[LINK] News: 'New mobile phones will double as credit cards'

[Adam Todd]

At 06:01 PM 29/04/2007, Kim Holburn wrote:
>On 2007/Apr/29, at 8:47 AM, Adam Todd wrote:
>>At 03:06 PM 29/04/2007, Kim Holburn wrote:
>>>See, I reckon $33 a month, which is way more than I have ever paid a
>>>phone company for a mobile phone is a rip-off.
>>
>>It's cheaper than my landline.  Landline $32.95 a month, plus call
>>costs on top of that, rarely below $40.00 - that's not many calls!
>
>I rarely paid more than $5 a month. many months not even that,
>occasionally nothing at all.  I only pay for calls, a single rate
>anywhere in Australia.

I have to admit with my vodafone I pay about $30 a year :)

I think it would be very hard to get a mobile that gives you $5 a 
month access to all networks with over 30 hours a month in calls :)

>When you've paid off your phone what happens then?  You keep paying
>the same amount for nothing?  Or you upgrade your phone?

Well the 2 years expired last week.  Remember, I wasn't on a plan 
that included a cost for the handset.  So I can get another "free" 
handset or I can buy a new one cheap, or I can get another one on a 
few bucks a month ($3 - $5) added on top of my plan.

I don't think I'll be going for a "more money" option.  Although, 
when you consider 24 months at $5 a month which is easier to pay than 
$120+ tomorrow out of ones small $180 a week income, it's actually quite cheap.

>I hate it when a phone company says things like:  You get reduced
>rates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, calls to people in this company's
>network are cheaper, calls from Sydney to Subiaco the phone company
>pays you, calls to 5 nominated friends are free from 11PM to 2AM, a
>reduction of 10% between 7.30AM and 9.30AM if you also use this
>company for broadband, a special reduction of 50 cents a minute to
>mobiles.  I just think this is a mad attempt to obfuscate costs.  How
>can you possibly think of all that crap?

I agree. I use to program the PBX to make calls on differnt carriers 
and with calling cards, etc.  It was too much hassle.

But I have to admit, 3, overall, is very economical for my 
situation.  I call over seas quite frequently and get very low rates.

When I was in France, my wife used her 300 minutes of free calls 
calling me, and I only paid around $100 in inbound call charges at 16 
cents per minute.  A mobile to mobile call in Australia is 30 cents 
to 44 cents per 30 seconds.

So the inbound charges were damn cheap.  However if I made a call 
from my phone roaming in France the call charges were anywhere 
between $1.16  to $3.20 per minute.  Needless to say, thanks to a 
Linker and his awesome Brother who lives in France I was provided 
with two mobiles for use there (one he recharged just for me - so 
generous!  I sent it back with credit and he "told me off"!,) and a 
Film Director friend organised two additional French Sims for each of 
my two companions.

So really it's CHEAP.  Cheaper than the land line - which is why I 
changed form the $900 to $1300 a month land line costs to the sub 
$100 a month three handsets on a mobile network costs.

Our call patterns haven't changed, if anything that have increased.

>>I'd love a cheaper monthly fee, but I'm not going to get 300
>>minutes of free calls, and 30 cent calls to all lands lines for up
>>to ten minutes.
>
>They've got you sussed haven't they.  You're paying for stuff you
>don't use.

But we almost use our 300 minutes every month.  My wife is the worst 
offender when it comes to using her $22 a month credit on calls, but 
I can't make her make calls.

I put MMS on her phone when I went to France and she sent me heaps of 
pictures - FREE.  (For $3 a month - MMS is $0.50 per message, we send 
HUNDREDS a week.)

I recently put MMS on my co-produces phone (rather than her requested 
Restaurants, TV and Comedy silly thing) and now she's using that like 
a message taker.

I send about 300 MMS messages a week.  Faster than a phone call, 
direct, limited to the points in issue, and organisable!  You can 
play them back and hear the instructions!

I don't feel I'm paying too much, sure I'd love to pay less, but then 
if I equate what we use against what we pay, our calls come down to a 
fraction of a cent per minute overall, and the MMS is free.

I'm also considering a pre-paid "capped" service with 3 ($49 a month) 
to use as an SMS/MMS gateway from my linux server.  CHEAP.  VERY cheap.

My co-producer has FREE SMS on her phone, (we have the land line 
option) which means she can send ONE message to the gateway and have 
it sent to dozens of people.

She's NEVER run out of FREE SMS messages in 2 years.

>>I think the technology is a side issue.  I think people get
>>confused over "how much" and "how often."
>
>This is an economic issue.  There are lots of ways of paying for
>"services".  Most of the phone companies use billing techniques that
>come from monopoly practises.  They also try as much as possible to
>make fee comparison between companies impossible.

OK, I'll totally agree with the fee comparison part.  When I was 
looking at whether to churn my land lines to another carrier, the 
cheapest rental was $20 a month per line, but I'd have to pay $120 
install and I'd not longer have ISDN, I'd be forced back to PSTN, as 
opposed to mobiles, which I tried hard to compare - rejecting 
Telstra, and Optus outright.

Vodafone was OK, but didn't offer the "free" minutes that I figured 
we'd use, 100 minutes a month on a $30 a month plan, plus call 
charges wasn't "cheap" because I'd be $360 a month out of pocket 
before I started making any calls.

>Technology does come into it though.  Charging very large amounts for
>very small data connections is a rip-off that we have inherited from
>government phone monopolies.

Yes that I agree with.

Again 3 have a plan for $5 a month that gives you 10 megabytes of 
data (both ways I'm afraid) and then 50 cents per megabyte.

Now the alternative is $3.10 per megabyte which is absurd.

Telstra is worse.

So yes, they are getting "another" $5 a month out of me.  I've used 
it every month so far, when I'm in the city.  The first time I used 
the broadband service before they introduced the plan I paid $50 for 
9 megabytes of data transfer.

Now I pay nothing.  But I needed to use it to transfer urgent files 
and scanned images form the court to my wife.  It was the only way.

It's not cheap, but then it's $5 a month.  I can't even get a dial up 
service as a BACKUP for that price (usage not included.)

>It is such a goldmine that it will be
>prized out of the clutching paws of phone companies only by other
>grasping new tech companies like skype or voipbuster.

Which is probably why Internet data on mobiles is so damn 
expensive.  Imagine near free Internet on a mobile phone - with Skype 
on a PDA, laptop or on the phone itself?

I can understand the economics of the telephone companies in that 
regard.  But I'm sure they can, if they want to, devise an economic 
method in which people can have those features and still provide a 
network cost profit.


>I remember a time when there was a huge ground swell of opposition to
>Telstra (or was it Telecom?) wanting to charge timed local calls
>(what we'd call now by the bacronym: local landline calls).

Yes, several times.  (And the time Bulletin Board operators were 
targeted by Telecom/Telstra to be charged for INBOUND calls in a 
timed fashion! 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2003.)

Timed local calls were pressed over and over.  I've always opposed 
them.  in fact I opposed time STD calls.  I couldn't see the point.

I also opposed timed mobile calls.  I said in 1986, if Mobile charges 
were the same as land lines, EVERYONE would have a mobile phone 
within 6 months.

I reckon it would have happened too.  Then we'd be in a pickle for 
DSL as no one would have had the need to install copper.

>They didn't succeed at the time but they won that battle by bypassing it -
>mobiles are so different we just accept timed calls on them.

Yep.  And we keep paying the fees and not demanding cheaper 
rates.  Look at the profits from mobile times calls!

But then look at the networks that are most stable :)

>>Then again, I watch people subscribing to services that charge then
>>$4 a day and they have no hesitation in doing it.
>
>So there's someone getting ripped off worse than you, always
>comforting...

Sad.  Really.  I don't understand why people have to download 
wallpapers and ring tones for $4 each.

$4 is a pie and a drink.

$4 is barely a one way train ticket for a few stops.

$4 is apparently roughly how much my wife says each meal for our 
family of six costs to make.  (She cringed at the $1.49 x 2 tins of 
Red Thai Curry Soup, plus left over chicken, and frozen veg that was 
made tonight saying that's at least $8 and it only served two people!)

Don't forget 19SMS competition SMS and 1900 numbers.  HUGE business.  HUGE.

But people do it and they get the $300 to $500 a month bill and just 
pay it - usually with a credit card.