Antonio Jorge Lulic is a freelance web developer and musician based in London. He also writes and takes photos.
ZDNet reports that O2 have revealed the bandwidth allowance for users of their iPhone - a pitiful 200mb per month.
I’m going to have to gloss over the glaring malfunction of British law that permits any organisation to advertise as ‘unlimited’ something that is clearly and openly delimited (’fair use’ notwithstanding, but we’ll get to that), because I’m more dumbfounded by the abject blinkeredness of O2 in perceiving the purpose and utility of the iPhone, and the mindset of the people who are going to pay for it.
As the ZD article highlights, O2 have reneged on their claim that users will be able to browse 1,400 ‘web pages’ a day - an unnervingly loose definition at the time by any account. That’s 1,400 pretty sparse pages, right there. Now consider the iPhone’s camera - you might want to (heck, Apple encourage it) snap a photo when you’re out, and email it to your Flickr. Granted, your 2 megapixel JPEG isn’t (I hope) going to impinge up on your bandwidth limit on the way up, but when you hit Flickr to see it in your photostream, you’ll choke down a good ~600kb page in doing so. Now we’re talking about significantly less than 1,000 pageviews.
Oh, and the YouTube iPhone app? Forget it. Just forget it.
But wait; O2 signed made a deal with The Cloud, ensuring that iPhone users get to hop onto their wifi networks on the fly, for free, right? The Cloud have capped usage for iPhones on their network at 60 hours a month and, I’m not certain how that’s gonna work, exactly. I have some questions.
Does this mean I have to sign in every time I enter one of their hitspots, and wish to use it? What if I forget to sign out? Do I find out three days later that my quota is exhausted, or do they start charging me? If, instead, The Cloud recognises me and logs me on automatically, does it start timing until I leave the hotspot? I work in range of their City of London cloud; will I run down my allowance in the first two and a half days of the month?
I felt a chill as soon as I discovered that O2 had won the iPhone; and I’ve been crossing my fingers since that they wouldn’t fuck it up. The price plans set off a few mental proximity alarms, but these data allowances are red alert calibre issues.
Here was O2 with a chance to demonstrate how current, innovative and open they are, even as a corporation, and even without the futureproof network backbone (I’m talking EDGE/3G here) a telecoms company needs to stay relevant, but the decisions they’ve made on this issue alone smacks of a company that just doesn’t get it, and will damage the reputation of the iPhone in the UK, permanently.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Apple gave O2 a chance to demonstrate how they can best abuse a monopoly, and nothing more. Why would they bother to stay relevant, when they can just exploit the stupidity of people who they know will buy an iPhone regardless of the conditions attached. O2 ‘gets it’ just fine - they want to take as much money as possible from you while spending as little as possible to keep your money coming in.
In the eyes of the O2 board of directors, if you buy an iPhone you are their prisoner, not their customer.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Precisely why, Mark, I resolved myself this week to hacking my iPhone as soon as I get it. My tariff on T-Mobile is better, and I’ll save £255 by not having to buy myself out of the rest of my contract with them.
I’ll have to forfeit Visual Voicemail (oh noes!), and the Cloud roaming wireless, but at least I’ll be on an EDGE network, and I have wifi at home and at work, so, well, who cares.
Screw you O2. I was with you when you were BT Cellnet, then Genie, then O2, and I’ve never liked you. Now, give me my iPhone and fuck off.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:48 am
You’re fortunate then. In Australia, only Telstra (ex-government monopoly like BT, but more evil) has the base station equipment to let iPhones work. So hacked or not, you’re stuck.
November 6th, 2007 at 1:11 am
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