3 comments

• 

  Jonathan Quirk

  11 months ago

  I use the Nokia podcasting app with my E61i. The crucial thing is that the E61i has WiFi. I use my home internet connection to get my podcasts onto my phone: additional cost: £0.00.
  
  £5/month for 1GB seems good but that works out at 34.1 MB/day. I'd burst that limit easily with my current listening habits.
  
  I need the E71 with its FM radio; then I can go back to listening to Radio2!
  reply
• 

  bitflung

  11 months ago

  NNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
  this creates the 'walled garden' currently STANDARD IN USA and it is EXTREMELY BAD!
  
  i have a nokia N95 at my disposal, so i'm lucky - it's not AT&T branded and not even offered by them. but look at what they do with the cost of services on the devices they offer:
  
  i pay $15/mo for unlimited data. AT&T assumes i'm using an antiquated piece of crap, because it's not one of their recent offerings - they don't know it but i use VoIP, email, web, etc... in fact i have raw TCP connection happening all the time. Nokia Maps, A-GPS, Worldmate Flight Alerts, Earthcomber, IMAP IDLE based pseudo-push email, EVERYTHING WORKS. they don't want this to happen. they would get more money from me if i paid:
  
  - $30/mo unlimited 'full' internet
  
  - $20/mo for GPS usage. yeah, thats right AT&T Navigator costs $20/mo. ridiculous, yes?
  
  - $30 MORE per month for tethering (which i do on my n95, and can even log into my work's IPSEC VPN). right, so if i want 'unlimited' internet from above, thats only to be used on the phone. buy a package that includes tethering and i'm charged for anything over 5GB of usage... and i'm also going to pay $60-65 instead of $30-35. (why the 'maybe' on the last $5 for each option? if it's DATA ONLY you pay $5 extra, add data to voice and you avoid this).
  
  so, my CURRENT AT&T PLAN, which is outside the scope of their intended use for my plan, costs me:
  $40/mo voice + $15/mo data + $5/mo text-messaging = $60/mo TOTAL.
  
  to do the same thing using their walled-garden approach?
  $40/mo voice + $60/mo data + $5/mo text + $20/mo GPS = $125/mo TOTAL
  
  more than 2x the cost!!!!! and why? because the corporate execs found that if a user is willing to pay for individual access to service A and service B, then as you increase the cost of each service you find a maximum they'll pay for THAT ONE SERVICE and that's the 'right' price for it. there is no incentive for them to make it easier for users to get these services at a lesser cost.
  
  WALLED-GARDEN = MORE EXPENSIVE
  and per-service based fees creates a walled-garden out of necessity.
  
  please PLEASE don't encourage your mobile networks to do this. this is the fundamental reason why the USA has such crap phones and crap usage of good phones even when they are made available.
  
  ----------
  
  on a side note: i paid about $140 for 3 years of navigation on my N95. that's a one-time fee that i didn't include above. round up to $150, thats $50/year or about $4/month you can add to my current $60/mo AT&T service rates... and their 'legitimate' alternative is STILL 2x more expensive. the post was long, i didn't want to clutter things up above... but for honesty's sake i've added it here.
  
  -bit
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• 

  Malcolm Murphy

  11 months ago

  I see the point, but I'm not advocating walled gardens again - they won't work either.
  
  The key things in my idea, which maybe I should have been more explicit about:
  1. The per-application price is a fraction of the current flat rate price
  2. It's "proper" internet.
  
  The problem I'm trying to address is that even 5ukp a month is a hurdle that some users aren't able to jump right now. PAYG users have it worse of course...
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