Terry Howard

Personal blog of Terry Howard, guy from Orlando, Florida that likes fishing, literature, technology and saying what's on his mind.

Terry Howard
Orlando, Florida

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"The Cell"

Posted by Terry Howard @ 8/28/2006

I went to check out my cellular plans options for internet access to see if the pricing for this has regained any form of reason and I was dissappointed, of course. It seems sad to me that myself, and many other cellular customers I know are not using a good portion of their phones' best features due to the out of control prices for cellular internet access. I would love to use my phone for checking and sending email, looking at the web, getting driving directions, or even using a secure shell to manage servers from the command line from where ever I may be (nerd alert!). All that is 100% possible and easy with most free phones you get today with your service. The problem is the phone companies have all decided that the pricing on that needs to remain out of touch with the quality and level of service. Most cell services charge per kb for net access when it's slow and unreliable, a pricing structure and approach that would be impossible to replicate for any other form of net access; cable, DSL, satellite, etc... Per kb? Are you kidding me? And the part that really gets me is they try to package this up like a big gift to you in their literature:

Plus, you don't pay for the time you use the service, just for the amount of data you send and receive. Out of bucket usage billed at $0.01 / kb.

Oh really? Can I please pay for just the amount of data I send and receive? I really hate not having the hassle of wondering whether I can load a particular site because I'm close to my kb limit! Yes, calculating my internet use daily to avoid getting screwed over by highly ramped up overage fees is exactly what I've been looking for! This is your cell company saying, "We think you're an idiot, and we want to take advantage of that as much as possible!" And hey, that's their right to exploit under capitalism. However, it's also the consumers right to slap that stuff down by not buying these garbage rates and recognizing their blatantly out of whack pricing.

To put that in perspective, the famously sparse Google search homepage, nothing but an html file and 2 graphics is 11 MB to load. That's 11 cents to just load Google if you were over your monthly limit, which you would be if you had any plan but the unlimited. Think how much loading a search result would cost you, or a single result in that list!

So under the most basic 1MB a month plan, loading Google would cost you the $5 plus 10 MB in overages, or $5.10. Using the 5MB mid range plan would mean you get to pay $15.06! Hmm, looks like the value is going the wrong way! So the mid range plan really just ensures nothing but the phone company will at least get $15 extra out of you each month as you get to look at, what, a few WAP mobiles pages before you're maxed? Heck, a couple ring tones would finish that off. There is nothing "service" about that service plan.

So this brings us to the UNLIMITED plan! What could be better than unlimited access, why even bother with those other plans, you actually use the internet, those other plans are for idiots and dullards who don't know how to deal with technical things. So it's time to step up to this awesome plan! Your choices are the basic $20 a month or $30 a month depending on how many text message you want to receive.

Why do you need text messages? You've got AIM and email built right into your phone, right? Well, how are you going to get the phone companies text message ads? You obviously need this feature and if you run out we'll only charge you 10 CENTS per text message. The text message, by the way, is limited in how long it can be, 140 characters to be exact. 140 bytes for 10 cents on text messages or 1024 bytes for 1 cent online, that's a 7 to 512 advantage with online data over text messages. And note that I specifically asked to never receive text messages, I did not want to receive them on my phone but I was told this was not a feature they could block. I could either pay for a bulk amount of text messages I won't use once or be charged 10 cents for every time someone decided to text me, whether I wanted or asked for the feature or not.

So what do you get for $20, the minimum unlimited plan? I tried earnestly to get average numbers for speeds, but I found that searching Google for anything that has anything to do with cell phones is like asking to be served up every spam page every created. My cell service's site flat out ignores that question, as if "how fast is it?" isn't a frequently asked question. So, I can only go by my own previously experience, which is slow, slow, slow. And inconsistent. I've gotten hangs, drops, just spinning icons for minutes before giving up. I'd say it's dial-up quality at best, maybe like dial-up during a Florida lightning storm. I have a hard time paying twice as much as dial-up for sub par dial-up performance. If I pay $20 a month I should be able to get consistent useable speeds, enough that I can look at a web page with a reasonable page load wait.

So, after digesting all this previously I said, "screw it, maybe I'll just jump on the internet using my phone when at home." I have a mac, it has internet access sharing via bluetooth built in, my phone has bluetooth, problem semi-solved, right? Sure, as long as I can convince my cell company to give me the unlock code to my phone so I can enable that HARDWARE feature of the phone that I purchased (not a freebie). So these arrogant assholes have cut off functionality of the product they resell because that feature might remotely compete with an over priced offering of their own. It's my phone, I paid for it, my internet access I paid for once going over the Bluetooth in my house, what business is it of my cell phone company to stop that? Sure, I guess if the manufacturer is cool with you doing that, fine, but I think the truth in advertising laws should require you to slap a big ugly sticker on every box that states clearly that this product's features are crippled. I guarantee you I would not have bought this phone had I known that my service would block my use of connecting to networks via bluetooth or dial-up access.

And so this is why I eagerly await the widespread implementation of wireless internet via WiFi to supplant the cellular systems. Sure, it would be another bill, but then that opens up a world of possibilities for endless entries into the VOIP arena and wonderful wonderful competition that will drive the prices of service down while the quality higher. Maybe then I can afford to actually use my phone as the tool I always wanted it to be.

Terry Howard

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"The Cell"

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