Some Random Moblog

I’m a big fan of wireless internet. It always reminds me of the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and when a pocket sized device can not just access pretty much any website, but instantly play Internet radio, stream YouTube videos and basically “contain” everything on the Internet… Well, it’s brilliant.

But I also love the fact that it takes away your dependance on the phone network.

A few months ago, this was really useful to me when I was in Ireland. Having debated endlessly with my wife (literally until the bags were coming off the carousel) about whether we were going to hire a car or get taxis everywhere and enjoy the Guinness, we found that at the car rental desks that the only ones available were big BMWs and Mercedes (far too big and expensive for our uses.) But there are a few desks at Cork airport that only rent cars that are pre-booked.

So, thanks to the nearby Starbucks wifi, I went online, “pre-booked” a car, then went back to the desk to collect the keys. And, presumably because they not only failed to anticipate that customers might have mobile Internet access, we booked a small car that they didn’t actually have and got a free upgrade to a huge 7-seater 4×4. All without having to pay the extortionate costs for using data on an overseas network.

There’s a lesson here about being prepared for customers who have mobile Internet access, but I’m not going to go into that right now. Because right now, following some impressively rubbish customer service from O2 (long story), I am angry about being without data services until I pay the remainder of a bill which, for reasons as yet unbeknown to me, O2 decided not to take from my direct debit today. (They didn’t tell me that they were going to cut this service off- even when I called earlier on to ask why they hadnt taken the full amount as a payment, and was told that nothing would be done for 7 days. No, I only found out after sending an email to ask why I couldn’t connect to the Internet.)

This is just the latest on a series of irritating blunders by O2 since getting my iPhone. I’ve had my phone cut off without warning twice, following an attempted direct debit on the wrong date (I assume that my complaint is the only reason my phone line hasn’t been cut off again this time- even though my complaint was about the lack of communication before cutting off my services…) This is from a company that were happy to cold call me while I was on holiday in South Africa to try to sell me their home broadband services, and then charge me for receiving the call.

It annoys me that when you’re roaming you can access any network, but in your home country, only a quarter of the available signals are open to you. There’s no fallback if you’re out of signal- or if your network cuts you off in error. No using Vodafones 3G signal when only 2G is available on O2. No using T-Mobile when nothing else has coverage. (And we wonder why we can’t get the high headline speeds that we’re promised with four networks doing the same job as each other, but pretending that the other three don’t exist. Maybe the 4G spectrum auction will deal with this inefficiency, but I doubt it.)

But thanks to wifi, I can still use my phone to go online and post this rant to my blog. (Faster than 3G as well.) I can also use a VOIP application to make phone calls for far less than the network charges me.

Magic.