Mobile Blogger

Frustrations When Choosing a Mobile Provider For Business In Ireland

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:22:13 +0000

We've been with Vodafone Ireland for our company mobiles for several years. While we don't have any serious issues with Vodafone it's only natural that we would assess the other providers' options to see if we can save money and / or get better services.

So what are the options?

The main mobile phone companies in Ireland at present are:

Vodafone
O2
Three
Meteor

We spoke to representatives from the three main companies, so any information we have (accurate or otherwise) was supplied by them.

Vodafone:
We discovered that they had taken the liberty of adding on some extras to our account that we didn't need but were still expected to pay for.
They've also got a really annoying way of handling roaming charges. In order to avail of lower rates when abroad you seem to be lumbered with an "addon" all year round even if you're not using it. Unfortunately the way they handle the billing cycles means that anything you add or remove won't have immediate effect until the next billing cycle, which is really annoying.

Vodafone's main weakness from our perspective is data. They seem to be incapable of selling us a data bundle that we can use for the pool, but expect us to buy data plans per phone. Since our data usage fluctuates we'd end up either buying data bundles we don't need or paying excessive overages

Three
Three Ireland have a few business plans, but they are totally inflexible. While the other operators do not care how many handsets you have on your plan, Three force you to upgrade depending on the number of handsets you need regardless of the number of minutes you use.

This is very annoying.

We currently have 12 or 13 handsets, however only 4 of them are assigned to specific members of staff. The others are "pool" phones which we use for any calls being made to mobile phones.
With Three's restrictions this would force us to opt for their most expensive call plan: Business Sharer 3000 which costs EUR290 a month plus an extra EUR10 per handset.
While the plan may offer plenty of minutes etc., it is completely at odds with our usage and would cost us practically double what we should be spending. If they removed the restriction on the number of phones on the plan we could easily move to one of the lower priced plans and upgrade if needed.

O2

So far we've had two representatives from O2 come out to sell us services. Why two? Well the first one didn't even understand what O2 was offering nor could he come to grips with our usage, so we were going to simply tell O2 to get lost when they sent us someone else who actually understood their products ....

In any case O2's offerings are quite attractive in most respects.
Unlike Vodafone it seems to be relatively easy to switch stuff around as needed, though we still aren't 100% sure if the savings we might make are enough to switch provider.
The one big weak area is the iPhone.
While the other providers are more than happy to sell you pretty much any phone you like on a business plan, O2 will not let you put iPhones on a business plan. This is incredibly annoying and could be the one reason why we wouldn't switch to them.

We haven't spoken to Meteor as yet and I'm not sure if we will, as their network coverage can be quite flaky (or at least it used to be!)

So in summary:
Three - their pricing plans are too inflexible, so they are not an option
O2 - Looking good, but the iPhone (or lack of) could be a deal breaker
Vodafone - Data is the main issue

Star Wars The Force Unleashed

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:15:19 +0000

If you want to get your hands on a copy of Star Wars The Force Unleashed head over to FilmReviews.ie where there is a free giveaway

LG Getting Hip With Iron Man Tie In

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:00:47 +0000

LG's Iron Man tie-in site is a Flash heavy environment that you can easily spend a few minutes exploring (on a PC!)

For the movie fans there's all the usual stuff, including desktop wallpapers, photos and videos. While the gadget freaks will probably get a kick out of exploring some of LG's latest phone models.

The site is firmly aimed at the US market (I found it via an ad in Wired magazine), but they'll probably be making a play in the European market as well

Mobile Metrics Report From Advertising

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:58:11 +0000

Admob have released their first report on mobile handset data / usage.

The company describes the report as:

AdMob Mobile Metrics is a new report with market level data. This initial report covers the month of September and includes manufacturer, device and country-specific data on AdMob's top four markets by impressions served: US, UK, India and South Africa.

There's no specific data for many of the European countries, but hopefully this information will be forthcoming as the levels of traffic and the number of publishers increases

You can download the report (in PDF) from their site

Mobile Monday

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:51:47 +0000

If you're interested in the mobile web, then you should pop along to Mobile Monday on September 24th in Dublin.

It looks like it could be an interesting event

Nokia E70 Compared and Reviewed

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:45:16 +0000

Niall has posted a review of his new Nokia E70

Charging Your Phone Everywhere

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:08:21 +0000

One of the things I hate about travelling is remembering to bring all the adaptors for the various devices that I need to carry with me. Over time the number of devices I'm carrying seems to have gone up and so it's increasingly complicated remembering to bring all the right leads.

The Genesis might be the solution to this kind of problem:

With adapters for the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA included in the pack, along with an in-car adapter, you will be able to charge your mobile device anywhere in the world. Simply use the compatible nib with the adapter relevant to the part of the world you are in.

Nokia Marketing Makes Odd Decisions

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:45:53 +0000

I love my Nokia. I have owned other brand phones in the past, but I always end up coming back to Nokia.
Of course I'm based in Europe where Nokia has a very strong position in the market.

According to a post by mobilejones Nokia will be launching a new version of the N95 for the US market in London. Huh?
Why on earth would they launch a phone targetting the US market in a European city?

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

N95 Wins Award

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:34:16 +0000

Bernie Goldbach mentions that the Nokia N95 has won a European prize as best media phone.

Making Your Content Mobile with Widsets

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:10:00 +0000

I came across Widsets earlier today via Bernie's blog. I'm not sure exactly how I got from his site to it, but there must have been a link somewhere!

Being able to consume content while using a mobile phone is always an interesting challenge.

Google's Reader has a mobile version which works pretty well, but it defaults to showing you ALL the unread items in ALL the feeds you are subscribed to, which can be quite annoying. Some of the feeds I am subscribed to I only read from time to time. I want them there, but that doesn't mean I want to read each and every item, thank you very much.

The other thing that can drive you mad when using a mobile is that a lot of sites are really awkward to navigate on a small screen and the images etc., are not optimised for mobile users.
Yes - the N95 has a very nice browser and yes you can use complex websites with it. I've even managed to post to forums from it.

Widsets seems to be a service / solution to help users overcome these issues.

WidSets brings you information normally accessed via the Internet, directly into your mobile phone. Using mini-applications called widgets, it sends you updates made to your favorite websites. The system uses RSS feeds to push information from these websites directly into your mobile phone the minute theyre updated.

The system is compatible with a wide range of mobile phones and on registration you are sent an SMS with the url to download the application.

What's pretty nice about the system is that they allow you to create your own widsets (nice play on words!) and you can choose to display ones that are relevant to your location and interests.

For example, as I'm in Ireland I can easily find Irish content that interests me (I put a rudimentary widset for Blacknight online as a test!)

I'm going to play around with the system a bit over the next few days and see how good it is, but so far I like the concept and implementation - which is good!

Cool Mobile Sites?

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 02:00:23 +0000

Does anyone know of any cool / useful mobile sites?

Ever since I started using my N95 I'm finding myself trying to browse the web while watching TV or even lying in bed.

I mentioned elsewhere that I'd found a decent version of IMDB for mobile users, but what else is out there?

Extending Battery Life on the Nokia N95

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:05:15 +0000

If you search you will find quite a few tips on extending the battery life on the Nokia N95.

In common with so many of the "funky" phones that are a cross between mobile phone and computer (the N95 is a lot more powerful than my first PC!), the battery life is one of the device's weakest points.

Simple things that you can do include turning off options that you don't need such as WLAN scanning. If you need to connect to a wireless LAN all you have to do is double-click - there's no need to do a background scan every few seconds and eat up battery life.

Of course the simplest solution is to upgrade the battery!

If you headover to EBay you should find a number of vendors selling compatible batteries with matching backplates. The backplate is essential as the longer life batteries are physically thicker than the standard one that ships with the phone.

Needless to say Nokia will not accept any responsibility if you use a non-Nokia battery, but I'm yet to hear of anybody reporting serious issues.

Lifeblog post

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:16:56 +0000

mt_20070814_001550137.txt

Fun things to do with your n95

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:05:27 +0000

I posted a brief review of the n95 the other day.

At the time I wrote my review I hadn't had time to fully explore the functions of my "new toy", but I've had some time to play with it since then.

It is a fun gadget to play with!

So what can you use it for?

So far I've:

worked out the route from my house to a shop in a nearby town
pre-ordered a DVD from Amazon using their mobile site
downloaded a few podcasts
read some blog feeds using Google Reader's mobile interface
sent SMS (boring I know)
made phone calls - very boring, but essential!
downloaded some ringtones

What am I planning on doing?

I'm going to try to post a few blog entries to one of my movable type 4 blogs to see how well that works. I tried moblogging using my Nokia communicator previously, but it was a total disaster.

I will probably be using the device to ssh into servers etc., at some point, but I haven't got round to installing putty on it yet!

Takeup of .mobi in Ireland Low

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 13:46:40 +0000

Although the .mobi TLD is run by an Irish company the takeup of the new TLD among Irish users seems to be quite low. According to the latest statistics from WhoisIreland:

The uptake of the new .mobi extension has been relatively poor in Ireland. Currently there are only 136 .mobi domains on Irish hosters. The main factor in this slow uptake is the higher cost of .mobi domains. This seems to have deterred much of the speculation that dogged .eu ccTLD in the landrush period.

One of the other issues with .mobi could be related to practical usage. A lot of companies have done little to embrace mobile device support, so an actual TLD aimed at such users may have an uphill battle.