All Points North

Carriers, it’s time to get on the dance floor.

Having spent the last few days of February in Spain I was not surprised in the least to discover once again that using data outside of your home country is very expensive. I can completely understand why as coming to cross-border agreements can be tricky especially when the companies aren’t connected in any way whatsoever. Imagine, just for a second, if Telefonica were in some small insignificant way able to communicate more directly with O2 or if Vodafone Spain had anything to do with Vodafone UK, perchance to dream that Orange in the UK was the same company as Orange in Spain. Such things pipe dreams are made of.

I’ve been told that the only people who care about mobile data roaming are people like me. People who have smart phones and tweet, Foursquare, email, browse and Facebook a lot. People who travel to conferences and therefore have business expense accounts to cover this sort of thing. To be fair, that probably was true once, but now I’m not alone. Consumers (or ‘normals’) are getting smartphones and, surprisingly enough are going to take them on holiday with them too.

Here’s a graph.

Source: IDC

What this graph shows is quarterly growth of smartphones in Europe. The data is a bit old now, but it shows a trend to the top right bit and last time I checked that was up. What does this prove? Well, not mush given the paucity of the data, but I think one can safely guestimate that smartphone sales are growing and will continue to do so in Europe.

The one thing that smartphones do better than anything else is use data. As it stands with current pricing most people will no doubt turn roaming off as soon as they get the email from their carrier telling them that using the web costs £3 per MB.  Though many will turn off roaming because of the cost alone another reason is trust. Yep that’s right O2 I just don’t trust you. Why not? Two text messages received within minutes of each other.

I’d show you a screenshot of them, but I have a Windows phone so can’t (this will be the subject of another post quite soon). Back on point…

28/02 20:30 I get a text message from O2

“You’ve spent £20 on data so far while you’ve been abroad in Europe. We’ll send another message if you reach £30″

28/02 20:33 I get a text message from O2

“You’ve spent £40 on data in Europe. We won’t charge you any more on your current bill, but we’ll stop the data service if you go over 50 meg”

Really O2? I used about 7MB of data in 3 minutes? Even if those messages were delayed and sent together you’re saying that with roaming off 99% of the time and with me only checking Twitter I breezed through 14MB of data in 3 days? That is odd, because at home I barely get towards 200MB in a month and there I have data on all the time and use it to post pictures, get email, check in, check out, browse and use Spotify. Here in Spain my data connection has been off the vast majority of the time.

No doubt if I called O2 and asked them they’d be able to verify exactly when and where I used all this data because of their robust, high-tech and leading edge mobile data tracking technology, which sort of leads me to ask: if it’s so good why the blamanche can’t you come up with some decent roaming packages Also, could you be a bit more opaque with that text message?  ”We won’t charge you any more on your current bill” So, does that mean you’re going to roll it over on to my next bill or am I good to go for 50MB for £40?

Conclusion: Why don’t you want my money?

And no, this isn’t a entitlement thing, I’m happy to pay for data, it’s more that I’m surprised by the mobile industry and its data roaming business plan. Encouraging people to turn their data roaming off when abroad so they don’t run up massive bills instead of offering a decent payment system with a sensible amount of data.

With all that said… Step forwards Orange:

At Mobile World Congress I got a press release from Orange about their new European data roaming tariff,

Orange’s latest ‘combined’ roaming bundle sees a new type of offer in the market, incorporating voice, SMS and data into one affordable and easy to understand tariff.  The offers will be available on a daily, weekly or even 30-day basis, tailored to each market. The offers, available in Spain, Belgium and Romania will be extended to other markets in 2012 including France, the UK and Poland. For example, in France customers will be able to purchase a bundle that includes 10 minutes of voice, 10 SMS’s and 10 MB for approximately €4 to €5 (daily, EU bundle) from June onwards.

10MB a day for about £3? That’s more like it.

Saw some nice new phones at Mobile World Congress, but this one from Fujitsu caught my eye. Not confirmed to launch in Europe as the carriers are yet to be dangled over hot coals and made to stock it. I think that’s how it works anyway.

I’ve listed the spec below so you can see the things it’s made of. Thank me later.

No really, it’s waterproof I seen it with my own eyes it was in a fish tank. The fish were fake (apparently this was because the good people at Fujitsu we worried about the welfare of the fish post show.

Have to admit I wasn’t entirely sure if this seminar was a how to…