Kiwiblog

Tom Pullar-Strecker writes in the Dom Post:

People might be forgiven for taking a joint media statement issued by Parents Inc and Youthline on Wednesday at face value. The charities said they were concerned the Commerce Commission’s proposal to regulate mobile termination charges might have a ”negative impact”.

Why would they be getting involved in this issue?

Vodafone’s charitable arm, the Vodafone Foundation, awarded Youthline $200,000 to build a centre in Papatoetoe in March and has also paid the salary of a Youthline counsellor. Parents Inc announced a three year partnership with Vodafone in June.

And their arguments:

Both Parents Inc. and Youthline are concerned about the other unintended consequences of regulation, such as the potential for an increase in text spam and text bullying. When a service is very cheap or free, it increases the risk of abuse.

They’re arguing that a reduction in the cost to phone or text someone is a bad thing as it may lead to text spamming and worst of all child abuse by text bullying.

That is like arguing we should introduce a charge to send e-mails, to reduce e-mail spam and e-mail flame wars. Absolute throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Yes it is possible more companies may try to send text spam, if sending texts is cheaper. However commercial text spamming is against the law, and further the telcos have a code of practice that bans it from their networks.

Pilbrow says, “One of the issues with young people and parents is that the technology is growing so fast we have not had time to put boundaries around it. Parents struggle with it, and when spam and other areas of abuse are factored in, the issues for parents increase immensely.”

So lowering the mobile termination rate will add to family stress for parents. I can not believe anyone in their right mind allowed this press release to go out with such vapid and stupid arguments – obviously motivated by a desire to please their funder.

Youthline CEO Stephen Bell is particularly concerned about text bullying. “The mobile is such a personal communications device, and teenagers in particular rush to read and respond to a text message as soon as they hear the phone beep. Texts can easily be anonymous, which emboldens bullies and intimidates victims. Anything that makes it easier for bullies is of grave concern and we should take it very seriously.”

Again this is just an outrageous argument. It is like arguing that lowering the price of petrol makes it easier for drunk drivers, or that lowering the price of newspapers make it easier for arsonists!

Incidentially Curia, which I own did some market research for Exceltium for their Lower the Rate, Mate campaign. This was well publicised at the time. My views on mobile termination rates pre-date that arrangement, and my response to these press release is entirely my own initiative fueled by outrage at the arguments used. No-one at all pointed the article out to me, suggested I should blog on it, or even knows I was going to blog on it.

There are valid arguments for and against mobile termination rate regulation. However scaremongering about text bullying and spam are not amongst them, and shame on whomever put these groups up to making such ludicrous assertions.

Very pleased to see an agreement between the teclos. Vodafone says:

Vodafone and Telecom NZ have worked together over the last 48 hours to reach a solution to resolve the issues between them, which have been identified by both parties.

This agreement has been reached by both parties, to achieve the best outcome for their customers, the telecommunications industry and all New Zealanders.

Telecom has agreed to extend its network filter installation programme, in order to help resolve the interference issues identified as impacting Vodafone mobile customers.

Vodafone has agreed to discontinue its injunction proceedings. Telecom’s new XT mobile network will go live for New Zealanders by the end of May 2009.

I have not followed the court case, but the fact Vodafone has withdrew suggests they were unlikely to win.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Vodafone tells me that they withdrew the court proceedings because Telecom agreed to everything they asked for.

Very disappointing to see that Vodafone has laucnhed legal proceedings against Telecom’s new mobile network, on the grounds of signal interference.

This is gut instinct, but I am suspicious that this is more about knocking Telecom’s marketing schedule off balance, than the only resort left to Vodafone. There may well be technical issues, but was litigation really necessary just 11 days from Telecom’s launch?

We’ll know more once documents are filed and made public. For now I am sceptical, and hope that it is not a sign of Vodafone behaving like an incumbent bully. As I said, there is not enough information public at this stage to know who is right or not.

The NZ Herald has an exclusive preview of a report being released at 10 am today, that was commissioned by Telecom, Telstra-Clear and Vodafone.

As readers will know, National was elected on a major promise of spending $1.5 billion to help ensure ultra high speed broadband to 75% of NZ homes.

The three telcos have released a report which basically says the Government should not spend $1.5 billion in this area, because all their existing offerings are adequate. I’ll try not to laugh.

Now you have to consider how unusual it is for the major players in a sector to try and stop the Government spending $1.5 billion in subsidies, rather than try and get some of the $1.5 billion.

So why would the big three be fighting against a huge investment in their sector? Because they are scared shitless that it won’t go to them. They are very worried that electricity lines companies may get to provide most of the infrastructure for fibre to the home. And this means the telcos would have to compete in offering services over that fibre network, plus offer complementary services over mobile and wireless.

Labour have been running what is basically a blatant lie for nine months, about National’s policy. They have been scare mongering that National is just going to give the $1.5 billion to Telecom, which would help perpetuate Telecom’s market dominance. Now ask yourself, would Telecom be partnering up with its two biggest rivals, to fund a report that argues the $1.5 billion should not happen – if Telecom thought there was any liklihood that $1.5 billion would be coming their way?

Now I don’t know what the Government is going to do. I’m not even sure if they have made decisions yet. But I think Liam Dann has it somewhat wrong in this article:

Bill English and John Key will already be having serious doubts about their ability to commit $1.5 billion.

The world has changed dramatically since Maurice Williamson – then opposition spokesman on telecommunications – made the $1.5 billion promise.

It was John Key, not Maurice Williamson, that made the promise. I was there at the speech. John was taking, and Maurice was sitting next to me clapping furiously – like all of us. Now this is not to say that Maurice was not a passionate advocate of the policy – he was, and he helped make it happen. But anyone who suggests John Key is not committed to this policy is wrong (in my opinion). It is no secret that John was a very strong advocate for it.

And while the credit crisis is an issue, the Government has made clear that they are looking to bring forward infrastructure spending, not reduce it.

Dann says the benefits of fibre to the home must be jobs, not just movies on demand. I agree. I think fibre to the home will allow many businesses to reduce costs as staff can work from home, which provides both economic and environmental costs. Dann says:

And cost-benefit debate needs to focus on jobs not, unfortunately, speed for the home user.

Last month a report by the Economist noted two studies which found some evidence of increased broadband spending equating to increased employment.

Washington-based Brookings Institution concluded that for every percentage point increase of broadband penetration, employment increases by 0.2 per cent to 0.3 per cent per year. But that is not huge growth.

Not huge? So if we get 10% more broadband penetration we will have extra employment growth of 2% to 3% a year. That is an extra 40,000 to 60,000 jobs a year.

I look forward to reading the full report. There certainly are difficult issues for the Government to deal with. For example if most of the funding does go to electricity lines companies, it would be desirable for this not to hinder current investment plans by the Telcos. I am sure the Castalia report will be a useful piece of research, as they had access to the telco’s commercial data.

Vodafone have just done a press release which should be a template for how to apologise when you get it wrong:

Late last year we announced we’d introduce a new online billing process that meant customers would be able to receive a TXT or email alert about their bill and could go online to pay it.

Nice idea, we thought. People will like that we’re thinking of the trees and the convenience factor will be a big plus. Certainly the trial group liked it, so we rolled it out to the public. To encourage customers along we also said we’d charge $1.50 per month for those customers who still want a paper bill, with that charge kicking in some time in the first half of this year.

And that’s where the wheels came off.

Our customers have told us they quite like the idea of online billing but they hate, hate, HATE the idea of being charged to receive a paper bill.

Did we mention they hate it? Well they do. And we’re going to listen to what they say.

Very clever – indicates they have listened to what people said.

So, being the company we are we’ve decided to do a U-turn, an about face, a 180: now you can get your bill in the post each month if you so want, and it won’t cost a penny.

In fact, we’ll go a step further – customers can opt to carry on getting the email or TXT alerts, they can get a paper bill posted out to them or they can chose to get their bill emailed out to them in PDF format.

No weasel words trying to deny it is a u-turn.

And we’d like to say sorry for all the trouble. We’re not perfect. We’re only human but hopefully we’re grown up enough to ‘fess up when we make a mistake.

And an apology to boot.

The only thing missing is the photos of the buring at the stake of the persons who dreamt up the idea of charging customers $1.50 to receive a bill!

A deserved nominee for the good spin of the year award goes to my friend Paul Brislen from Vodafone for his comments in this article on how the cost of cellphones takes up more of a young person’s disposable income, and hence less young people are smoking.

British experts believe cellphones have replaced many of the social mechanisms cigarettes previously offered young people.

Vodafone New Zealand spokesman Paul Brislen said the cost of cellphones would take up more of a typical young person’s disposable income.

“The disposable income moves around and these days it’s far more important to them to have the latest phone with all the music on it than it is to have something else going on,” he said. “It’s a social status symbol.”

There should be a Qantas Award for such work

Yay, Vodafone has made available some cheaper plans for the iPhones. They have introduced a $60 and $40 monthly plan. You don’t get much talktime but if you like it for the data, it will be good for you as still 250 MB a month.

I suspect it is not just me, but that no one is getting e-mail on Vodafone/Ihug at the moment.

The one good thing of getting so many e-mails, is when you have not had an e-mail for over two hours, you know it is a fault. Even the webmail is empty so Vodafone is having problems receiving e-mail it seems.

Their system status claims no problems, and God knows how one actually finds the phone number to call for their helpdesk. They make it as hard as possible to locate it seems.

Vodafone has announced its pricing for the iPhones which go on sale on Friday, and its certainly not cheap.

The phone itself starst at $199, but only if you to a $6,000 contract over two years. Yeah thought not.

Their cheapest plan is not so bad – $80 a month which includes 120 minutes of calls (4 minutes a day), 600 texts (20 a day) and 250 MB of data (8Mb a day which isn’t bad). The phone will cost $549 or $699 (for 16GB phone) on top of that.

The $250 a month plan gives you 600 minutes or 20 minutes a day. No increase in texts (600) and a nice 1 GB of data.

I hope prices will drop over time. They probably have them high now because they know there will be some peopel who will pay anything for an iPhone. Personally I would hold off and wait for some lower prices as will be inevitable when they want more customers.

A very welcome announcement by Vodafone that it will extend its 3G network from 63% of NZ to 97%.

3G gives people broadband speeds of up to 7.6Mb/s.

The next technology step up is HSPA (which I am trialling) which goes up to 28.8Mb/s.

Of interest is the next step after that, and that Vodafone is looking to go with LTE instead of WiMax which has been much hyped. LTE will give speeds of over 100 Mb/s. But note these are connection speeds – very different to actual speeds.

Last week the Herald looked at the new Compass product from Vodafone – a location finding and route planning service.

Type your destination address into the BlackBerry and you’ll be guided to your destination – both visually on the handset’s screen and audibly by a rather robotic voice coming out of the phone’s speaker.

I think location based services are the future killer apps for mobile phones. About to download and try it.

UPDATE: Have it installed and it is great. Even better it is free until October. Google Maps for Blackberry is cool but the data charges are a killer. This is free for now, and even in the future only $10 a month or something.

I am now a beta tester for Vodafone’s new high speed mobile data cards. I have to say so far so good.

The old data card had a maximum download speed of around 350 kb/s. These can go around 20 times as fast, and I routinely get over 2 Mb/s down and around 1 Mb/s up.

Giving up the DSL connection one day is not an impossibility.

Installing the new card was pretty simple. Step 1 is insert CD and install latest software. Step 2 is transfer sim card, and you are done.

While I am a big advocate for fibre to the home, mobile broadband is just as important – both for rural areas, but also for those like me who travel around. It really is so good being able to connect up, in most places in NZ.

Telstra-Clear has launched a warp-speed Internet offering – 25 Mb/s download, 2 Mb/s upload and a monthly 120 GB cap.

The cost is $230 a month which rules it out for most people, but it is good to have the option there, and over time prices should drop.

Vodafone has also announced they will allow customers to go on VDSL2, as well as ADSL2+. VDSL2 can do speeds of up to 50 Mb/s down and 30 Mb/s up – but only if within 1 km of a exchange.

The pricing is not specified, but the story says “VDSL2 connections could be bought by anyone who wants to pay for it”. Does that mean you pay one off for the connection or a higher monthly fee?