I’ve been hanging out in Starbucks some mornings recently whilst Madam #1 goes to nursery. I’ve actually found 3G to be quite a satisfactory substitute for WiFi. I haven’t tried doing a Skype call over 3G, maybe soon. But otherwise it’s quick enough and pretty reliable.
My data usage comes to about 10-12Mb for 2 hours, so there’s little chance of busting the 3Gb monthly limit. At my old provider’s rate of £4/Mb, I’d need a second job to pay for the connectivity.
Next week I’m on holiday. What’s peculiar is that T-Mobile will lose 100% of my business in the process. Rather than do data roaming abroad, I’ve got myself an apartment to stay in that has WiFi.
If you were following an aggressive “pipe” strategy, you’d try to bid for my business. As soon as I landed on a roaming network, T-Mobile could pitch me via a text message some bundled plans (say €50 for a week’s unlimited access) with “click here” activation. Better to get something than nothing. The secret sauce of making money from dumb pipes is to actually try selling one.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 03:51 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Martin,
If you want to make your mobile data go further (and perhaps speed up your browsing, depending on your upstream speed at home), try installing Rabbit proxy (http://www.khelekore.org/rabbit/) on your home machine. It's a compressing proxy that I use for the same purpose with my (paltry 200mb) Data plan here in Oz.
LG
Posted by: at January 27, 2007 12:49 AMVoIP over 3G UMTS has too much latency. Over the North American 3G (EV-DO) it is fine. And those in NA have unlimited reasonably priced data plans that go Coast to Coast. Whereas us in Europe step outside our "home" country (some smaller than many US States) and bang, the arse is being ripped out our pockets.
Posted by: at January 27, 2007 09:30 PMMartin, Skype seems to run at about a MB a minute when I try it on 3G.
Posted by: at February 27, 2007 02:42 PM