Category: Blog

All my cards on the table. I like the iPhone. There is a lot of like – it is sleek, has a myriad of apps, tonnes of functionality, is light, easy to navigate, and it’s cool.

But I also like the LG Arena, Samsung Omnia and Blackberry Pearl. However, for some reason they do not have the mystique around them that the iPhone does. There were no huge cues and resellers stores when any of these phones came on the market, nor were there pages of copy written about it, or mentions on the TV So why does this happen with iPhone? Easy. Two words – Steve Jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people like the iPhone because of him, but he is the master manipulator that gets us all excited when the new units comes out. He is the one that set the ball rolling when he came back on board in 1996 deciding that although the Mac was not the most popular computer platform, there was still a place for it in the tech mainstream.

So he set about looking for new, funky ways of using technology. Remember the first iMac that came out without a floppy drive? I was pretty angry at the time, but within a couple of months I was burning files to CD and using the CD drive. Jobs is a man of vision, and while I sometimes feel he creates unnecessary hype and over exaggerates the capabilities of his products, he certainly does keep his competitors on their toes and makes them try and out-do Apple.

Over the past five-ten years so many innovations have come out due to this competition, that in the end, we the consumers are the winners. So while I can get cynical about the Apple marketing campaign, I do realise there are benefits to be had.

As technology marches on, one of the casualties seems to be personal service, with tonnes of companies doing away with a real life person, and putting what I call a ‘cyber greeter’ on the phone.

Vodafone has Lara, a cyber greeter who asks you questions and depending on your answers, eventually puts you through to where you want to go. But there are problems with this, both from a personal and technology point of view.

For a start, there is the impersonal nature of it all. They are saying to me “while we want your money and custom, we can’t be bothered investing in a real, live person to meet your needs.” Second, from a technology stand point, in my experience, there are problems with the voice recognition technology not recognising what I am saying. This, in the past, has led to me getting through to the next stage after two or three attempts – and when there are a few stages, it can be very frustrating.. This would be solved if a real person was answering your call in the first place.

That aside, I have found a way to cheat and beat the system so you can get through to a real person a lot quicker. Make up gobbledegook! All you do is spout nonsense into the phone, and you will get “I’m sorry, I could not understand your answer, please try again” a couple of times, before the voice then defaults to “I’ll just put you through to someone who can help you out” mode. Maybe it’s not a perfect way to circumnavigate the system, but it beats wasting time trying to explain to inanimate object where you want to go.

I read an interesting story over the weekend about a recent survey that said that SMS, or texting, was the most popular form of communication. This doesn’t surprise me, as texting has become second nature to most of us.

What the survey did get me doing though, was thinking. How much, in real terms, does texting actually cost, and how much are the Telco’s making? I have heard through various sources and my own hunting around that the cost to the Telco’s of somebody sending a text message can be anywhere between a quarter of a cent, up to one cent, while they charge you a lot more depending on your plan. They would argue on unlimited plans, the more texts you make, the more value for money you get. But that isn’t the issue.

Can Telcos charge you a lot less and still make a lot of money? Telstra made $3.7 billion after tax last year, while Optus made $583 million. This, on face value, seems a little excessive and both Telcos could offer a little bit better deals in my opinion.

For an excellent article on how pricing works, and why Telcos don’t disclose the true cost, you should look at this American example of why Telcos appear to be making money from nothing. Computer science professor, Srinivasan Keshav from the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, explains it best when he says “…text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network..it doesn’t cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million.”

Do I believe Telco’s shouldn’t make money? Of course not. If they want to make money, then it’s up to them, but what they should do it be up front about costs, and charge a fair and reasonable price. The purpose of the company is to provide a dividend to shareholders – what interests me is; is that dividend bordering on usury with regard to what it costs customers to have the service?