything else, especially the carrier connection.

Increasingly — and I’m generalising I know — hotspots seem to be becoming more of a hindrance than a help.

I’d really like suppliers such as T-Mobile and Boingo to move to properly describing their services in terms of speed.

In the case of the Boingo one I experience, something like “125 bytes per second guaranteed when browsing leading websites” would be appropriate based on my experience today.

It’s not just Boingo though. I’ve had similar issues with T-Mobile as well. BT Openzone in the UK is another shocker too.

What’s to be done? Stick with the mobile operator connection when I’m abroad in the short term I think.

And reset my expectations on WiFi services.

How have you found these services recently? Is it just me?

Having completed research that shows that many sole traders and micro businesses reckon the next year will be tough (70% anticipate revenue staying the same or decreasing next year), T-Mobile to introduce a price plan package just for them.

Here’s the issue: Micro businesses and sole traders now rely heavily on their mobile phones. I do mean heavily. For many, it’s the primary business tool. Getting a decent handset can really boost productivity. For example, the messaging functionality on a BlackBerry can be rather useful if you’re out-and-about a lot. But, in today’s business environment, I reckon T-Mobile’s research might be right: How many micro business folk will be committing to 24-month contracts just to get the new phone?

T-Mobile have done something about this. They’ve introduced 12-month contracts (hello old familiar!) with a clear price structure along with some decent handsets.

The handsets in question? HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S, BlackBerry 9300 and BlackBerry 9780. These aren’t the bleeding edge (e.g. the BlackBerry 9900 replaced the 9780 just a few weeks ago), however they are most definitely good enough. Let’s be clear on value too — The Bold 9780 is currently £329 on Expansys.

And with just 12-months worth of commitment, that’s a pretty good deal.

Now then, the price plans are good.

£25 a month gets you 750 minutes, 250 texts and 100mb of data. I am severely unimpressed at that amount of data — but then again, I went through 1.67gb yesterday on my 3UK MiFi, so I’m not quite the target market for these price plans. However, there’s a good get-out-of-jail-card here: If you use more than your allowance, you’ll be billed 50p per meg, but subject to a daily cap of £1. So if you’ve got a busy 3-days of data use one month, you’ll only pay an extra, say, £3. Doable.

At the other end of the scale, £45 a month gets you 2,000 minutes, 500 texts and a gig of data.

I actually think this is quite a good deal.

I like the way they’re looking after a particular market segment. I like the clear pricing. I like how they’ve included the likes of the BlackBerry Bold.

I’d like to see a lot more though. Right now, the company’s only tools for innovation appear to be price and mobile device hardware.

For instance, every single micro business or sole trader will have a PC or Mac. Guaranteed. They need to produce invoices, for a start. So, you’re supplying and assuring their mobile device, but what about their desktop or laptop? What about airline lounge access included with your subscription?

Anyway, it’s good to see a bit of movement from the UK operators. Nice one T-Mobile!

Find out more at www.t-mobile.co.uk/business.

If you’d like to read more about my viewpoints on Operator Innovation, you can find those posts here.

The executive also pointed out that there’s quite a lot of hope that Olaf will change things, that he’ll ‘get’ what needs to be done, that he won’t keep the company chugging along in first gear.

“Why don’t you put it down in an open letter then?” I said.

The executive gave this some thought and, on condition of anonymity, sent me this text. I’ve personally verified his position and identity at Everything Everywhere.

Here we go:

Dear Olaf,

Today you start officially as CEO of Everything Everywhere.

This letter should help you understand what many of the Everything Everywhere employees think and offers some advice to help Everything Everywhere regain its’ rightful position as the UK’s leading mobile operator.

Lets start with where we are today.

Everyone knows it but no-one says it: we’ve lost our way. We spend too much time with our heads in the sand. We’re hugely internally focused, top heavy and far too bureaucratic. It takes too long to complete even simple projects and we’ve lost of sight of why our customers choose us. Despite what the corporate PR machine says, it’s clear to most that we’ve not truly integrated the Orange and T-Mobile teams or made enough improvements to our greatest asset: The network.

When the name Everything Everywhere was announced, I think it’s fair to say that we all thought that it was a bit of a mouthful but were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The general sense was (and still is) that the name signifies something ambitious and exciting that could really make a difference to our customers lives. We felt that we could achieve something special in a commoditised and cluttered market.

But there’s one major problem – it’s just a name. We don’t have a clear, compelling strategy that explains what Everything Everywhere stands for, what our vision is, how our customers will benefit or what we need to do. At the moment ‘Everything Everywhere’ is grey, vague and ambiguous and means little to employees and nothing to our customers.

We know that we need to change from being a box-shifting telco and that Vodafone, Telefonica and Three are targeting our customers. We know that our margins are being undercut by everyone from Tesco to Lebara and we know that we have dynamic new competitors, particularly from the US and Silicon Valley. And we know that to prosper we need to offer our customers great, distinctive, personal, reliable services at the right price.

And that’s the most disappointing thing about the first year of Everything Everywhere. Twelve months ago we were warned that during change processes major organisations tended to focus in on themselves rather than the competition. And guess what happened? We focused on ourselves. We missed the opportunity to make a difference. We’ve not created a grand vision or supported it with groundbreaking offers and there’s little evidence on the ground that we recognise that the world is changing.

And as we’re a company called Everything Everywhere we need to be able to deliver on the promise implied in our name.

So here’s some advice:

1. Improve the customer experience of the network

Olaf, the network sucks. If you need proof of this try and make a call in a busy city centre or on a train. Try and get a reliable data connection or better still ask our customers about their experiences. The feedback isn’t going to be good.

Our primary job as a mobile operator has to be to help our customers communicate – to make a call, send a text or use their data connection. If we can’t do that then what are we for? This isn’t a complicated ambition – we need to improve the basic day-to-day performance of the network so that it works wherever and whenever our customers need it. If this needs more investment, more people or more projects then so be it.

Our network is the very foundation of our business and if it ain’t working, lets fix it.

2. Explain what Everything Everywhere is and it’s strategy

Any new business has a big job to do to explain what it does, what it stands for and why it exists and Everything Everywhere is no different. It’s just that most new businesses don’t have 28 million customers.

What we need is a strategy that articulates what Everything Everywhere believes in, how we’re different and that sets an ambitious direction for the business. The strategy must be exciting, creative and distinctive and fire the imagination of staff, customers and external stakeholders. The strategy should go into some detail. Not too much, just enough to help us understand what needs to be done — and to buy in to it.

If you need some advice on how to do this, just watch any of the recent Apple keynotes. They’re a great mix of product launch and future ambition, sprinkled with some Apple magic.

3. Is it one brand, two brands or three brands?

At the moment we have two and a bit consumer brands – T-Mobile, Orange and a fledgling consumer brand Everything Everywhere being launched in a limited number of retail stores (Read: Everything Everywhere to launch 30 new stores this year).

There’s plenty of people who think that trying to establish Everything Everywhere as a consumer brand will be tough but clarity on the brand strategy would allow the business to focus on what we’ll be doing in the future.

4. Innovate to compete against Apple, Google and Sky

In the 2010 at the launch of Everything Everywhere Tom Alexander identified Apple, Google and Sky as evidence of a new form of competitor. His message was clear – we’re no longer ‘just’ competing against Vodafone, Telefonica or Three but also against dynamic new companies who are faster, more creative, more confident, more willing to experiment and backed by enormous resources. Tom told us to “rampage and innovate”. Super words, unfortunately the result of this was nothing different, just more of the same.

So this time lets make a difference and actually innovate! Lets use our brand, our network and our technology to create compelling experiences that make a difference to our customers lives. We have enormous resources at our disposal – we have strong brands, great knowledge about who our customers are, what they do and where they are, we have large direct customer support and retail networks, we have a billing relationship and we subsidise huge amounts of the technology that our customers love.

We must be able to create something special from these starting points.

Yes it will be hard as we have tight budgets and our competitors are vibrant but lets ruthlessly focus our resources on a few high value, distinctive offerings that are really great for our customers and take the fight to Apple, Google and Sky.

5. Sort out the bureaucracy

Please, please do something about the bureaucracy. There’s no doubt that Everything Everywhere is a big business and needs the proper checks and balances, but the business is being hamstrung every day by the inability to get things done.

For example, even the smallest project, change or improvement has to go through ridiculously convoluted processes before anything gets done. This affects our ability to get projects to market quickly.

We certainly need to ensure that we focus on the important and most valuable projects but does this have to be at the cost of acting quickly and decisively?

We need to retain flexibility to back different ideas and we need to have the confidence to become more creative and back more horses.

We need to get a little bit more ‘Silicon Valley’ in our approach.

6. The leadership team

The top of our business is too big. There’s far too many senior managers, many of whom have overlapping responsibilities. You know that, you’ve already said it (Read: Telegraph interview). So hopefully you’ll streamline responsibilities, be clear on who does what and then let them get on with it.

Ideally we’d also bring in some fresh blood. Many of the top team are mobile operator or telco people who’ve been internally promoted. Although this is admirable we should stimulate our business with some of the worlds best talent bringing new perspectives, fresh ideas and different experience.,

7. Be visible and accessible

We’re coming out of several years where the only time anyone saw the CEO was on his way to his office or staring out of one of the companies’ many magazines.

Olaf, please be visible and accessible to your employees and allow people to have their say without feeling like they were stepping out of line. If you and your top team have the confidence to engage with employees personally you’ll be rewarded with insight, support and appreciation and they’ll follow your lead.

8. Have confidence

Everything Everywhere has many great assets. We have fantastic staff, brands that many of our customers love, customer support and retail networks that Google or Apple could only dream of and we’re highly profitable. That’s a great starting position for us to innovate and excel.

A touch of humility doesn’t go amiss. We can learn from our competitors and customers but lets back ourselves to succeed. Lets be confident, portray our ambition and excitement at the possibilities open to us and have faith that we’ll succeed.

Finally Olaf we’ll look forward to joining you on the road to Everything Everywhere’s success.

Regards
A Senior Manager

Yesterday’s revelations about the News of the World newspaper hacking the voicemail of a missing (and sadly, murdered) teenager has — perhaps predictably — resulted in a small outcry on Twitter. This outcry threatens to ‘go nuclear’ as Chris Lake at e-consultancy points out.

Chris has penned a piece this afternoon asking how brands should respond to this outcry. He also links to this handy tweet-ready page that many consumers are using to register their disgust. Someone has compiled a list of brands who advertise with the News of the World newspaper and created a ‘tweet this’ button for each one, enabling you to whack out tweets-of-disgust in record time and without having to go and find the respective Twitter account names.

Chris reckons there’s two possible responses: Either ignore the messages being received or tackle them head on. He also points out that ignoring enquiries from customers is highly dangerous.

I haven’t issued any tweets on the subject but I can tell you, if I sent a note, I’d be expecting a reply today. And anything other than ‘yes we are removing our spend’ is unacceptable.

That’s the consumer viewpoint.

The business end is a little more challenging. The News of the World is read by squillions of people. It’s got a huge reach on Sunday. Pulling advertising is therefore a rather difficult decision.

I imagine most social media experts will be counselling a direct, open response as soon as possible. I also imagine that the corporate communications folk will be thinking the total opposite.

One of the mobile companies collared in that list is T-Mobile.

Here’s an example of what’s going on — each of these people will be wanting a reply from the operator:

What’s the T-Mobile response?

Silence, obviously.

I wonder how many messages T-Mobile would need to receive before they’d feel compelled to reply?

Will this blow over by 6pm tonight? I wonder.

T-Mobile USA has launched itself onto Facebook, providing free VoIP calls between social networkers though the service is not yet integrated into the operators mobile network.

Bobsled by T-Mobile is a VoIP application integrated with Facebook to provide audio connections between users with a tap of the mouse, along with a voice mail service capable of pasting messages to the receivers wall. Thats far from unique; there are a handful of similar services, but the addition of the T-Mobile brand is a significant development.

via T-Mobile turns Facebook telco • The Register.

Set your expectations to ‘rough likeness’. Heh. It’s good to hear that East 17 track again.

Here’s the sponsored video from T-Mobile:

By the way, it’s not Kate Middleton anymore, is it? Better get used to Princess Catherine.

T-Mobile is refusing to offer any compensation citing ‘Force Majeure’.

Now then — should customers get a refund? Or some free text messages? Or, if you’re on a €40 per month contract, should you get €1.30 (i.e. one day’s fee) credited?

Or since these kinds of interruptions are few and far between, should users just suck it up?

I think some type of response is useful, especially if it’s a catastrophic outage that prevents people from doing business. You could even credit everyone 100 free text messages that must be used by the end of the month (knowing full well that most people won’t even bother using them). It’s the thought that counts.

What do you think?

This is excellent news.

It means that shortly, if you’re an App World user, you’ll be able to pay for your downloads via one-click carrier billing, rather than having to type in your PayPal details.

Although PayPal is highly useful, it’s a total arse for me because the service insisted I use a crazily complicated password to prevent hacking. Which means that actually using PayPal is a Cecil B DeMille production involving copious copying and pasting. Just bill me. Hit me. Just get it done. This is what I want from App World. I just want to get the app or the content. Ergo, I think RIM will shortly find a heck of a lot more downloads completing when it introduces the service across these new operators.

I’m also looking forward to hearing from application developers who should really, really benefit from this news.

It’s not just payments for downloads — you’ll also be able to charge in-app payments to your bill as well. Absolutely fantastic. Whenever I’ve looked at any conversion statistics in the context of carrier billing, the numbers are always off the charts compared to credit card, PayPal and so on.

If you’re a Vodafone customer, expect App World carrier billing to be available for the following countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Greece and Ireland. More countries to follow suit.

No word yet on which Telefonica and Deutsche countries will get carrier billing on App World but I think it’s a fair bet to assume the UK and Germany will be enabled as a priority.

Good news, RIM.

I’ll be popping by their stand later today to have a wander around. More shortly!

Although it’s about a million miles away from an actual flashmob (clearly, there must have been weeks of planning to pull the whole thing together), it is most certainly worth a look.

If the function of a successful advertising campaign is to make you emote, I can report success as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t mind getting that welcome when I arrive into Terminal 5…

T-Mobile have done it again with their Flashmobbing. This time they are apparently welcoming home weary travellers arriving into Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5.

Heh.

A combined total of 28 million folk watched the last two flashmob videos (the Liverpool Street dance and the Trafalgar Square Karaoke event). And if you assume there’s about 60-70 million people in the country that’s pretty good going. I trust the creative you dreamt this up got a big bonus.

Here’s what we should expect:

Henry Church from South Kensington in London, the first passenger to receive the welcome, said: “I’d just come in on an overnight flight from Washington DC and as I walked through the doors this woman started singing to me. I had no idea what was going on, I thought she was a nutter. Then all of a sudden what seemed like the whole airport joined in the singing and they were all looking at me and I was totally overwhelmed. One minute I’m thinking about the slog to get home and the next thing I know the whole arrivals hall is singing ‘Welcome Home’ to me. Unbelievable. I hope it gets into the advert because my mates and my missus are never going to believe me when I tell them.”

Haha! Brilliant.

As for the ‘premiere’ time, have a read of this:

The advert will premiere on Friday 29th October at precisely 10.15pm when a full length 3 minute version will be screened. In what is a world’s first, the ad will premiere across the entire ad break simultaneously on more than 80 digital and terrestrial commercial TV channels along with all of the major social networks including Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. It is expected to be watched by nearly 10 million people across the UK and reach more than 2 million households. To watch it online go to youtube.com/lifesforsharing.

That is some organisation, eh? I really like the ‘immediacy’ too — they’re filming and editing everything in under 36 hours.

The advert, which is being made for T-Mobile by agency Saatchi & Saatchi, is being filmed, edited and broadcast in under 36 hours and is the first ever to be filmed at Terminal 5. Spencer McHugh of T-Mobile explains: “We want to create adverts that not only show our products in a different way but are entertaining and interesting enough that people want to share them with their friends – whether that’s over a chat in the pub, on twitter or on text. It simply isn’t good enough any more to put a 30 second advert on in the break on Coronation Street. That’s why we are launching with a 3 minute version and will be launching on social and traditional media simultaneously.”

I will look forward to this.

Here’s the trailer, complete with rousing classical score:

[Yes, I just did embed a trailer of an advert... Never thought I'd ever do that!]

It looks like nice work T-Mobile!

He points out that the news isn’t yet confirmed from T-Mobile but that his source has been reliable in the past. Head over to his post to read all the pricing details.

If true, it’s not brilliant news for T-Mobile customers — the deals don’t appeal to be that competitive. But if you’re wedded to T-Mobile out of some weird and wonderful brand loyalty (and if you simply love using an online billing system built out of string and sellotape), then you too will shortly be able to enjoy the iPhone experience with them.

If you’ve been sitting staring out the window as a T-Mobile UK customer for the past few years, watching all the cool kids swan around with their iPhones, I’ve got some good news for you. T-Mobile is getting the iPhone. There are precious few details available — here’s the official announcement in full:

June 8 2010: T-Mobile UK will launch iPhone 4, the thinnest smartphone in the world with the highest resolution display ever built into a phone. Further information on launch timings, pricing and tariff plans will be revealed in due course.

For more information on iPhone 4 please visit www.apple.com/iphone

Almost exactly the same as Vodafone, o2 and Orange.

I was hoping T-Mobile might get to pick up the iPhone especially given the fact that Orange (which has the iPhone) and T-Mobile are both owned by the same parent company now.

So if you’ve been loyal to the network for quite some time and you were thinking it was finally time to switch… relax, you don’t have to… keep glued to the T-Mobile UK site for more information.

Now then, what about Hutchison’s 3UK… will they get the iPhone?

Superb phone for #business: #HTC Desire, unlimited texts, unlimited Calls, unlimited internet for £20 per month: http://bit.ly/d9k021

“Wow!” I thought, “20 quid a month? For a desire? How are they doing that I wondered?”

I clicked through.

Here’s what I saw:

It’s not 20 quid a month. It’s 35/month but there’s a discount for the first 3 months.

This offer itself is perfectly fine.

It is, however, patently RIDICULOUS to advertise the phone at 20/month.

The website even says: £20 a month (24 months) in bright T-Mobile branded purple.

That tells me the offer is £20 per month for 24 months, right?

No.

Because there’s more clarifying text underneath saying “(for the first 3 months, £35 thereafter)”.

Absolutely ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous.

Do they think our heads button up the back?

This demonstrates yet another further erosion of the English language when it comes to mobile operators.

“Unlimited?”

Oh it’s unlimited. Until you hit the limit.

Or it’s ‘fair use’. Until we decide that fair use means a 500mb limit. (I’m looking at you, Vodafone). So you can have unlimited data. On a 500mb limit.

How long before T-Mobile starts running TV adverts for the HTC Desire at ’20 pounds per month’ with a disclaimer saying that 20 pounds actually equals 35 pounds.

They didn’t even say in big letters on the HTC Desire special offer that it’s “20/month 3-month special offer” or anything like that. No. Ridiculous.

- – - – -

ORANGE AND T-MOBILE UNVEIL JOINT VENTURE NAME, TEAM, VISION AND PLANS
Companies outline vision to give customers instant access to everything, everywhere

Everything Everywhere: One company, running two of Britain’s most famous brands – Orange and T-Mobile
Best for customers: Scale of new company allows delivery of best value, best choice, best coverage and best quality in the industry
Biggest Network: Plans for a single super-network that will give bigger and better coverage for customers, with a smaller impact on the environment
Benefits begin this year: Roaming across both networks due later this year, at no additional cost to the customer
Boost for Sales: Biggest operator retail presence on the high street with over 700 stores today
Brilliant Service: Focus on quality, to ensure customers receive the very best service, helping people discover more from their mobile
Acceleration in new markets: New assault on business market, continued leadership in wholesale, and focus on new revenue streams
One Team: New Leadership Team announced to take the company forward

London. 11 May 2010. Britain’s biggest communications company was unveiled today, promising to transform the industry and give UK consumers the best coverage, devices, service and communications experience possible.

The company – called Everything Everywhere – will run two of Britain’s most famous brands, Orange and T-Mobile, and has a customer base of 30 million people: over half of the UK adult population.

Orange and T-Mobile will continue as leading brands in the market, with each brand having its own shops, marketing campaigns, propositions and service centres. However, behind the scenes, the two brands will be run by one company, with one team and one vision to give consumers instant access to the people, places and things they want, wherever they are.

Everything Everywhere is the name of the company that runs Orange and T-Mobile, and the company that all 16,500 employees will work for. The company will be officially integrated on July 1.

Tom Alexander, Chief Executive of Everything Everywhere, said: “Together, we are Britain’s biggest communications company, with over 30 million customers.

“We are on the verge of a communications revolution. Up until a few years ago, mobile was just about voice and text – not now. Multimedia phones have already started to change the way our customers access the world – for entertainment, education, information – wherever they are, whenever they want.

“That is why, through our scale and Britain’s only super-network with its unsurpassed coverage and capacity, we will be leading this revolution, giving customers instant access to everything, everywhere.

“We are Everything Everywhere – it’s our name, our vision, and our ambition – and we run two of the UK’s biggest brands Orange and T-Mobile. It’s our vision to give our customers instant access to everything everywhere, opening up a world of endless possibilities.”

FURTHER INFORMATION

The brands
Everything Everywhere will give the two trading brands of Orange and T-Mobile a shared platform of strength, with each brand owning clear emotional territory in terms of propositions, marketing and brand identity.

To customers, Orange and T-Mobile will continue to compete as distinct brands in the market, each having its own shops, campaigns, propositions and service centres.

Best network
Everything Everywhere is creating the country’s biggest and best mobile network. The ambition is to combine both the Orange and T-Mobile networks, cut out duplication, and create a single super-network.

For customers it will mean bigger network and better coverage, while reducing the number of stations and sites – which is good for cost reduction as well as being good for the environment.

Later this year, customers will experience the first benefits of the merger, with the ability to roam across both networks at no additional cost.

Boost for sales
Together Orange and T-Mobile have over 700 stores on the British high street today. The company is now looking at continuing to improve and evolve its estate to generate more sales and cement its position as the UK’s number one communications company.

Brilliant service
It is an ambition of Everything Everywhere to deliver the best service in the industry to the company’s 30 million customers across both brands.

The company intends to do that by offering an excellent level of service, with the best-trained and motivated people helping customers.

Acceleration in new markets
The company intends to propel itself beyond mobile communications, with a greater focus in developing new revenue streams based on the way customers will use their devices in the future.

With greater scale, the company intends to develop new revenue streams in adjacent markets, such as mobile advertising and mobile commerce.

With the company’s new coverage and scale, it also intends to ramp up offers to the business market, with the best propositions and value for businesses across Britain.

One Team
There is a new Leadership Team for Everything Everywhere, with key personnel from both Orange and T-Mobile running key areas of the enlarged business.

The team is led by Tom Alexander, Chief Executive, and Richard Moat, Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chief Executive.
Joining them in the Leadership Team, are:
Andrew Ralston, Chief Commercial Officer
Guillaume van Gaver, Vice President of Marketing
Mark Duncan, Vice President of Sales & Loyalty
Andrew Coull, Vice President of Retail
Pippa Dunn, Vice President of Orange Propositions
Lysa Hardy, Vice President of T-Mobile Propositions
Gerry McQuade, Chief Development Officer
Marc Overton, Vice President of Wholesale
Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business
Bruno Duarte, Vice President of Home
Russel Taylor, Vice President of Business Development and Online
Neal Milsom, Vice President of Finance
Emin Gurdenli, Vice President of Network
Fotis Karonis, Vice President of IT
Jackie O’Leary, Vice President of Customer Operations
Rui Pereira, Vice President of the Programme Management Office
John Cromack, Vice President of Purchasing
Linda Kennedy, Chief Change Officer
Ian Pitcher, Vice President of People Operation
Nicolas Ott, Vice President of Strategy, Planning and Regulatory
Steven Day, Vice President of Brands and Communications
James Blendis, Vice President of Legal
Ben Messore, Vice President of Strategy

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.

The new combined unit would bring in around £8.2bn worth of sales, and hoover up 37% of the UK market – more than O2′s current lead at 27%. Costs associated with the merger could reach £800m though, but savings are expected to be £445m by 2014.

All of this is, of course, subject to regulatory approval. However, it does leave lots of unanswered questions – for instance what happens with existing joint ventures like T-Mobile’s MVNO with Virgin, and their 3G network sharing deal with 3? Plus there’s the big dark cloud over jobs – how many redundancies will such a merger cause?

Whilst neither party will comment on the report, sources close to both companies said an official announcement could happen as early as tomorrow (Tuesday).

Reports over the weekend in the UK Sunday newspapers claimed Vodafone and O2′s parent company Telefonica had already submitted bids of £3.5bn for Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK business unit.

A combination of O2 and T-Mobile would bring around a 42% market share in the UK, Vodafone and T-Mobile 40%, whilst a joint venture with Orange could grab 37% of the market.

Is he worried about being left out of the bidding war for Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK business unit? Quite probably, but he plays it quite cool. “We are watching developments closely, but if you’re asking me whether it’s consuming my time day and night, the answer is no,” he says. I’m entirely relaxed about the situation – no one is running around here like headless chickens.”

Meanwhile the Sunday Times reports Vodafone is talking to Deutsche Telekom about swapping it’s Turkish operation (formerly Telsim) for T-Mobile UK. To put that possibility into figures, Vodafone paid £2.6bn for the Telsim operation in 2006, but has since written it down due to competition from Turkcell – the dominate player in the market. It could raise £1.5bn of the projected £3m worth of T-Mobile UK by disposing of the Turkish unit.

Finally, the Daily Mail adds its usual dose of doom, gloom and ‘they’re all out to get us’ sensationalism with a report that says ‘Telecoms regulator Ofcom is warning potential bidders for T-Mobile that any takeover deal will face the toughest scrutiny, amid fears that it would lead to a sharp increase in prices for consumers.’

Happy days indeed, with sources close to Deutsche Telekom still claiming there’s ‘no rush’ to offload T-Mobile UK. With new MD Richard Moat (formerly of Orange) less than two months in the job there still may be time to avoid being swallowed up by a rival player. Speaking of Orange, they’re still in the frame for a deal with T-Mobile. Or not, if you believe the claims a possible deal was rejected a few weeks ago.

The Financial Times claims that the Newbury-based operator has been sniffing around its rival, said to be worth between €3bn and €4bn – and may be considering teaming up with Hutchinson Whampoa – the parent company of 3 – to launch a bid.

Even if Vodafone went it alone, the combination the two operators in the UK market would give a market share of 40%, according to the BBC. Such a large chunk of subscribers would certainly ring alarm bells with the UK Competition Commission and the higher powers of the EU in Brussels – although the BBC says it’s not uncommon for operators to have such dominance in other European countries such as France and Spain.

Vodafone are not the first operator to be linked with a bid for T-Mobile. Previous rumours of interest by Orange were vehemently denied a few weeks ago after a reported rebuffal by Deutsche Telekom, plus there’s still the distinct possibility of a ‘mega-operator’ plan involving 3, Skype and T-Mobile – which I exclusively wrote about back in May.

Whatever the outcome, one fact remains – being a mobile operator is no longer the equivalent to having a licence to print money. Vodafone are currently going through a £1bn cost cutting plan after it recently announced a 53.5% fall in annual pre-tax profits from £9bn to £4.2bn, and Deutsche Telekom recently wrote off €1.8 billion on T-Mobile UK.

And for comparison purposes, the new G1 Touch (on the left) next to the old G1:

Well then. If you were ever in doubt about Android and the way ahead for the platform, I think you should begin to relax.

You can pick up this new G1 Touch free on an 18-month price plan at £40 per month. There’s no physical keyboard, instead it’s touchscreen. That might not be for everyone — I myself prefer a physical QWERTY screen, but that said, I’m pretty impressed by the 5MP camera. Of course, as the MIR T-Shirt points out, it’s not about the megapixels, dude.

I think it’s a fair assumption to assume that the camera will be better than the old G1.

Here are the key points from the G1 Touch release:

- Large multi-touch screen
- Exclusive black edition available only from T-Mobile
- 5 Mega pixel camera with auto-focus and video capture
- Live photo gallery updates with friends pictures
- All contacts on and offline sync together in a live phonebook
- Compatible with Microsoft Office Outlook, Hotmail and other email providers
- Standard 3.5mm headphone jack
- High-speed web browsing and instant access to Google services including Maps, Google mail and Street View using T-Mobile’s award-winning mobile internet network
- Access to Android MarketTM for a choice of thousands of applications to download direct to your phone

I’m pleased to see a proper headphone jack there. This caught my attention:

T-Mobile predicts that one in five of its regular mobile internet users will have an Android device by the end of 2009

Shocking.

Absolutely shocking.

But you know what, I can believe that. I am seeing more and more normobs carrying G1s as I walk around London.

Now, that screen on the G1 Touch looks rather nice doesn’t it… more on that in the next post.

Keep watching on T-Mobile UK for details.

Now, a word on upgrades. I spoke to Oliver from T-Mobile PR, who explained that the G1 Touch is an addition to the range, not necessarily a direct upgrade path. (e.g. If you’re keen on a physical keyboard, the original G1 is probably still the handset for you). Therefore those who took out an 18-month contract with the G1, well, you’ll be able to upgrade to the G1 Touch — but you’ll be treated like any other customer. If you’ve been spending a TON of money with T-Mobile, you might be able to wangle a deal. But otherwise, the G1 Touch is a new contract or an upgrade at the end of your contract.

That said, who’s going to be getting the G1 Touch?

Yes? Good. Because that’s what T-Mobile UK have cooked up for your delectation. It’s the next in the series after the rather amazing T-Mobile ‘Dance’ at London’s Liverpool Street Station that saw hundreds of apparent commuters all of a sudden break into a series of co-ordinated dance moves. Brilliant advertisement, compelling viewing. If you haven’t seen it, take a few minutes and check it out here:

And here’s the Hey Jude one in Trafalgar Square:

The good looking girl who appears now and again, singing in tune, is popstar Pink.

I think.

I’ve been wondering all about this particular video after I kept seeing it playing on all the electronic screens around the London Underground/Tube. Know I know.

I’m pretty impressed at T-Mobile UK’s advertising geniuses. The first video, The Dance, definitely underpins the company’s ‘Life’s For Sharing’ message — and, whilst the ‘Hey June’ one does too (load of folk, all singing-along mostly out of tune), I think The Dance is going to remain their most compelling ad for some time.

I’ve been using my Android G1 a lot since I arrived in America because, conveniently, my US T-Mobile sim works perfectly with it (even though it’s a UK device). I didn’t have to do any configuration since HTC thoughtfully included the T-Mobile US web settings on the device already.

So I’ve been taking pictures.

As you do in a city as nice and as varied as San Francisco.

I’d like to send them directly to Flickr. Since there’s no ShoZu service on Android at the moment (and I haven’t re-installed Pixelpipe yet) I thought I’d have a look around the Marketplace on Android.

Unlike others, I take it upon myself to buy as many applications as possible. I did a certain amount of evaluation on ‘Flickr Upload’ when I came across it. From memory it was $0.99. Or perhaps less.

I scrolled down to the comments.

On the 28th of April, ‘Matthew’ commented:

Works wonderfully. Well integrated.

.. and he gave it five stars.

I suspect Matthew is referring to the share option. When you take a photo on Android, there’s a button that pops up called ‘Share’. Click on that and you get the choice of sharing by Email, by Google Mail or — to Flickr (enabled by this application). Smart. I was warming to the concept.

I noted that it’s had between 100-500 downloads. Ok. Not a brilliant well-trodden path. I continued with the comment review.

On the 21st of April, ‘z0mbix’ commented:

Will not authorise with flickr on t-mobile/G1. Can’t get any reply from the developers em[ail]…

Er.

I’d gone off it right away.

The final comment on the app’s frontpage was a day before z0mbix’s one from Benjamin:

Exactly what I was looking for works perfectly

Hmmm.

Z0mbix’s comment put me right off. But I reasoned there must be a reason, maybe he/she didn’t know what they were doing? Afterall if Benjamin and Matthew each had a good experience, I should be ok?

Right?

As I walked out of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco I spotted an advert I wanted to write about. I decided to download Flickr Upload there and then, configure it and get moving.

I paid the money, the app downloaded and within seconds I’d got to the main prompt, asking me to authorise my Flickr account to work with it. Fair enough.

I typed in my Yahoo account username and password and hit ‘login’.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

The screen went blank.

Er.

‘I’ve just paid a dollar for this,’ I thought, rather disappointed. I was experiencing the pain of fellow user, z0mbix.

I tried again. Maybe I typed my details wrong?

Again it failed. The app just sat on a blank screen like this:

Rubbish!

I ended up sending the photo to my email account and walked home, rather annoyed with myself.

I was annoyed because I thought I’d obviously got my Yahoo password wrong.

What self respecting developer would allow an application to go live — a chargeable application at that — which doesn’t actually work?

Then I reasoned that it must be a Yahoo screw-up and spent a good few blocks cursing them in my mind.

I got back to my desktop and immediately changed my Yahoo password to check I had it correct.

Again I tried authorising the app.

Nothing. Nada.

I’ve bought a dud.

I don’t know who is responsible. It COULD be Yahoo, entirely. But one assumes that the two other recent commenters on Android Marketplace aren’t lying and they got it to work.

I’ve tried a few times over the past few days to activate it to no avail.

So I looked up the developer online.

They’re called Macrospecs and they’re a privately-owned startup in the bay area.

Ah hah! They’ll have a GetSatisfaction page, right? Or a forum or something?

No.

Nothing!

It’s a one-page website and — ultra annoyingly — the ‘contact’ page goes straight through to their email address.

Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the Flickr Upload application on their site.

I then had a look back on the Android Marketplace and saw that the ‘developer site’ is listed as FaceofMobile.com/Flickr. Ah hah!

No, hold your excitement.

This is the entire site:

Yup… it’s one page. It consists of three screenshots and a macrospecs logo, with no link. No contact details. No support option. Nothing.

In fairness to the developer, one wouldn’t expect that many support enquiries from an application that simply sends a photo to a Flickr account. It’s not rocket science and there’s hardly any failure points.

Except the authorisation process.

And, of course, macrospecs don’t control that, Yahoo do.

Tough luck for me and z0mbix, right? If it ain’t working, you can try contacting macrospecs but it’s rather clear they don’t want to know — and are not expecting to support any enquiries.

I hunted around and I found a support forum for macrospecs’ Face of Mobile application, a $1.99 Windows Mobile Facebook app.

I suppose I could try posting there.

But I’m not feeling very welcome — or smart for buying the app. Indeed I’ve paid a dollar for the privilege.

It’s perfectly fine for it to happen to me, I have a good understanding of the trials and tribulations of mobile development — but if this is the experience of your average consumer who’s just picked up a G1 or G2 and is expecting 100% friction-free total quality-assured service from the Android Marketplace, they’re not going to be at all impressed.

Like the ringtone marketplace a few years ago — you’ll pay once and if the experience sucks, you definitely won’t ever pay again.

What’s the right response?

Is this a FAIL on the part of the team at macrospecs? Is it a Yahoo FAIL?

Or is it an Android FAIL?

Would this have happened on an iPhone?