Quack

A big splash for Telstra’s 6 months to Dec 2006 results. The spin doctors were at their best talking up the NextG network, now with speeds of “up to” 500 billion Gb, and trying to get the broader population of Australia on their side in the battle against the evil regulator (not that they really have an influence).

I wanted to comment on a few little details within the report that affect the service provider community. (more…)

Despite what anyone tells you, your view of mobile phone coverage is an extremely subjective thing. Whether it’s Telstra with 98% of the population covered, 90%+ of the geographic coverage, or Optus spending several hundred million to increase just 2 percentage points in their own coverage, what actually affects you (and me) most is that nasty blackspot that you pass by every day or so. (more…)

The next generation of coverage, speed, services has brought us the next generation of mobile phone plans. No, the odd characters in the title are not shorthand for me swearing, but rather the mandatory footnote tags that appear in every single (mobile) phone advertisement you will see, referring you to the all important information in the footnotes. The beloved asterisk, dagger, caret, and pound symbol are essential qualifiers these days to what used to be simple words like “plan”, “fee”, “anytime”. Don’t you pine for the days when “anytime” actually meant “any time”?

The early days of mobile phone billing brought us my favourite item in the smoke-and-mirrors toolchest: 30-second billing. (more…)