Link: D.Telekom CEO says T-Mobile USA is core asset | News | Mergers/Acquisitions | Reuters

T-Mobile CEO René Obermann says there are no plans to sell their US network, despite the rumour mill going into overdrive in the past few weeks, and apparent pressure from investors.

“The U.S. business is a core business of the mobile communications business and therefore of Deutsche Telekom,” Obermann said on Tuesday at an industry conference.

“We have defined the U.S. as a core business for Deutsche Telekom in the future as well,” he added, echoing Chief Financial Officer Karl-Gerhard Eick, who told Reuters in May that Deutsche Telekom was not considering a sale.

So there you go. Of course things might change - it wouldn’t be the first time a denial is issued a few weeks (or months) before the rumours come true.

After my post the other day about, amongst other things, T-Mobile restricting my web access via web’n'walk, I finally snapped. I did something about it.

 Logging on to the T-Mobile mobile homepage last night, I noticed they’d added Facebook on the front page. Wicked. Perhaps they’ve added it to the whitelisted sites and I could access it?

Alas no, it was still locked this morning. So off to the T-Mobile store I went, ID and handset in hand.

“Hello, can I unlock my handset please?”

“Certainly sir, you want to access adult sites?”

“No, just Myspace, Facebook, and MSN. I don’t want dodgy stuff”

At this point the rather charming sales assistant gives me a dirty look. I then go into the total denial that I’m accessing p*rn on my mobile mode, trying to persuade her it’s for proper things. Uhuh. Right. She’s looking at me like I’m a fully paid up member of the dirty raincoat brigade, and my newspaper of choice is the Daily Smut.

Anyway couple of minutes later, and an hour of waiting for it to update, I can now access a service that T-Mobile are advertising on their homepage. Fantastic. But what a palava.. She even gave me a lecture in the shop, reminding me if I lend my handset to anyone under 18 I’d have to call up and put the lock back on. Yes of course, Facebook and Myspace are a hot bed of sordidness and nudity. Then again, maybe I’ve lead a sheltered life

As I (Alex) mentioned in a post a few days ago, I’ve been moving house. Been out on the road a lot the past few days, which has given me a chance to really hammer my T-Mobile Web’n'Walk/Flext account.

It’s been utter shite. No really, totally crap. My E61 seems to spend most of its time flipping between 3G and GSM, and promptly breaking the data connection everytime. I’ve had full reception but got a text saying there’ve been a load of missed calls from people. Calls have dropped out and then refused to reconnect for at least five minutes.

In the past four or so days I’ve had duplicate texts both received by me and people I’ve texted, some 2-3 hours apart - but exactly the same message.

I’m currently posting this blog in my new abode via an apparently 3G connection - whilst I sort out a broadband hookup. Alas, it’s not 3G speed. To be honest I’ve seen 56K dialup faster. Network congestion? Get outta here, it’s gone midnight on a Friday night/Saturday morning. Reckon many people are using data in the area? I doubt it.

And finally.. I can’t use MSN/Windows Live Messenger, or even the official Web Messenger or clones, as T-Mobile have decided I’m under 18 and shouldn’t be allowed to use such terribly lewd ’adult’ services - which it reckons they are. Myspace is on that list too, as is Facebook. I wouldn’t mind so much but it’s a business account registered to a limited company and I have asked at least twice for it to be sorted.

Head, bang, wall. Might go check out what Three have to offer over the weekend.

Link: BBC NEWS | Business | Deutsche Telekom backs VoIP firm

Deutsche Telekom is backing the internet telephone company Jajah, becoming the first major phone company to support such technology.

T-Online Venture Fund chairman Andreas Kindt said in a company statement: “By investing in companies like Jajah, we will be able to continue to bring users around the world the innovative solutions they are looking for.”

Curious and curiouser. So on one hand you’ve got Vodafone and Orange, in the ‘VOIP is bad for business as people won’t use our network to make voice calls, so let’s block it every way we can’ camp - and on the other T-Mobile’s parent company who’ve just pumped a load of cash into a VOIP related company.

This one will be interesting to watch…

Link: Online poker goes mobile as Bwin signs up phone operators - Independent Online Edition > Business News

The online poker craze is set to go mobile with network operators T-Mobile and 3 offering British customers access to Bwin’s multi-player application PokerRoom.com.

Since it was launched in 2005, PokerRoom has attracted 11 million registered customers over the internet and hopes to replicate that success in the mobile market. Bwin, an Austrian online bookmaker, has signed up mobile gaming specialist Cellectivity to launch PokerRoom over the T-Mobile and 3 networks, the first time that live multi-player poker has been marketed directly to mobile phone users. The service will guarantee access to poker tables anywhere at anytime. A play-for-fun version will also be launched for those customers put off by the prospect of losing money playing against serious players.

Link: News: T-Mobile looks set to win Euro distribution rights for the iPhone - MarketingWeek

Gosh, the rumour mill is in full spin this week. According to Marketing Week, T-Mobile have emerged as the frontrunner in the race to secure the European distribution rights for the long-awaited Apple iPhone.

Europe’s biggest mobile phone networks, including Vodafone, Orange and O2 owner Telefonica, have been competing for the right to sell the combined music player, mobile phone, e-mail and internet device when it is launched in Europe this autumn. Apple has already signed an exclusive deal with AT&T to distribute the iPhone in the US.

It is thought that the company has narrowed the European shortlist to Vodafone and T-Mobile but sources say the Deutsche Telekom-owned brand is the favourite to land the deal.

Interesting. But hang on a minute.. T-Mobile isn’t quite pan-European - they’re not really big in the Italian, Spanish or French markets - so what’s Apple got planned for there? Gartner research director Martin Gutberlet is quoted as saying he reckons they’ll sign an exclusive deal with the likes of T-Mobile initially, but market pressures will later demand they work with other distributors across Europe.

The article also says that Carphone Warehouse pulled out of the running due to the iPhone’s lack of 3G compatibility, which is apparently also the reason Three didn’t get a look-in - which is a shame.

Link: Virgin Trains speeds towards on-board 3G mobile network - 11/May/2007 - ComputerWeekly.com

Virgin Trains is partnering with mobile operator Orange to improve on-board 2G and 3G mobile voice and data services to Virgin Voyager passengers. Eighteen Voyager trains have already been upgraded, and the system will ultimately benefit passengers on all 78 trains operating on the cross country and North Wales routes.

Excellent news, and quite relevent to anyone who spends time on one of Virgin’s new shiny trains. I was on a Pendalino from London to Birmingham about a week ago, and had virtually no T-Mobile coverage at all. The article goes on to explain why..

Orange developed technology to overcome the radio frequency signal blocking effect that is a result of the metallised glass on new train carriages. The system uses antennae on carriage roofs to receive outside signals, which are then replicated through a bank of repeaters placed inside the train.

Aha, a faraday cage - just as I thought. Still, it’s one way of enforcing the quiet carriage that some train companies operate!

Another reader — J — has emailed me to tell me about his trauma with o2’s online ordering system.

He’s also been trying to get hold of an 8800 Blackberry. (Shit hot looking, by the way, those.)

Have a read of his traumatic experience…

I rang up today — AGAIN — and was on hold, twice — once for 10 minutes, and then, the phone just got cut off.

That’s a favourite call-centre way of getting the lines cleared… when you hear someone momentarily pick up then hang up…

When I did finally get through, I was told someone from “admin” would have to call me back. When asked why, they just said I have to wait for a call.

I waited until 2pm after no call and told O2 where to shove the contract.

Good man! Good man!

That was the dark. Now for the light…

I just rang T-Mobile, got through first time. They ran a credit check, it was succesful (of course!), and I am having my blackberry 8800 delivered by 1pm tomorrow on Web and Walk, Flext 35 and Blackberry service. The guy on the phone was great, very helpful, answered all my questions quickly, and explained the whole billing of all of my packages really well.

Why is it that T-Mobile can get the phone to me the next day, yet O2 can’t even tell me when I will receive my phone!?

Now let’s just hope T-Mobile’s network is good enough for me. Although saying that, it can’t be much worse than Orange, can it!?

Thumbs up for T-Mobile I say!

Let me know how you get on, J.

Link: Virgin Mobile Tops UK Customer Care Report

Virgin ranks highest in customer satisfaction for its mobile telephone service in both the pre-pay and contract service sectors, according to a  J.D. Power report. The study, now in its 10th year, measures the customer satisfaction of pre-pay and contract customers with the UK’s leading mobile network providers

Congratulations to the guys and gals at Virgin Mobile, but how did the other UK operators do? Well, O2 came in a close second in the prepay market, with Tesco Mobile just behind them in third place. Meanwhile in the world of contract phones, Virgin were 1st, O2 second and T-Mobile third.

There’s also some interesting stats on mobile phone usage patterns in the report, so worth a read.

I’ve got a dormant T-Mobile account. It’s been sat there for the last 6 months or so stuck in my N90 that I lent to Hetty ages ago to take some pictures of something.

It’s sat on a dirt cheap £18 a month 1,000 off-peak minutes tariff — with web’n'walk on it — and well, when you add up all the shite — the £3 non-direct-debit charge and whatnot, it’s always £30 a month.

The account is useful. It’s like a security blanket. Nice to know I’ve got a spare account. Why? I can’t quite explain it. My main accounts are my other T-Mobile account and Three. But I’ve got this back-up one.

Bit of background. I’ve moved into London into a rather grand penthouse* apartment in the centre of the city. However it doesn’t have internet yet. There are, interestingly, at least 6 wifi networks in my locale, but none of them free to access. So I have to wait until Wednesday until I get a connection — or even a sniff of a connection.

I have arsed around trying to get my N95 or E61 to connect to the internet via the laptop and, try as I might, it never works.

You know, T-Mobile do a USB modem that works with an Apple Mac now. Just recently launched…

Cue a shopping trip.

Can you see what was in my mind?

I certainly didn’t need the USB modem. I could have done without. It meant I couldn’t blog though, until I got on the train at King’s Cross and eased myself into the 225 Malard Service trains with their free wifi.

I’m in central London, so, stuff it. Let’s go shopping, right?

I walked down to Oxford Street. Much like any Pizza Express, I am pretty good at knowing more or less where every T-Mobile shop is located. I remembered the Oxford Street one and shortly arrived. The joy of living centrally.

At the door I wasn’t greeted by the chaps wearing HTC t-shirts. For some reason the place was full of these guys wearing ‘HTC’ on their chests. I think they were a marketing team there for the day. I said hi. They ignored me. Nay bother.

I located a proper T-Mobile sales guy and asked him for a USB modem.

All was good until he said, ‘right I’ll need to do a credit check on the system’.

‘Whatever for?’

‘It’s part of of our policy?’ he replied, glancing at my T-Mobile branded flagship N95 handset in my hand.

Fair enough.

Didn’t work on the computer.

‘I’ll need to phone up, sir,’ he explained.

Ok.

On the phone, he conversed with the sales support folk.

‘Nah, you can’t have it,’ he said.

‘You what? Why not?’

‘You haven’t paid on time in the last three months, so if you come back in July…’

I explained, ‘Of course I haven’t bothered paying it on time, I missed a payment the other month because your stupid system wouldn’t take my card.’

He gave me a ‘themz tha roolz’ look.

I asked to buy it. Nope. They don’t sell’em without a contract.

‘Fine, I’ll pay for the contract in full,’ I said.

‘But that’s 12 months up front,’ he exclaimed with some surprise.

‘Yes? How much?’

‘Can’t do that, sir. You need to show us you can pay on time for three months.’

‘What, even if I’ve paid the full balance up front?’

‘Yes.’

Ooookay.

‘You understand that I spend £200 a month with T-Mobile, with my other account, yes?’ I asked.

‘Errrr,’ came his response.

‘And that I couldn’t give a toss about this secondary account, right?’

‘Errrrrrr,’ he looked a little bit surprised.

‘And that it doesn’t take much to reeeeeeeeelly annoy customers into moving their business, this was a fling, an off-chance, I was about to spend a shitload with you..’

‘Errrrr,’ he shook his head. I realised I wasn’t helping him much.

‘Ok ok, them’s the rules, no problem.’

I walked out. Fair enough. Fair enough. Them is de rools.

I phoned up and spoke to the customer retention department. They did the usual, tried to persuade me to stay. The lady I spoke to wasn’t impressed, telling me, ‘but you’ve three more months to go on your contract!’

I said, ‘Sure, swap it to the lowest contract plan, remove the shite on it, and tell me the balance for three months, and I’ll pay it now..’

‘There will be a £34 early cancellation fee,’ she said — I could hear her straight lips. She was not impressed I hadn’t fallen for the retention department’s usual ‘I’m sure there’s something we could do’ ploy.

‘Thirty four pounds, to cancel the contract?’ I needed clarification.

‘Yes.’

Fine. I hung up. I will cancel the contract. But I’ll pay it off and avoid the thirty-four pound ‘fine’.

So, the rules are that since I missed a payment, they can’t accept £300 up front from me for the USB modem. Stuff’em. Now and again the big operators are totally let down by these sorts of things. I appreciate the rules are there and must-be-followed. But… at the expense of revenue?

I’m going to have my internet connection on Wednesday. By which point, a USB modem will be far, far, farrrrrrrr from my mind. But, on Saturday morning, I’d have blown 300 quid — up front — on a T-Mobile USB modem. Their mistake or mine?

You know that surgeon I mentioned in the other post? Well, he was showing me Vodafone Live on his Nokia. It’s an ultra modern handset, but a shit browser. I think it’s a 6200 series, or similar. Anyway, he wanted to show me how to get on to Google from it.

Here were my instructions:

1. Open up your web browser
2. Ok, click on ‘Home’ — that’ll load up Vodafone Live (I said this with some conviction, assuming Vodafone had setup the handset this way. They had.)
3. Right…. now… (the first page of the service had loaded up) .. Ok … just… have … a look for… [my eyes were scanning, hunting for a Google link]… there will be a Google link……. some………where. He’s scrolling up and down and all I’m seeing is a half-baked shitter version of Three UK’s phenomenally good mobile portal. No Google link at all.

So I ended up having to manually enter mobile.google.com into his handset. There must have been a link from Vodafone Live to Google somewhere. Couldn’t easily find it. Perhaps I should have been using a Vodafone N95 to browse ‘Live’.

A little bird told me that Vodafone Live is being updated. I hope so. I can’t remember who it was that told me, so who knows. Perhaps there’s an update to coincide with the new data plans? I think you should either stick a whole team of producers and a bag of money around creating a shit hot mobile service that is updated across the day (a la Three UK) or deliver your subscribers a more or less blank home page with a link to Google on it, and a few other top links (a la T-Mobile UK). Half-way doesn’t work.

I’m up in Scotland on business once again. Tons moving. Lots of exciting things.

I resolved to find the nearest store to my hotel and opted for the one in Paisley. I called them to check when they closed. 5.30pm. No trouble.

I hopped in a cab and, well, the pace of life in Scotland is a little slower than in London, so the taxi driver took a … bit… of….a… while…. to …. get…. there. I arrived outside the Paisley shopping centre at 5.25pm. Again, no biggie.

All I wanted to do was peer briefly at the new Windows Mobile T-Mobile Ameo and also look more closely at the N95… and maybe, just maybe, be upsold to it. Maybe. I reckoned the dying moments of the day’s trading would be the best time to do this.

The taxi driver took a few minutes to sort out my receipt and find some change. Minutes ticked by.

I walked, with no small amount of haste, into the Paisley Centre and hunted for the T-Mobile store.

At 5.29pm I found it! I raced along the corridor and, ……. oh…..

The shop was already well and truly closed. Properly closed. My E61’s clock turned 5.30pm just as I arrived to stare, woefully, through the security barriers.

I took the above picture to record my annoyance. When I phoned them up and asked ‘When do you close?’ I should have been advised that they CLOSED at 5.20pm. Look in the picture! The store was DESERTED at 5.29pm/5.30pm and the security barriers were already pulled down.

What an arse.

What a total arse.

When someone tells me that they’re open to 5.30pm, I assume that they are able, ready and willing to transact business UP until 5.30pm and then they commence closure, then the security barriers are pulled down — and so on.

So that wound me up a little bit.

I walked along to the Three store and found it had only just begun closing. Good stuff! I could have still walked in and said, ‘HOLD THE TILLS, GET ME YOUR NEAREST N73…’

As I sauntered back toward the exit, I saw the T-Mobile shop barriers raise. Interesting. I whipped out the N93, and the E61 for the foreground time — and snapped this one:

So the store is TOTALLY closed at 5.30pm. They must have really commenced closure much earlier — then the staff are out the door at 5.34pm. Fair enough, they’ve got an Easter break they want to enjoy and a nice summer evening outside. But woe is me. Or woe was me.

I’m not going back there.

Instead, I’m off to the Clydebank store today for a few minutes. I might return with an N95. I might return with nothing. I could even return with an Ameo, although I wouldn’t put money on that.

I got a call from a guy from a rival network this afternoon.

I was really quite concerned because I answered the call as I was in a taxi. Moving.

It’s a big no-no if you’re a T-Mobile user here in the UK. You can, I swear, hear the clunky handover taking place between cells. I sit there in a mini blind panic when I’m on the phone, hoping no one will spot the shit network I’m using.

It never used to be like this.

Anyway, how embarrassing. I got this phone call from a head honcho chap.

The first thing I said was (words to the effect of), “Hi, thank you for calling! Listen, look the network is a bit iffy and I’m moving… so…”

The guy was taken-aback, “Wait, what on our network?” he asked.

“No, no, no T-Mobile…”

He was relieved. Then, I think, maybe secretly laughing at me. I would be.

I wouldn’t be laughing.

I’d be calling me a chump.

CHUMP!

I can’t tell you how embarrassing that was.

I have been perfectly fine with T-Mobile for about a year. I really have. Yes I’ve known it’s been slightly less quality than other networks, but really, the data plan has suited me down-to-the-ground. It’s only recently that I’ve actually noticed call dropping, network busy and so on. Woe is me.

I’m doing something about it, don’t worry. It’s Three, by the way. That’s my choice of network. I’m going to make a wee badge for the blog. This blog is brought to you by the letter’s E, W, A and N, and he uses Three. Something like that. More on that in a minute.

You know your mobile service is powered by a cluster of rabbits arsing around on wheels when, with full signal, your phone unexpectedly call disconnects with a joyless beep and a ‘connection error’ notice.

So unexpected was it that the person I was speaking to didn’t recognise I’d been cut off. She thought I was just being silent! When I phoned back, she didn’t quite understand that I had genuinely been cut off. That’s because getting cut off is - or should be - an experience firmly relegated to the past. Not if you are on T-Mobile…

Without fail, every time I leave Liverpool Street Station, the handset totally loses signal. Totally. As though I’ve phase-shifted into a different universe temporarily.

It’s fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuannoying when you run SMS Text News — you know, I should, have some sort of clue — and the lady opposite carries on yapping away on her cheapo SLVR, no doubt service by some non-rabbit-powered network.

So, T-Mobile RabbitPower® — it’s green, but it doesn’t work very well.

What cold hearted brute deletes love messages from their handsets?

Link: Brits Turning to SMS for Love Letters

The British love affair with romantic letters is over, as the nation turns onto amorous texting, reveals research by T-Mobile UK. According to the T-Mobile survey 40% of Brits cherish mobile love messages by keeping them on their handset, and nearly half (46%) crave flirty SMSs and poems.

Under 24s are the most sentimental - 49% keep more than 20 romantic texts on their phone, while only 16% of people over 45 years keep that many. Women (40%) and under 24s (62%) find it easiest to communicate feelings via text rather than face-to-face, while one in five men (19%) find poetry the most romantic form of communication.

FORTY PERCENT Women find it easier to communicate via TEXT?

What were they doing BEFORE text messaging was around?

Darren sent me over some pictures of his new HTC T-Mobile Ameo.

God, it’s good looking:

I don’t think this sort of thing should be allowed. It’s far too good looking.

I had to do a bit of a gasp when I saw the pictures. Involuntary.

I’ve always had a thing for Windows Mobile, despite being beaten over the head with the ridiculously slow performance (of past devices and OS versions).

Always willing to take another look.

Look at the size of it!

You can see the full Flickr set here. Thanks for sending the pics, Darren. When time permits, knock us over a bit of text about how it’s performing?

Or if you want to get a bit special, do a wee video of it. Or pop into London with it and I’ll bring my N93…

In the tune to the immortal ‘Turning Japanese’:

I’m turning Vodafone I think I’m turning Vodafone I really think so
Turning Vodafone I think I’m turning Vodafone I really think so
I’m turning Vodafone I think I’m turning Vodafone I really think so
Turning Vodafone I think I’m turning Vodafone I really think so

Here’s the issue. TWICE today I’ve been cut off.

First: I was hurrying through Soho on the phone wondering whether to pop into see the guys at Sonus PR unannounced or get to my other meeting on time. In the end, I thought I should focus on the calendar and time. As I walked into Soho Square, my conversation suddenly stopped. I looked at the phone and it just said ‘connection error’.

I redialed, everything was fine. I carried on talking.

Second Issue: It happened again, this evening. I was sat talking away and all of a sudden the handset just disconnected. Same error.

Third Issue: People try calling me but, despite the handset being connected and send/receiving internet traffic, the calls are diverted. I have to switch off the handset and switch it on again to get it to poll the network. Likewise, trying to send a text message is impossible until I restart.

I’m thinking it’s a T-Mobile issue. Not an E61 issue. I mean it could be the handset, couldn’t it?

Anyway, I hung around in the Vodafone store at Liverpool Street today pondering.

£40 for ‘unlimited’ data each month. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Could get their USB modem. Would be damn useful for the Apple when I’m in werid hotels with no internet service. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Could I actually get a Vodafone deal at say 60 a month, add a 40 quid unlimited price plan………….. and that would more or less equal what I blow on T-Mobile most months…………..

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Thoughts? Do I need to be HEAVILY sedated?

Jeremy caught this one on the Register’s Hardware site. It looks absolutely gorgeous.

Link:
T-Mobile UK prices up Ameo UMPC-style communicator | Reg Hardware

3G UMTS/HSDPA machine with a QWERTY keyboard; 5in, 640 x 480, 65,536-colour screen; 8GB hard drive; 128MB of memory; Bluetooth 2.0; 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; three-megapixel camera; and an SDHC-compatible memory card slot. It runs Windows Mobile 5.

All of this comes in a 13.3 x 9.8 x 1.6cm, 355g unit that has battery capacity sufficient for 6.5 hours’ talk time and 300 hours in stand-by mode, according to T-Mobile.

This is exactly the sort of good looking Windows Mobile device that I’ve always wanted to see in production.

Will it be any good? Or will it be hobbled by a sluggish, shitty operating system? Gahhhhhh. I really would like to get hold of one to see. I don’t think I’ll take out an 18-month price plan to find check.

An 8 gig hard disk? Very cool.

3 megapixel camera? I’m interested. Hmm.

Available to order right now on T-Mobile UK? Yes, very interesting…

Maybe. Just maybe, I could be seduced by a T-Mobile sales person and upgraded to one of these…

I’m still fuming with the T-Mobile site update.

They made some nice looking changes a little while ago.

Ever since they did so, my original cookie — which has been working for about 7 months — was negated.

I don’t know what happened.

But now I can’t login. I can’t remember my password.

Totally 100% annoying. As a result, I have missed paying my bill so now when I phone them they’ll be treating me like a criminal wanting deposits off me and the whole shebang. This, despite the fact I am paying shitloads each month.

I could, admittedly, have paid the balance via 150 but, you know, I pay it online. That’s what I DO.

GAHHHHH.

What WEB DEVELOPER someone in the T-Mobile UK building screwed this up? Accept my wrath. Thank you. Now I better go and pay the bill…

I’m setting up these phones, right, for my colleagues and putting T-Mobile Pay As You Go sims in them just for the time being. (The concept — if they like the device, they might want to use their main sim card to run it, but meantime they can use the PAYG sim to check it ou).

I stuck £20 on each sim then was shocked to get a message from T-Mobile on the device saying:

You’ve topped up by £10 — you now have free evening and weekend texts to all UK mobiles from the UK for the next month.

You what?

Wow.

Now I’m paying them over a hundred quid a month on contract for my main line and *I* don’t get free evening and weekend texts!

I dunno,… sometimes I think I’m missing something and should actually use PAYG.

Martin Geddes over at Telepocalypse has been having a series of bad days with T-Mobile UK.

His experience is documented at his post, T-Stuck

First problem: they can’t provision T-Mobile Hotspot access at the same time as the rest of the account. You need to call back after you’re a customer. Wonder how many abandoned sales that leads to?

Followed quickly by post, T-rash

F*ck it. I’ll give my money to someone else and use my phone as a modem & drain my 3Gb data allowance instead.

If anyone at T-Mobile is reading, you know how to find me.

A commenter on the post weighed in with a rather insightful:

David Beckemeyer @ January 21, 2007 12:18 AM:
And the thing is, this isn’t just T-mobile. It’s become the accepted norm. It’s amazing that we put up with it, but the fact is people do. Why should these companies do bettter when we will happily repeat their tortured use of the word “free” day in and day out, and pay the ludicrous fees they charge barely a whimper. We give them no reason to improve. There are no consquences for their bad behavior, so why should they change.

Things get a bit better with Martin’s follow-up, T-riffick.

Deary me. I’m quite content with my service from T-Mobile. But they definitely need a blogger relations programme.

I’m willing to bet that the chaps at Three’s X-Series blog would be hot-to-trot if they caught anything like this on their blogradar about X-Series.

Helen is not impressed…

Link: Musings of a mobile marketer: Honey I’m home

I’ve signed up to the Club t-zones from T-mobile as run by Buongiorno and it’s a bit rubbish. A joined up out of curiosity (it’s free) in January and they were still touting Christmas ringtones. Either they’re very early for Christmas 2007 or no-one updated the club for new content after Christmas. A missed opportunity surely to reach those new handset owners and those trying wap and downloading content for the first time.

More in from my anonymous mobile phone industry chappy about the Nokia N95 reportedly on its way from T-Mobile.

A lot of people have been telling me that the handset would be available for purchase for about 500-600 quid, which, even to me, total geek, is a bit expensive for a consumer handset that you’d imagine both the networks and Nokia would like to be widely available.

So my contact tells me the handset will be in the region of £300 - £350. Whether you could conceivably get the handset at no cost if you took out a stonking £70/month contract (or the like) I don’t yet know.

I don’t even see it on the T-Mobile site yet.

Perhaps, though, they’re waiting for all the CES stuff to die down. And for people to get a bit more cash in their pockets after Christmas.

Or perhaps it’s actually a glint in the milkman’s eye?

Arse. I’ve been sat, like real chump, looking at the T-Mobile pay-monthly phones page every day hunting to see if they’ve added the Nokia N95 to general availability.

Not yet, it seems.

My gloriously insider-information feed to me by an in-the-know person made it clear that the N95 was due out ‘in January’. No specific dates. There’s a heck of a lot more days to go before the end of the month though. We’re only on the 8th so far.

Link: T-Mobile vows to stop ’screwing’ data-roaming customers - ZDNet UK

Just in case, …… just in case you thought that ‘they’ — the folk running mobile operators were charging high roaming fees because, well, it was extremely expensive…………. nahhhhhh.

I was sent this as a reminder just now relating to the news that T-Mobile are reducing their data roaming rates by half.

Refreshingly frank comments by Ed Williams, if made part in ‘jest’

T-Mobile has promised to cut its overseas data-roaming charges later this year, after one of its senior executives told conference delegates that it is “screwing” its customers at the moment.

The remark was made by the operator’s enterprise strategy head, Ed Williams, at the Mobility Summit in London, during a panel discussion on the subject of mobile data tariffs.

Discussion moderator Chris Lewis, a senior analyst with Ovum, asked Williams if, despite T-Mobile’s £8.50 “all-you-can-eat” data tariff for usage within the UK, the operator still “screws” its customers on data roaming.

“Completely screw them, yes,” was Williams’ response.

Williams, who is also a director of the Mobile Data Association, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that his comment was “made in jest”. He also revealed that T-Mobile will be lowering its data-roaming tariffs later in 2006.

It’s not yet clear exactly what T-Mobile is planning, but another company executive, senior pricing manager Uday Kansara, later told the conference that T-Mobile is planning to bring its consumer rates down “as the costs come down”..