Terrence, a regular SMS Text News reader (and Scrabble regional finalist) , decided to test the UK mobile retail market from the point of view of a standard customer wanting to buy a pay as you go handset. Fascinating results. Have a read…

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With all the talk of contract, tariffs, mobile browsing and cool new services, we often forget that the high street shop is the main point of interaction that customers have with their phone company.

So, I set myself a simple challenge. Go and buy a Sony Ericsson K800i on prepay from each of the major operators - Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Three and Vodafone.

So, what’s the buying experience like at the sharp end of phone retailing? Given that CarphoneWarehouse and Phones4U limit the number of handsets you can buy in one transaction, I decided to try the networks’ own stores in Central London…

Orange
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The two sales people were engaged with customers and chatting (fairly accurately) about the phones on offer. After five minutes of pointed browsing and trying to catch someone’s eye, I got bored and left.

Score: 0/10 maybe I’d have had better luck in a bigger store.

Three
- - -
Took a quick peek in their store. Was pounced on by an eager sales assistant’s, “Can I help you?”
“I’d like a K800i on prepay please.”
“Yes sir!”

…

…
Fifteen. Fricking. Minutes. Later…. It took four sales assistants to work the till. They kept trying to charge me £300 for a phone that
cost £129.99, they couldn’t register my details, they were confused by shiny objects floating in the air.

Score: 3/10 I got my phone but it was like pulling teeth.

T-Mobile
- - -
A busy store, but I managed to grab a salesman. He whisked himself away to the basement to fetch my phone. And never returned.

ell - he did several minutes later. Only to be distracted by customers trying to complain to him. When he finally extracted himself he sauntered over with a cheery “None in stock, mate.” No effort to cross sell, no indication as to where I could buy one. He was obviously more interested in a contract commission than a prepay sale.

Score: 1/10 not the way I expect to be treated as a potential customer.

O2- - -
I was promptly greeted as I entered the store. On informing them I wanted a prepay phone, I was shuttered off to Brian The Trainee. I’m not sure whether Brian The Trainee was mute or just sullen about not selling any iPhones. The whole transaction proceeded in silence, no small talk, no cross sell, nothing. Service was slow, but I’ll make allowances as he was only learning the ropes.

core: 7/10 good competent service.

Phones4U
- - -
I’d vowed never to set foot in a P4U after they sold me a second hand phone with someone else’s details still on it. Still, that was 7 years ago - so maybe it was time to give them a second chance.

Sales assistant was brisk, efficient and chatty. No pressure to buy insurance or anything like that - the total antithesis of P4U’s reputation.
He did have to spend some time on hold to Orange to register the handset - apparently Oranges online system was offline - but he kept me informed the whole way through what was happening.

Score 8/10 a good sales experience marred by Orange’s systems.

CarphoneWarehouse
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The greeter snootily dismissed me to one side of the shop as soon as the word “Prepay” passed my lips. The sales assistant vanished into the basement to fetch the T-Mobile SIM and K800i. In the meantime, I was treated to two sales assistants complaining about their boss, their customers and their lives in general.

he sales assistant reappeared, took a puzzled look at the order screen and scurried away again. I was left listening to his colleagues try and get their head office on the phone to resolve a customer complaint.

hen the sales assistant reappeared, he had an unbranded phone with him.

“Will that work with T-Mobile T-Zones?” I asked.
“Ummmmm…. dunnno… should do.”
“Should do or will do?”
“I’ll get the manager.”

The manager explained how to get the settings on the unbranded phone - visit the website, type in your phone number.

“D’ya won a memikid?” said the sales assistant.
“Excuse me?” I said
“Do. You. Want. A. Mem. Ory. Card?” He said with barely concealed contempt.
“No thanks”.

Overall score: 5/10 I got my phone but it was not a pleasant sales experience.

Vodafone
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I’ve not written about my experience in a Vodafone store. I work for Big Red (they pay my bills but they don’t pay me to blog) so I don’t think it would be appropriate to comment. Besides, I’d be accused of being biased. But I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

On returning home I got a phone call from my credit card company. They’d detected an unusual purchasing pattern on my card and had blocked my account!

Conclusions
- - -
Customer service is dead. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life….. you get the picture. At times I felt like I was in Royston Vasey - in a local shop for local people.
If I was treated this way in any other type of shop, I wouldn’t return in a hurry. But I guess that’s what most shops bank on - they sell
once and don’t see you for another 18 months, if ever.

Prepay customers are second class citizens - the sales staff are really only interested in making a big commission on a contract and will turf you to a trainee if you’re not going to make them any cold hard cash..

In any other store picking a box off the shelf, swiping it through the till and taking payment would take less than a minute. In the world of mobile you’ll be lucky to be out of there within ten minutes.

Oh, and don’t buy a bunch of prepay phones on credit card. The police will probably think you’re a terrorist….

Am I alone in receiving such appalling service in store - or are all stores this bad?

Three people recently have talked to me about dotmobile. Every time they’ve referred to the service as ‘the student mobile network’ or words to that effect and I’ve always blurted out ‘Do you mean Blyk?’

Turns out there is a student mobile network — an MVNO — by the name of Dot Mobile. What do I know? I’m getting old.

One reader told me that ‘they’re generally hated in the student community’ — something I found strange. I enquired a little more: “It’s because they have stands in Student Unions and can be very harassing, even after you tell them you’re in a middle of a contract.”

Street teams, eh.

I’m sure they’re not all bad at all. The deals look good. I’m going to put them on my list of people to talk to. Have you come across them?

3i, the venture capitalists, aren’t having a good day. Or year, actually. So much so that the venture capital division has been nailed to the wall and been incorporated into the firm’s ‘growth capital unit’.

Who, then, presided over the Class-A screw up? That’s 734m pounds worth of screw-up, according to the Financial Times (via StrategyEye)

Have a look at the various associates here:

Looks like Jo Taylor is the head honcho for UK Venture Capital:

734m pounds spunked up against the wall. Deary me. So, if you were thinking of approaching 3i for funding for your mobile concept, don’t bother.

In other news, however, the co-founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, is hoping to show the suits at 3i how to suck eggs by launching his own early-stage investment fund, YOUniversity Ventures (reports StrategyEye). He’s knocked up the fund, which is apparently founder-friendly, along with old PayPal colleagues Keith Rabois and Kevin Hartz. They might be up for mobile related investment — worth chatting to them anyway.

So I’m reading ZDNet’s coverage of IBM’s newly released ‘Lotus Expeditor‘ platform:

IBM moves to expedite mashups for mobile | Tech News on ZDNet

IBM has released a new version of its Lotus Expeditor software, which is targeted at mobile application developers building both business and consumer Web 2.0 mashups.

According to IBM, Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2–released last week–supports laptops, desktops, kiosks, and mobile-device clients. The company says it is designed for building mobile mashups such as services for the tourism market, where electronic map applications are integrated with information on local restaurants, weather, or independent vacation-spot review sites

… and well, I’m sad to say I couldn’t get my head around it. I gave it, what… 5 minutes of browsing around on the IBM site and I couldn’t quite ‘get’ what Expeditor does. Sounds good. Lots of buzzwords. I’m not sure how it helps the guy on the street (or the guy on the sales frontline). I get the concept, I’m just not entirely sold on whether you need Expeditor to do it.

The board of directors has been busy at Motorola. Busy.

Engadget is reporting that the Moto board is planning on splitting the behemoth into two independent, publicly traded companies. Entity one: Handsets. Entity two: The other stuff.

Engadget is right to point at Palm, I suspect:

Greg Brown, Motorola’s president and CEO, says the reason for the split is easy, “Creating two industry-leading companies will provide improved flexibility, more tailored capital structures, and increased management focus - as well as more targeted investment opportunities for our shareholders.”

Right, weren’t those the reasons for the Palm split? The matter is of course subject to regulatory approvals, but Motorola hopes that the transaction is complete “in 2009.”

We shall see.

Issah, our intrepid 15-year old reporter, has a wicked piece coming about how mobile phone shops treat their young customers. Nothing short of ridiculous.

However today I’m on the hunt for ideas for what we could get Issah to test out. Phones, products, services - what do you think needs a 15 year old’s perspective?

I’m going to give him a JCB ToughPhone and see if he and his friends at school can break it (in, er, as safe a manner as possible, maybe in a science or woodwork style lesson). I’m going to give him an iPhone and see what the youngsters make of it (particularly after the rather stimulating piece he brought us about how UK teenagers reacted to the iPhone launch.)

I’m thinking of talking to 3UK and seeing if they’d drop Issah over a few new handsets to have a play with and see how the teens react to them. Or Vodafone (whilst their forum intervention team is shit hot, I don’t think their consumer PR would be that interested.)

Any ideas? Let me know.

What the hell is it with Nokia and their piece of crap Software Updater.

I was just writing a text message and wanted to put my name at the end.  Turns out Ewan doesn’t exist in the dictionary.  I had to add it.

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY PHONE?” I’m thinking to myself.  Oh yes, then I remember.  It’s a sodding Nokia and I made the mistake of assuming — (Make’s an ass out of ‘u’ and me, right?) that ‘backup’ includes stuff like your dictionary and whatnot. Clearly not.

Stupid, stupid, arse, arse, stupid.

The Nokia Backup function should be renamed as ‘generally, backs up most stuff, complete with random annoying exceptions and stupid things you expect a multi billion dollar company to have though of’.

SIMchronise, the mobile data synchronisation experts based in Dublin, Ireland, have just launched PhoneBackup for the Irish market. I just got a note in from CEO Philippe to let me know the details.

They’ve been doing some wicked work for a wide variety of companies since 2005 — their first public product is PhoneBackup, which, as you might imagine, does what-it-says-on-the-tin. Always a fan of things like that. PhoneBackup works with a wickedly large range of handsets — from LG to Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, Nokia… in fact here’s the full list:

PhoneBackup takes a regular backup of your handset’s phonebook and costs EUR 2.50/month paid by premium text message. Credit card, debit and paypal options are coming shortly.

Services such as PhoneBackup rank in my ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL list of services every mobile user should use. There is nothing worse than losing your contacts. I get emails regularly from readers telling me about their own personal screw-up. It’s a double-arse if you’ve had your phone stolen and not backed up your contacts. Take five minutes and get your contacts backed up. It’s worth it.

Now you can only use PhoneBackup if you’re based in Ireland at the moment — but the service is coming to the UK, Italy and Belgium shortly and will no doubt be on the radars of incumbents Mobyko and Zyb.

Every success to the SIMchronise team for the launch!

Bubble Motion, the voice SMS specialists, have knocked up a whopping $14m of investment for their second round today. Congratulations!

Existing investors Sequoia Capital participated in the round together with newcomers Comcast Interactive Capital and NCD Investors. I haven’t yet managed to have a play with Bubble Motion — I’ve been admiring it from afar for years — I think I need to actually *go* to a country where it’s deployed and have a play with it. Our ancient United Kingdom operators have relegated me to the poor boy at the back of the classroom — none of them have yet deployed BubbleTALK.

135 million use BubbleTALK (yes, one hundred and thirty five MILLION) around the planet. It does what it says on the tin — you click, talk and send your voice message to anyone.

I’m going to try and sit down with Bubble at CTIA and find out more.

I popped into the Orange shop on Oxford Street today.  I thought it was about time I had an Orange connection.  I’ve got handsets and price plans on all other UK networks and, well, it’s all about putting your money where your mouth is.

I walked in and had a browse at the rather small selection of pay-monthly mobiles.  The pay-as-you-go section was double the size!

My attention was drawn to the latest HTC Touch that comes complete with a keyboard.  I wouldn’t have minded that.  But let’s talk data.  A sales person came over to me after giving me about a minute’s worth of browsing time.  Good strategy.  He gave me enough time to have a poke about, then asked if I needed help.

I thought I’d get stuck in.

“Talk to me about your data charges?” I asked. The chap looked a bit put out.

“Do you mean browsing?”

“Ah, no,” I said, “I mean pure data.  The last time I was in an Orange shop it was 4 quid a meg… what’s it now?”

“Oh, er, a pound (a quid) per meg,”  he replied, quickly.  Good.  Good knowledge.

“Aye but do you have an unlimited style 1g service plan?”

“On our data cards it’s 3GB per month,” he replied.

“But on your handsets, on a standard service plan?”

“A pound a meg.”

Hmm.

“Are you sure? You don’t do some sort of 7 pounds a month, 100 meg or 1,000 meg offer?”

Insert look of panic on the salesman’s face.

“Errrrr,” he said, “You’ll er… no,”  [He was about to get a brochure], “No, it’s not in the brochure. You’ll need to phone.”

“Phone?”  I prompted.

“Yeah, er, phone up.  Phone up and ask.  They’ll know.”

Right.

Can’t be bothered.   Next.

In years gone by, expert craftsmen were named Masters. Master Builders, Master Blacksmiths and so on. In this new period of our history, labels are changing. Whatley is one of the only Master Jaikus that I know. He knows and uses the service inside out.  Jaiku is his third eye.

Today we bring you part two of the Joy of Ku — Jaiku Unwrapped. Part One is here.

All good? The Master pulls down the hood of his dark billowing robe, turns toward us as we bow benevolently and…. over to James.

- - -

Ok – so those of you that read my last ‘official’ Whatley on Wednesday a fortnight ago (ignoring all the N95 shenanigans that happened in-between); and were quite interested to read my little introduction to Jaiku, then you’re probably wondering what I’m going to cover this week in part two of ‘Jaiku Unwrapped’ (nice title Ewan).

First up: Are you on Jaiku? If yes, read on. If no, go to http://jaikuinvites.com and get yourself in!

Next: Let’s talk about features

Well, there’s a lot to cover. I first encountered Jaiku way back in the Spring of 2007 as an early S60 app. This first iteration being ‘merely’ the cell tower naming, ‘life stream’ enabled, active contacts book… and breathe.

So what does that mean?

Cell Tower Naming – Each Jaiku user can name the cell tower that is currently in use by their mobile handset. This information is then shared with your [Jaiku] contacts. This is cool.

Most of the cell towers near me are called variations of Teddington; Teddington Station, High St, Home etc… and if any of my Jaiku buddies find themselves in the area, their Jaiku app updates their location accordingly. Can be fun when you’re browsing your contacts and you notice one of your friends is in one of your cells.

Life Streaming – Jaiku was at launch (and arguably still is in some respects) WAY ahead of its time when it comes to TRUE life-streaming. Any and all feeds can be pulled in and aggregated into the one stream. Here’s mine:

Comprising of my Last FM, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Various Blog Feeds.

All of my content in one place. Fantastic stuff. Interesting how this is now the business model for the relatively new ‘Friend Feed’. Something that I’m yet to try out… but I’m told offers a very similar service on the full life stream front. Big deal, Jaiku’s been doing it for ages.

Friend Feed lacks a mobile component however… which means no cool, location based stuff.

That aside, all of this life-streaming is no good if you can’t do anythingwith it. Which leads nicely into…

Active Contacts – Now that you (and your contacts) are all life streaming content or ‘Presence Information’, Jaiku takes on a more interesting role as a replacement for the native contacts application within the handset. Having Jaiku as an ‘Active Contacts’ book allows you to see who is and is not available for calling just from one quick glance. Each contact displays the stream coming from their handset – this encompasses everything I’ve mentioned so far (Location, Life Stream Feed Content) and adds to it calendar info (shared, hidden or just ‘busy’) AND profile information too.

The screens below are taken from the S60 app with my phone set to three different profiles:

The Profiles being General (Green), Vibrate (Amber) and Silent (Red) respectively.

If my Jaiku is displaying a red icon, now’s probably not a good time to call.

Note you can also see my latest ‘kus’ as well as the next event in my calendar; this information is opt-in as part of the sign-up. For the sake of sanity (and privacy) I normally have this set to ‘busy’ but have shared for the sake of the screenshots.

Having this option available for all of my contacts would be excellent.

A quick glance can show me:

Where you are, what you’re doing, what your plans are, what you’ve been listening to, the last photo you shared, the last video you shared, the last blog post you wrote…

It goes on.

All of this stuff comes together to form one S60 app that is truly something spectacular.

Not got an S60 handset? Try http://m.jaiku.com instead. Not as functional as the app but still easy and accessible from your handset.

All this so far has been about the utility. The product. The usability. The benefits.

In my next (and last) Jaiku-themed piece I’ll cover off the final piece of the puzzle.

The thing that, in my opinion, truly makes Jaiku special:

The Community.
First is this piece from Jonathan Greene who gives a rough outline of the features I’ve mentioned above. It’s a good read but the good stuff is at the end with his fantastic video (from last year!) about the (now live) beta client of the S60 app.

Second is this post from co-creator of Jaiku, Jyri Engestrom. Entitled:

“Blind Men’s Baseball – The Social Importance of Peripheral Vision”

This one quote: “phones were designed with the assumption that when a person picks up the receiver to dial a number, they already know who they want to call.” says it all for me…

Next week I’ll be in Las Vegas spreading the SpinVox love at CTIA.

If you’re heading out yourself, come find me and say ‘Hi’.

If not, see you in a fortnight.

Thanks for reading.

Heh, just caught this…

Link: Txting’s not a Fab Game plan - Gazette Live

And the policy of texting players on a Saturday night to let them know they’ve been dropped is tacky. As an Italian, it’s surprising Capello has a system so lacking in style.

.. I can just imagine these poor players sat waiting ’til the small hours to get a text from the manager. You could have a right laugh with them if you used one of those anonymous text services, couldn’t you?

Dear David, the new haircut sucks, so we’ve dropped you. Sorry. Love Fabs.

Last August I met with Marc Allera and asked him a serious of questions about 3UK’s service — one of the quesitons was about the massive disconnect between the 3UK shops that are now in almost every UK High Street, and the 3UK customer services.

I wasn’t impressed, you see, walking into a store last year and asking if I could upgrade my handset, only to be told to ‘phone India’ by one of the helpful chaps. They couldn’t deal with existing customers, only new customers. And whenever I phone the nice customer services, I do feel like a 12 year old again when they say ‘but Mr MacLeod, you’re not due an upgrade until XXX’.

Anyway, I wondered if things have changed. Here’s what I put to Marc last year:

Why the disconnect between 3UK stores and Customer Services?
Marc: Well the main barrier for us to deliver better service in-store is our system. While our call centre agents can handle every enquiry you might have, our system doesn’t allow our in-store team to do similar. We’re mid-way through a major project to address this change — and we expect to complete by around March next year.

So, I’m about to walk into one of the 3UK stores on Oxford Street and find out if the major project has been implemented. Here’s hoping!

Got home last night and wanted to check my email on my Nokia E90 that I stupidly updated with the Nokia Software Updater. Which is, if I haven’t said already, a piece of shit.

I really don’t know WHAT is going through the heads at the software developers over at Nokia. What ARE you thinking?

I updated my device, ok? Yes. Before that, I ‘backed it up’. Messages, contacts, and so on. Yes?

I restored, yes. That ‘worked’.

I thought all my bookmarks were restored.

No.

Just ONE is missing.

ONE sodding bookmark is missing.

How crap of a mobile development team do you HAVE to be, to make a BACKUP and RESTORE function that DOESN’T DO WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN.

Either you should make it work. Or not bother at ALL. BINARY — PLEASE! One or the other! Don’t make it HALF work.

It’s MAGNIFICENTLY ANNOYING to find that every single one of my internet bookmarks was restored, except the really long complicated one for my web email. That, er, seems to be … somewhere else.

Either the backup screwed up. Or the restore screwed up. Whatever, it’s just ridiculous. This is a billion dollar company we’re talking about. A market capitalisation of, according to Google Finance, 124 BILLION.

Why do they even bother to include this function if it doesn’t WORK. By all means, hide it away and let the geeks play. If it was a hidden function, something you had to *seriously* find to use, then I wouldn’t have a problem.

I have a massive issue when it’s front-and-centre on the Nokia PC Suite — as you can see above — there it is, I even highlighted it with a red box. Gah. Goodness knows how many consumers are being mucked around by this idiot function.

What a total ARSE.

Remember this from yesterday?

Link: SMS Text News » Archives » Nokia E61 just ’stops’ working with mobile data

Has anyone experienced this situation? A reader emailed me telling me that his Nokia E61 just stopped working with mobile data recently.

Completely stopped.

The phone works fine, mobile data is screwed. He can’t get anything working at all.

He phoned T-Mobile UK (oh dear) and the polite people on the end of the phone explained that he had his mobile data settings configured incorrectly.

Absolute tosh, he did nothing to the device and the settings are all there, fine and dandy.

Turns out T-Mobile simply, er, disabled mobile data services on the sim card… by mistake. For some reason. Who knows.

It’s re-enabled now, the reader tells me. And working.

Deary me… I wonder what happened there?

Silicon Republic is reporting that Ticket Text has launched service in Ireland. Good luck chaps!

A Dublin-based mobile firm that delivers tickets for sporting and music events by text message has launched its service in Ireland with a variety of events on offer.

Ticket Text last year struck a major deal to sell its ticketing services to Ryanair’s 53 million-a-year customer base and the company has now deployed ticketing software from Toronto-based AudienceView, whose technology is used by the Football Association, PGA Tour, MGM Mirage in Las Vegas, Toronto Blue Jays and NEC Birmingham.

News24 in South Africa has this story about a British/South African pilot who is being ‘held’ by the Zimbabwean Government for various and allegedly tenuous reasons.

SMS… always useful, particularly when you’re surrounded by 15 burly security people and you can type a text out in your pocket.

Just picked this one up from Arab Times Online.

Link: Arab Times :: ‘Interior’ to monitor SMS messages, websites

The lawyer was responding to a statement released earlier by a high-ranking security official saying the Interior Ministry is planning to monitor SMS messages and websites to prevent primaries from taking place.

That’d be one heckuva monitoring job…

I got this email in from a reader — a FEMALE reader, noless!

Here’s her problem:

HELP! I am just about to stop using a Nokia E61 as I am giving up mobile email. I found I was too contactable for clients and I kept on looking at my email at all hours of the day. Now I need to get a new phone and I don’t know what’s cool or sexy. What should I get? I am in London and using T-Mobile.

Interesting. I know what you mean. I can’t stop looking at my Blackberry if I’ve got it on vibrate. Every time an email comes in, I think it might be ultra urgent and… sneak a look. Or worse, I just can’t stand being near my Blackberry when the little red light flashes. I feel like I need to reach over and check what’s just arrived.

Anyway, a sexy phone. Any recommendations for the lady? I’m thinking N81, maybe? Top of the range Sony? N95 8GB?

I think my eyesight was going nuts yesterday when I wrote the post on RebTel. I checked my account rates and saw it was what looked like 8 pence per minute. Not bad, I thought. Bit steep but, you know, not bad for the service level, especially when I can use my inclusive unlimited landline minutes.

Then I had a note this morning from Mira at RebTel (she posted a comment) to let me know that it’s actually 0.8 pence per minute.

Right. Bit of a difference, then!

A rather good deal…

According to Aussie reports, cops in New South Wales are asking the public to submit photos or videos of crimes captured on cameraphones to the police to help them with their investigations. Users will then be able to upload the footage to the police over the internet.

Apparently, the move was inspired by the London bombings as well as riots in Sydney. According to ABC, the state’s police minister has warned would-be crime fighters to put their safety above gathering evidence.

With cameraphones’ resolution now around 5 megapixels or higher on most new models, it can’t be long til this type of footage will start appearing in court as exhibit A.

If you like your phones thinner than Kate Moss, get yourself a Modu. The device has apparently entered the Guinness Book of Records as the lightest mobile phone in the world. According to the book, the device measures 72.1 mm x 37.6 mm x 7.8 mm - smaller than a credit card.

The mobile was launched at Mobile World Congress earlier this year and weighs just 40.1 g. Modu, as the name suggests, is a modular mobile, so users looking for a bigger or more feature-heavy device can put the device into a modu jacket - a type of shell.

It’s a great concept - you can put the phone into a clamshell jacket or a bracelet jacket, depending on what form factor you fancy. In its unjacked form, though, it looks like it might be a little too easy to drop down the back of the sofa, never to be seen again.

Mobile entertainment applications and content provider Viva Vision has received a $2 million capital injection from Medical Capital Corporation, which the company says it will use “to scale its business, support its growing user base, and further grow distribution”.

Last year Viva Vision introduced a mobile slideshows business line, with content both produced by in-house production studios, and by media companies. The company also sells video on demand content and video-to-mobile applications. It already counts the likes of Verizon Wireless among its users and has added eight new carriers to its list of customers over the last year. The company has also seen impressive growth in user numbers - hopefully this funding injection will help it continue in the same vein.

Phew. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has confirmed that the company is working on high speed 3G version of the device, telling the Financial Times the company is experimenting with a HSDPA model.

In an interview on his digital lifestyle, the FT asks Lazaridis what’s his latest squeeze? His answer: “One of our prototypes - a 3.5G BlackBerry. It’s very fast over third-generation networks that have HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access).”

Good news for all those who want their mobile email that little bit quicker.

Check out this story from Mike Smith — he’s added it as a comment to this post from last April: SMS Text News » Archives » Unlimited data on Orange UK for £8 a month. No, I’m not kidding!

Unbelievable!!! I was on a £4.00 per month unlimited GPRS wap package with Orange for 4 years. When I say unlimited, it was subject to a fair usage policy of 10mbs per month. So much for unlimited!!! I was actually using 400-500mbs per month, on a regular basis, and no one said a word.
I then upgraded to a Nokia N95, not one of my better decisions, but I needed access to Orange internet, not wap. I was offered a £5.00 per month unlimited off peak bundle, or an anytime 30mb bundle for £8.00 per month. 30mbs, I would have got through that in an hour!!! I reluctantly opted for the off peak package, at least I wouldn’t need to re-mortgage the house at the end of the month!

Just by chance I rang customer services (now there’s a breach of the trades description act) to see if any new data plans had become available that would be more suitable. To my surprise, and great delight, I was offered anytime unlimited usage for £8.00 per month. Now that’s a bargain in anyones book, so I grabbed it straight away.

Knowing Orange of old, they may suddenly realise just how generous that is and withdraw it, just like they did with my £4.00 wap package. The bottom line is, they can withdraw the offer, but if you are already on the plan, they can’t take you off of it. My advice would be to grab it while it’s available, and if you change your service plan, don’t be talked out of giving it up. Make it plain you keep want to keep the data bundle no matter what. £8.00 per month unlimited internet usage is a very good deal indeed, now if only it was possible to get a connection………………………………:-))

Are you on Orange? What’s your story with mobile data? I always thought Orange was the black sheep of the UK operators with a ridiculous set of data rates.