Molecularist

All right. I’m an now fully in the camp of ‘WTF are the operators thinking?’.

A few years back, I was uploading a few videos and it kept failing, since the network was not happy I was sending something huge upstream. When I realized that I was repeatedly uploading a large file, I knew that the bill would be high. And it was.

But, i knew what I was doing.

Well, recently I was doing some research. I handed one of our devices that had WiFi to a 20-something who was really into music and the Web. I told here that it had WiFi and she was all excited.

Later that day, she proudly showed me some free songs she downloaded off the Web.

I commended her in figuring it all out.

Well, a few days later, I notice that she was not using the WiFi, but the 3G connection.

Ugh.

The 3G connection’s access point happens to be called ‘Internet’, so she thought it was all fine.

When I showed her how many Mb of data she had consumed and explained the cost of data, she went pale.

She didn’t know she was doing anything that would cost her an arm and a leg. She thought she was using the WiFI (it said ‘Internet’). The phone made it so easy to connect.

Ugh.

We promptly deleted all 3G access points.

Yeah, I’ve been touting mobile access to the Web for a long time. I’ve always known cost was an issue. But, WTF? It feels like a scam.

It’s hard to find anyone who actually uses the mobile operator to access the Internet (if they are paying for it themselves). At least to the extent they use the desktop Web. And, couple that with oases of WiFi access and no one will use the mobile operator once WiFi really comes to mobile devices.

It’s bullshitake, if anyone tries to compare WiFi and 3G network coverage. It doesn’t matter. On the one hand, you pay a boat load for a few megs of data. On the other hand, you need to wait a bit until you get to the next WiFi oasis to have megs and megs of cheap access. WiFi oases are everywhere.

Yeah, I think flat-rate 3G data will help. But, I think the operators have missed an opportunity to get folks used to using the mobile network. WiFi operators have trained the users first, and will be hard to dislodge.

Ok, so I am sure most of you have said this a hundred times. And I have agreed, for the most part, a hundred times (I’ve called it the ‘dark underbelly’ of mobile services).

What’s different this time is that I have been able to put this in a much greater context. And it’s become a much more interesting story.