Archive for February, 2008
I hinted in an earlier blog to my grievances at the current mobile data charges in the UK. Vodafone’s bundle is for 120Mb, but at least they stopped calling it fair usage over the Christmas period and started being more up front with it as a real cap before your incur further charges. I was initially trying to resist Vodafone because of the mobile internet allowances, preferring T-Mobile who were coming in with a 1Gb fair usage policy on their standard Web’n'Walk package (which did actually seem fair), or maybe 3 with with the same 1Gb cap, but Vodafone have done well and got exclusive deals on many good phones, including the Nokia E61i – the one I wanted. O2 are scraping in with 200Mb fair usage policy. comparable to that of Vodafone, but it’s Orange who really come out worst out of the bunch, coming in with 25Mb – “The Offer is subject to a fair usage level of 25Mb per day and is not to be used for other activities such as, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video.” – not sure how that can be considered as fair.
I circumnavigate the data charges by saving on my excessive usage when I’m in range of one of my favourite wifi hotspots. Hopefully the area of mobile internet charges will go through some competitive pressure and, fingers crossed, see some changes over 2008. I’m sure it’s dampening peoples desires to access more creative mobile services, although until there’s something to apply the pressure I don’t see why the MNOs would change their strategy, especially when each operator is happy to encourage customers to use their own web services at a more attractive data rate. Widespread Wimax usage is several years off in the UK whilst we wait for the analogue broadcast signals to be switched off. Maybe initiatives like Wippies (the wireless hippies) who are providing communal wifi hoping – will add some fun to the mix. I also wonder how many people in the UK actually are influenced by the data charges package when they sign up for a contract, it probably is still only a small (but growing) percentage
In the meantime we’ll hear more stories like Ian Simpson ringing up £27K data charges in a month or a MoMo group member (and Blackberry user) who got a bill for £600 in a month for using the wrong APN.
This is something that has been written about many, many times already, but I have to vent my frustations!
I have just been trying to look at a planning application on the Gloucestershire County Council website. I use Linux so also use Firefox to browse (although, even if I was on another OS, why use anything different?). Most of the site works OK with Firefox, but there is a section I need to get to to view some documents. I click the button and get a 404.
Predictably, calling the council helpline puts me in touch with someone with less computer knowledge than your average family pet, who informs me that I need to reboot (!!) and then enable popups. I didn’t bother continuing that particular conversation.
A quick look at the page source revealed hardly any HTML but mostly Javascript – bet this has been coded for IE I thought.
Only way to check was to relunctantly fire up IE using the excellent IE for Linux package. Sure enough, the page worked. Looking through the help on the site, it says that the site is best viewed with IE 5.5 (!!) or later.
Why, in this day and age, is this still happening – why are people coding for one browser only – is this laziness, corporate blindness or does someone really think IE 5.5 is a decent piece of software?
Even more frustrating in this case is that the software has been paid for using various taxes that I have paid and I should be able to view the site on a browser of my choice.
This problem, continuing to occur in the relatively mature desktop browser environment, is only going to get worse with the vast variety of mobile devices that are on the market. If people would stick to the standards and not invent their own then at least we would only have to deal with browser bugs instead of shoe horning sites into different standards.
There, that feels better – rant over.