And as if by Magic...

We're back!

Yes yes - we know - it's been...
*checks calendar* ...ooo blimmin' eck!

...it's been over a month since the last post...
(really? that long? Wow)

Things have been a bit crazy here at Refresh Towers of late - what with uber brand new projects being created (shh - more on that soon)

Eyemags achieving one million downloads...

Vodafone breaking Mobizine downloads...

The launch of our first National Newspaper Mobizine...

...and that's just the tip of the iceberg!
But no fear - we're back and as strong as ever.

Anyway - it's all a lot to take in so let's tackle it one thing (and one post) at a time....

First off - Vodafone.

You may've read recently (ooo - say about a month ago?) that Vodafone's new 'mobile internet' complete messed up Mobizines for any Vodafone user who tried to download the service.
Well - you'll be please to hear that it has now all been fixed.
Voda have since apologised (to everyone - wasn't just us this affected) and we can all live happily ever after!

If you're still not sure you have the correct version of Mobizines - drop an email to help@mobizines.com along with your phone number plus make and model of handset and we can check it out for you.

We'll be back later in the week with more on all of the above - and we mean it this time!


Stay Tuned!

Vod - aaargh - fone

BREAKING NEWS FOR ANY BRAND NEW MOBIZINE USERS ON THE VODAFONE NETWORK

If you are on the Vodafone UK network and have attempted to download the Mobizines service since June 4th 2007, you may not have the correct version.

If you tried to install and you saw a message that starts with the following text:

"Your handset may be capable of receiving this service but we have not yet tested it and cannot guarantee the quality of the service you will receive..."

First:
Check to see if your phone is on our supported handset list -
If it is supported and you still saw the above text then there is a very high chance that you may not have the right version of Mobizines.
This strongly applies to anyone using a QVGA and/or Symbian phone... (N95 users take note!)

Please email us at help@mobizines.com along with your phone model and mobile number and we will endeavour to get you fixed and up and running ASAP.

Our people are talking to Vodafone's people RIGHT NOW and we will hopefully have this problem solved as soon as possible.

More news as we get it...


EDIT:
Our friends at smstextnews have a reasonably good explanation of it all here.

More on Canadian data costs

Google Spreadsheet of the price of data in Canada (and some other places).

Note that Rogers Telecom helpfully multiplies your costs by 6 if you wander into that big country south of the 49th parallel, taking you from 0.5 cents a kilobyte (yes, kilobyte: I've seen phones that send more than two kilobytes in request headers alone) to 3 cents.

Putting it in a Google Spreadsheet is a really cool and powerful way of demonstrating how twisted data prices are, so top marks to Thomas Purves for putting it up as a part of his post reported on here.

We'd like to expand on that so - I'm trying to put together a "best deal" spreadsheet in Google.
But modelling it is evil.

Cost is the thing we get asked about most of all, and its a really thorny issue to crack, largely because the mobile operators go out of their way to make it as hard to compare as possible.

In the UK alone, for example, you have operators that operate tariffs with a daily cap and an excess, (eg, Vodafone will charge you a pound each day you go online, so long as you use less than 15Mb of data, with a £2 surcharge for each megabyte over the 15Mb), operators who charge per service (eg, Three) and operators who charge a flat rate for all you can eat so long as you don't take the mickey, (T-Mobile, ray!).

Unfortunately, that's usually only one tariff in a portfolio of tariffs so, for example, T-Mobile's pay as you go offering looks a lot like Vodafone's, with a daily surchage, and Three also offer flat-rate pricing via X-Series.

Why's it so difficult to compare? The argument goes that if users were able to compare easily between mobile tariffs (and data's only one part of that) they...gosh!... would move to operators that offered better prices, thus increasing churn and starting a price war. I used to work for a small web agency that did some consulting work for a large airline. One of the ideas we came up with as a sales promotion was the concept of the Isoquid. The idea was to draw lines on a map of the world showing how far £200 would take you by air, so that if you did happen to have exactly that sum of money in your pocket you'd be able to book a ticket from the interface we designed. The idea was turned down because it showed all too graphically how European flights were artficially expensive compared with flights to the US. The £200 that got you to New York would drop you somewhere short of Geneva. (Bear in mind this is before the budget airlines really kicked off.)

On top of that confusion the amount of data that you use reading Mobizines (which are free from us to you, except for Three users, and the three quid a month is a bloody good deal) depends on the number of titles you have and the type of title.

Take the example of someone who only subscribes to Sudoku, (it's okay, we still love you, but you're missing out on a world of fun). The Java client version of Sudoku, which is one of the most popular downloads we have at GetJar, is 168 bytes to update. That's right, you can fit it in one line of BBC Basic. Refresh to get a new puzzle daily and Vodafone's new pricing means you'll end up paying £30.

On the other hand someone with subscriptions to Evo and Monkey (say) which are 225 times more data will only pay four quid because they only update on a Wednesday.

So while we hear your requests for a simple way to calculate how much subscribing to a Mobizine is going to cost, it's extremely hard to build up the comparisons without ending up with something that looks like a City trader's desktop. We're working on clarifying the proposition (or make things simple, in English) so watch this space.

So why does a gigabyte of data cost £20 in New Zealand and £2908 in Canada?

The polite answer is that New Zealand has a more competitive market than other territories. The impolite answer is that the operators are petrified of ending up competing on raw price as simple ISPs so they're very very gently deflating costs.

Eventually they will be bit pipes and you'll be able to choose whether you want to use the add-on voice service from your mobile operator or just stick with your Skype subscription but it's gonna be a long time coming. (And perhaps the wifi providers will eat their lunch while the telcos are still trying to decide which wine goes with Sea Bream.) In the meantime expect a very distorted market.

Oh and all of the above and the fact that the regulatory authorities have enough on their hands dealing with things like cutting voice roaming costs to worry about data yet...

What's in yours?

Got an N95?
I have. So has Richie.
Rich got his from T-Mobile.
I got mine from Vodafone.

Let's have a quick comparison, shall we?

Two sections: Box & Handset

In the box for T-Mobile:

• Handset (obviously)
  
• Mains Charger
  
• TV-Out Cable
• Hands-Free Kit
• Mini-USB Cable

So that's what Rich got.
Me and my Vodafone package?
Well I got all of the above PLUS the following:

• In-Car Charger
• 512mb MicroSD Memory Card + SD Adaptor
• CA-44 Adaptor (the thing that changes old Nokia charges to new ones - you know the one)

First round to me then... er...I mean Vodafone.

Ok - moving on - What about on the handset?

T-Mobile - Rich got LOADSA stuff!
Vodafone - I got LOADSA stuff too! Except...

I'm missing my Internet Telephony Settings - (just like the Orange variant).
Boo.
Not only that but also on Richie's download app - he gets cool stuff like:
System Rush, EA Games, Gizmo VOIP...
What do I get?

Snakes.
SNAKES!

No matter how many times I refresh - ALL I GET IS SNAKES!
Nice.

T-Mobile (Richie) wins that round then!

Conclusion? It's a draw*.
If you want loads of accessories and stuff (and you don't mind missing out on a few features) then get your N95 from VFUK.
If you want access to all of your N95 features & software (and are quite happy to purchase your own accessories) then get your N95 from T-Mobile.

Happy shopping!
Obviously we haven't checked Orange and/or 3 - so if you have this handset on either of these networks - let us know what you have and haven't got!

*On this note - Rich thinks that ultimately I'll win as I kind of have a bit of a reputation for flashing the odd phone or two... ahem.

PAYG or FAYG?

Are you Pay As You Go or are you Fleeced As You Go?

That is the question...

We all know the Mobizines Service is Free right? RIGHT?!
Right.
And we all know that the operators are very slowly coming round to the idea that we might not want to pay through the nose for our data charges, right? RIGHT?!

And although some people take issue with this - at least the operators are trying...
They are trying right? RIGHT?!

WRONG!!!

I get in this morning and start my usual 'pre-work blogroll browse' and thanks to the lovely Technokitten...

(whom I also happened to meet at a mobilistic soiree last week - cheers lass)

...I have now been enlightened to the world of PAYG Data Charges.
To use a common web phrase... OMG!

Vodafone seems to be leading the way with a whopping £7.50 per mb!

That's insane!
Almost as bad as their (current) contract prices!
But hey - it could be worse...

You could be paying for mobile data in Canada, OUCH!
Now THAT hurts.
(thanks to Ewan @ smstextnews for that one)

Edit: I've just been told off for being too negative - I'm going to go and do some research on PAYG prices - see if I can find the best offering.
Not just the worst.
BBS.

Not all that quickly though

Maths-phobes look away now.

Something about James' post struck me as a little odd. Not anything James said, but the quote from Voda: "Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

Huh? How does that work out? If 1Mb equals £2.35 before the change, and 15mb equals £1 now then actually you get 35 times as much data per pound! (35.25 to be precise).

No wonder it's taking the mobile operators so long to figure out that flat, or at least predictable, data tariffs are what we want. They can't even work out the basic maths in their pricing models.

Incidentally, that comparison above is only valid for the 15Mb you get for a pound. Stray over the 15Mb and Voda will charge you £2 a megabyte. For £2.35 you get 15.675 megabytes. Put another way that means you only get 15.675 times as much data for the same price as before not 30 times.

The thirty times statement comes from the proposition that you are paying for the first 0.5Mb of use per day and the other 14.5Mb are free. This is what's know in the trade as a bit of a strange 'un, rather like buying a chassis and getting the rest of the car for free. You can't buy a smaller bundle than the 15Mb offer, so the actual price of the thing is a pound for 15 megs however it's presented.

Slowly but surely...

The operators are coming round to the idea that not all of us want to pay hideous fees for our data! As you can see here, the Mobizines service is FREE(ish). However - with some network operators it can cost you an awful lot of cash for that little thing we like to call Data.
As one of the lass' here at Refresh Towers used to say:

"Mobizines! Getta Bitta Data on ya Dog! Innit?!"

The T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk is clearly leading the way with their 'all you can eat' tariff. That combined with Three's X-Series demonstrates that very soon, draconian data download charges will be a thing of the past.

Good news today (well - ish) - Vodafone have just announced some of their plans for their data strategy...

The link is embedded up there ^ but for those of you who just want the meat - the site says:

"Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

It's not exactly the tidal wave of change we were hoping for but it's a step in the right direction (if only a little one).

To be fair to the guys at VF - they do allude to a monthly web browsing package but unfortunately give no details.

So we wait...