3 UK (Hutchison 3G) to finally start offering the iPhone in the UK

Leave a Reply

3 UK, the network which claims to have the best 3G coverage in the UK, has recently announced that it will start offering the iPhone 4 from June 24th.

There’s no news on pricing as yet, but 3 have said that they’re aiming to announce tariffs on June 15th.

I’m personally very pleased with the idea. Despite the fact that I left 3 earlier this year, it’s good that 3 are finally offering one of the most popular smartphones around. And it could be perfect time, as O2 are cutting their mobile internet down later this month, coinciding with the iPhone 4 launch.

With their extensive 3G coverage in the UK, this could see a lot of customers moving from other networks to 3 for the brand new iPhone, which claims to have a bucket-load of new features that will interest a wide range of smartphone users.

O2 cuts unlimited internet on it’s mobile tariffs – is that such a bad thing?

Leave a Reply

It has recently been announced that as of June 24th, O2 will no longer be offering unlimited internet to it’s new and upgrading customers. The move has shocked many, but O2 has said that too many people use the network abusively and as a result they have been forced to take action.

O2 has mentioned in it’s press release that the changes will only affect about 3% of it’s customers who use the network excessively. The remaining 97% will not be affected as O2 claims that even the lowest internet package, providing 500MB per month, is more than 2.5 times the average monthly user usage.

Customers currently on contracts with O2 will continue to receive unlimited data until 1st October, but will have to watch for changes to their contract over the next few months to make sure they don’t receive horrendous charges.

The question is whether other networks will follow suit. Orange currently offers “unlimited” internet packages, but hidden in the FUP are limits restricting customers. As usual, Orange has forgotten the meaning of unlimited. Vodafone is slightly clearer, offering fixed plans with fixed usage limits.

It is also worth thinking about whether O2’s increasingly popular MVNO, giffgaff, will follow suit. The network announced today that they have no plans to change their unlimited internet offers with their goodybags, but stated that they couldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t change in the future.

Personally, I don’t think the news is all that bad – as customers will finally get a clear idea of what they can use each month in terms of data, but time will tell as to whether customers agree to the changes.

Mobile broadband data needs to get cheaper (on pay as you go)

Leave a Reply

Despite loving mobile broadband, I have to say that the cost of maintaining it is still very high. Even with 3’s very competitive rates, it is still very expensive. At £10 per single GB, that’s a very high rate. Of course, you can get multiple GBs at cheaper rates, but you still have the annoying 30 day limit with most networks. If you don’t use the data within 30 days, you loose it.

Mobile broadband has been around a fair old while now. It took off when networks starting giving birth to 3.5G services (or HSDPA) which offered speeds that were comparable to home broadband speeds. The USB dongle brought easy connectivity to the mobile networks, whilst in more recent months the Mi-Fi dongle has made mobile internet much more convenient.

I really do think it’s about time mobile networks started offering cheaper data rates for mobile broadband. The cost of providing bandwidth is falling and networks should start passing these savings onto customers.

Skype over 3G with iPhone brings free calls – for now

Leave a Reply

Skype has recently introduced a new update for Skype on iPhone which introduces brand new calls over 3G. Previously, all calls had to be made over wi-fi.

The new update means that, for the time being, iPhone users can make free (or very cheap) calls to other Skype users as long as they have sufficient data allowances.

However, the use of the new feature is only available at no charge until the end of 2010. After New Year, Skype have said that they will introduce a small charge for the service, but the specific cost has not yet been confirmed.

In the mean time, if you have an iPhone, go make some calls over Skype. It could save you a lot of minutes on your contract.

Chrome 5.0 brings host of new features

3 Replies

Google today released their latest version of the growing web browser, Chrome. The new version includes a large range of new features.

I’m very pleased to know that Chrome now synchronises browser settings, as well as bookmarks, to the syncing server. This means that when you use Chrome on multiple computers, you take your whole browser with you. Nice touch.

There’s also a really nice selection of HTML functions – including drag and drop (ie you can drag your Gmail attachments to your Documents folder).

In addition, great news for Mac and Linux users – Chrome 5.0 is a stable version! It’s about time!

Oh and finally, Google have set that from the next release of Adobe Flash (10.1), they are planning to automatically include a full compatible version of Flash with Chrome every time it is installed. That way, if you don’t already have it, Google will automatically install it for you when you install Chrome.

Head to google.com/chrome for the new version, or upgrade automatically from your browser!