Afternoon readers, Whatley reporting in…

My post quota has been a bit low lately, (sorry Ewan), I’ve been working hard on a top secret SpinVox project, (more on this next week - promise), in the meantime however allow me to share with you something that appeared on my radar earlier today care of my friend Roger.

Roger, aside from being a girl, is a good blog-buddy of mine.
She and I write and maintain:

“Why Don’t Grownups Get it? - conversations we have had with growdups, by Roger and James”

We tend to take it in turns to post up stuff and normally it’s quite non-techy and it tends to lean towards the ridiculous…

But, as I said, this afternoon Roger posted up something that I felt I just had to share:

Roger - Over to you:

I don’t know if it is just me, with my seemingly magnetic ability to attract idiots, but I don’t have much luck with customer service types.

See my post on Dell. I rest my case.

Or I would rest my case, but I’m afraid I have to shake it into wakefulness for another round, this time concerning those ever-helpful bods at 3 Mobile.

Don’t worry, it’s not a longwinded rant. I’m really not cross about this one. Like Ron Burgundy when Baxter eats the cheese, I’m not angry. I’m impressed. With the sheer level of idiocy.

It’s a quickie. And here it is:

My phone broke. This happens. I took it to the 3 shop (one of those ones in a Superdrug, where you can’t tell if they are shop assistants or muggers, you know the ones). They sent it off on a three day repair on Monday. And credit to them, it came back into the shop, all shiny and fixed, today.

Of course, when I switched it on it went mental beeping away with hundreds of voicemails and texts from lots of terribly important people trying to get hold of me (it’s a social whirl being me, it really is).

And here’s the thing.

One of the messages was from 3.

Telling me my phone was ready for collection.

Let’s see if we can spot the flaw in their logic, shall we?

*sigh*

Roger.

UK network operator Three is having a problem this morning with the system it uses to monitor data use against its ‘fair use’ policy with multiple warning SMS messages being sent to customers warning they are over the limit and may be cut off (I’ve had 23 26 27 in about 3 hours - 4 in the time taken to write this). Customer services are aware and asking people to ignore the messages, but there’s nothing on the Three website at this time.

I guess problems are unavoidable, but the number of texts is a real pain. I’m waiting for an important message…

Update: Appears to be fixed (no more messages) as of about midday.  After 4 hours of beeping the silence is eerie…

I’ve been doing a mobile phone audit these past few days.

I discovered I was still on a 75 pounds per month T-Mobile price plan. So I phoned them up and switched that down to a 15/month price plan. No need to pay them more than necessary, right? Especially as they have the gall to try and charge me $0.18 per minute roaming fees on the Starbucks WiFi for my US account.

I also swapped my other T-Mobile account — the one that keeps on screwing up with their billing system — down to nothing.

Then, on to Three. Or 3UK. I always refer to them as 3UK because once or twice I’ve written a story about them only to have some people using 3Italy or 3Denmark email with enquiries.

I’m on a 30 quid a month price plan. Plus X-Series Gold — which I put on as a gesture of support for them. But you see I’m using Vodafone more and more. So I thought I’d move the Three handset down to a 15 quid per month deal and swap to X-Series Silver.

Turns out you can’t.

“What about the 15 pounds/month price plan?” I ask the nice Indian lady.

She explains that this is (effectively) for ‘brand new customers only’.

Right, but my contract us up in August. I’m more than half way through it. Let’s do a deal. I want to reduce my total cost down, I say.

You, er, can’t. Is what I was told.

I asked the lady to repeat the reasoning. Turns out I *CAN* change my price plan to something lower if I want, but there’s a charge.

Of course.

I’ve written about that before.

At least 50 quid if I want to reduce my price plan. That’s the deal.

Deary me.

Ok.

I thanked the lady and hung up.

We’re definitely going to have a reckoning come August.

Been a customer with 3UK since they launched on 03/03/03? Chances are you’ve got a very special gift through the post recently.

1000Killahurts, a user at 3g.co.uk’s forums (here’s his thread), reports that he recently received a phone call from 3UK telling him he was going to be receiving a hamper of goodies to thank him for his business (for their 5th birthday celebrations).

Nice.

The hamper arrived and that’s the picture of it there. He’s got a nice new N95 8GB, a new Pay As You Go USB Modem and a load of other goodies.

(Thanks for this Zakir)

A while ago, I don’t recall when — maybe 2-3 years ago — Hutchison Whampoa, owners of 3, the 3G mobile network operator (and operators of 3UK) purchased a chain of 900 drugstores here in the UK.

Why? Well, they’re big in health and beauty (See the Hutch site for more details). There was another reason: The 900 store chain could almost overnight get 3UK out to every high street. As a result, almost every Superdrug you can find has a 3UK concession stand, or in smaller outlets, a series of shelves featuring the 3UK pay as you go offering.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I walked by the Superdrug on Charing Cross Road, centre of London, and saw a Virgin Mobile concession stand right there.

Instead of snapping a picture, do you know what I did? I QIK’ed it! See above for my rather mumbled video explanation.

I thought it would be a good idea to do a video rather than snap a photo; although I didn’t recognise just how much of a fool you look with your E90 pointing at a shop window with it’s red ‘record’ light on whilst you chat away. That’s why I’m mumbling. Folk on the street were doing rubberneck looks at me as I recorded.

I went into the 3UK store on Baker Street yesterday to see if I could upgrade my handset earlier to a Nokia N95 8GB.

The chap there was extremely helpful, particularly since I wasn’t able to remember my 3 number. I’d come out of the office without my handset so we had to call Customer Services to get them to look up the number.

I still don’t think 3UK is there yet, with it’s integrated customer information systems in the shops. It seems natural to me that, like in any Vodafone shop, if you walk in and give various pieces of information, the sales person should be able to look up your account and talk to you directly, without referral to Customer Services.

So. We go the number and I explained what I wanted. A new handset.

The chap was keen to do business, but unfortunately the 3UK system wasn’t going to bend around my aims.

Turns out that the earliest I can discuss upgrading with them is August 21st.

“Right, well I’d like to discuss upgrading with you now,” I said to the chap, who then relayed this to the customer services agent on the phone.

“It’s 200 pounds to upgrade to an N95 8GB now,” he said (repeating the customer services agent’s response).

“Ok, well it won’t be 200 pounds in a few months time, will it? One of your chaps from the Indian marketing team will be on the phone offering me shitloads of special deals to upgrade and extend my 12 month contract. Yes?”

My chap nodded. I think the CS agent probably nodded too.

I waited.

I was, you see, expecting a bit of negotiation.

I think, from memory, my 3UK contract expires at the end of September. So really, it being mid-April, I’m only half way through the 12 months. Fair enough. They haven’t got full value from me yet.

But I was offering to negotiate. In their favour. At that particularly moment, they could have stuck me on a 24 month contract at between 30-50 quid a month and I’d have accepted it and walked out the door with the N95 8GB.

Back to the real world.

“It’s 200 pounds,” the chap prompted.

I tried once more, “OK. I see. So that’s the final offer, is it? Just, in a few months they’ll be phoning desperate to renew me and I’ve no particular compunction to keep the account open since I swapped to Vodafone.”

“It’s 200 pounds.”

Ooookay. The chap was a bit disappointed as I could see he wanted to do a deal but customer services wasn’t having any of it.

We move on. Fair enough to 3UK. Just wait ’til the upgrade chappy from India calls me though.

SMS Text News reader David runs a highly successful mobile internet startup in the UK. He’s been having no small amount of trouble with 3UK. I wonder, has anyone else had similar issues?

Over to David to

- - -

Hi Ewan

I wanted to share my experience with 3 yesterday.

I bought a 3 mobile broadband modem on pre-pay for my son who has broken his leg to so that he can use his laptop when on hols. Great value for a little peace and quiet
So I get a call from him asking me to to top up his credit. Easy me thinks all I have to do is sign in to My3 add a card and add some credit. Having eventually retrieved mobile numbers and passwords from said son.

I signed in and added a card. Apparently it takes 7 days to confirm a card (what utter crap me thinks) but the nice people at 3 charge £10 to the card enough for 1Gb me (me thinks) problem solved, happy son I can get on with my Sunday.

3 hours later I get a call from my son saying “Dad I am out of credit again!” I quizzed him “What have you been downloading, uploading, streaming?” but it appears that he had been using MSN.

I called 3 broadband customer support number, only to be told to dial 550 from my 3 mobile. “But I don’t have a 3 mobile, I have a 3 Internet dongle!” I exclaimed. Eventually I was transferred but got lost in the system so repeated the whole process again.

“Well sir I can see that you topped up by £10 but you did not use this purchase a £10 extra so your data has been charged at £1 Mb. You have to purchase the extra to get the 1Gb.” If I can borrow some your own words “What utter arse!”

“But sir it is clearly explained in the terms and conditions in the book that came with the USB Modem.” Like I still have the book and why if this is really necessary (because programming the online and billing system hasn’t gotten done yet) didn’t it say that when on the Web page when I spent the money?

After a further 10 minutes of remonstrating what a ridiculous system this was and asking to speak to the supervisor they applied the credit to my account. I had to phone my son and ask him to unplug the modem otherwise any data would have been charged at £1 Mb immediately.

Total cost £10 top up, 30 minutes of calls to an 0870 number so probably another £10 and a good bottle of red wine to lower my blood pressure.

- - -

David, thanks for taking the time to document your experience. Ridiculous. So you actually have to phone up and tell them that you’re BUYING AN EXTRA for 10 pounds and THAT gets you the 1GB of data?

That’s a bit of a creakingly crap billing system…

Critical Path are the daddy when it comes to messaging.  They’ve been in the game a long time.  I remember, back the dotcom days, we were hunting around for the best email provider on the planet to offer whitelabeled email services for our visitors.  We selected Critical Path; alas… we didn’t quite have the budgets of Microsoft and Yahoo, so in the end we weren’t able to do business.  (I secretly longed to be able to offer our audience a decent service like Yahoo or Hotmail though). Critical Path has been around the block though and it’s no surprise they’ve taken one look at the burgeoning mobile platform and nodded an affirmative ‘aye’ and got stuck in.

Memova is their consumer messaging service for mobile operators (and broadband providers) and Hong Kong’s 3 has just gone live with the service offering.  It’s an interesting offering: -

Unlike enterprise solutions, Memova Mobile works on virtually any mobile phone and does not require users to download or install client software. Additionally, the solution offers an easily managed inbox, delivering email messages from approved sources only - eliminating mobile spam and giving consumers complete control over their email experience.

I’m going to see if I can take a look and see exactly how this works.  No clients, no downloads and an easily managed inbox?  Perhaps it works with the handset’s existing ‘email’ functionality — since almost every handset, even a shocking Motorola RAZR — can usually cope with POP or IMAP email access.

No word on whether 3UK customers will be getting a similar offering as yet though.  The full release is here.

This is just brilliant. AND we’ve got AUDIO!

Remember I blogged the other day about the super 3UK offer for pay-as-you-go USB modem deal? Well, reader Dan Lane went straight to the 3UK site and ordered one. The result? Well. Complicated. I’ll let him explain…

- - -

Ok, first things first. Who am I? I’m Dan Lane, mobile geek, entrepreneur and CTO at Howler Technologies (a title I share with legendary mobile developer Jay Fenton, yes, we have two CTOs). I am the polar opposite of a “normob”.

I have strong opinions on most things but this article isn’t about sharing my opinion with you, it’s an opinion-less factual representation of an exprience I just had with Three customer services.

Ewan posted about the £69.99 PAYG USB Modem deal that Three are currently running, in the small print I noticed that there was a further £50 off for existing Three customers and decided that was great value for money and I’d have me some of that action.

When ordering they look up your postcode and guess your address. I always write my address in the following format:

Apartment 123, Building Blah
Street Name
London
SE12 3AB

When I entered my postcode I was offered a list of apartments in the following format:

Apartment 123, Building Blah, Street Name, London, SE12 3AB

Brilliant, I picked mine from the list and my address was filled in as:

Apartment 123 Street Name
London
SE12 3AB

That should do, I know my credit card has authorised payments to similarly mis-formed addresses and there is only one building on my street so the courier can find it. I place the order and think nothing more of it.

Delivery day comes around and I don’t remember seeing a confirmation e-mail so I check my spam folder and there it is, along with another e-mail telling me my payment didn’t go through due to a “mismatch” because my address eventually ended up as:

Building Blah
Apartment, Street Name
London
SE12 3AB

I am told to visit a link and correct my details, the link is: http://threestore.three.co.uk/3pay which, at the time of writing, displays the standard IIS “The page cannot be found” error.

No problem, I’ll just call the 0870 “Three Shop Helpline”, correct my details and we’ll have this sorted in no time at all.

I record all the calls I make to any customer service dept, simply because of all the terrible terrible experiences I’ve had in the past, here is my first attempt to traverse their IVR.

Notice that when I select 5 for any other queries it asks me three questions specific to delivery, when I then select option 3 for “all other delivery options” it claims to be transferring me to a customer service representative but actually dumps me out to the main customer service number for existing customers which, presumably, isn’t going to be able to help me with my existing order. I go a few options into this menu before realising where I am and hang up.

In my second attempt when I select 2 for a query about an existing order it asks me the same delivery-specific questions as it did in my previous call when I pressed 5 for any other queries. Sensing that this call was going the same way I ditched it and called back.

The third time I hit magic number 4 which put me straight into a queue, which was playing a horribly jittery skipping version of Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By interspersed with a crackling voice thanking me for my patience, here is a sample. I won’t post the whole call because a lot of it involves me reading out my address multiple times.

Eventually someone answered and said that because the order had been cancelled I’d have to re-order, since I couldn’t use the website she passed me through to direct sales so they could take my order over the phone. Unfortunately the sales chap told me that the £50 discount offer was a mistake and he was unable to offer me the same price, however they would do the same deal but with £20 off instead of £50. Fair enough, this is still a great deal and I’m happy to go ahead with that, I ask the chap if that’s the very best price he can do and he goes away and checks.

When he comes back he tells me that unfortunately £20 off is the best they can for existing customers but it’s only available on the website. When I point out that the website won’t work for me he apologises and I ask him to confirm that there is nothing he can do to help me before ending the call.

In situations like this I like asking that final question because it gives the other person one last chance to think about it and perhaps say something like “actually, maybe my manager can help”.

My name is Dan Lane, and I constantly find myself an unfortunate victim of customer service.

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!

I met with Jonathan Jensen the other day to talk mobile and he was telling me that in his area, he’s getting a phenomenally better signal from 3UK when he forces his handset to only use 3G coverage. Here’s his blog post on the subject:

Sevendotzero: 3G coverage

Since setting my Nokia 3G handset on 3 to only use 3G coverage & not GSM I’ve had much better service. The handset used to spend its time switching between 3G & GSM when coverage was flaky. This seemed to be far from seamless. The result was that I regularly used to lose signal where the coverage was a bit flaky. 3 has disabled the ability to set the handset to GSM only (because they pay roaming fees to Orange, their GSM partner) but 3G only works fine for me.

Has anyone else found this?

Motorola is getting some love from 3 once again after spell out in the cold, with the operator reintroducing its handsets to its network for the first time in 18 months. The first device off the block will be the HSDPA-enabled RAZR2 V9,

According to the company, 3 has decided to welcome Motorola back into the fold because of its “renewed focus on powerful 3G handsets like the RAZR2 V9″ and a compelling roadmap to boot. 3 is now training up its sales staff for the reintroduction.

While it’s good news for Motorola that it’s got another operator customer on board and another channel to get its handsets out the door, it seems a little bit of a shame that it started with the RAZR - it doesn’t exactly showcase Moto’s drive to move forward with its product design.

O2 and 3 have decided to unite their mobile video platforms - bringing LookAtMe! and SeeMeTV together under the EyeVibe brand. The operators said they were taking a leaf out of the book of SMS and MMS by making the technology work across operators, with the hope of getting more consumers on board as a result.

Users of Eyevibe will now be able to post video, comment on others’ clips and use messaging regardless of whether they are customers of O2 or 3. To date, LookAtMe! and SeeMeTV - both developed by Yospace - have earned their users £800,000 on 60,000 clips uploaded and generate on average 28 million page impressions a month.

With the business models for some areas of mobile telly still a little on the uncertain side, it’s likely that there we’ll see even more of these type of sharing deals in the future, particularly when it comes to broadcast infrastructure.

3’s X-Series blog, dedicated to documenting ‘mobile internet musings from 3 people on the go’, is shut. They’ve run out of musings, it seems…

Link: xseries: Hello, I must be going …

Hello all, well the time has come for the X-Series blog to close its doors for a while. We are going to re-ignite a new blog later in the year, but in the meantime there’s plenty of places for you to say hi, including:

3 neXt
3 neXt on Facebook
3 Skypephone Forum

Strange, very strange.

Why start a conversation with the public and X-Series users only to dump that conversation a little while later? A new blog is coming, eh?

Why not bother keeping the current one going ’til then? Ran out of things to say? Can’t be arsed? Deary me…

Corporate blogging is a fascinating thing to behold — and it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — be held to the same rules as a marketing campaign. I don’t think they should be switching conversation on and off.. That said, the wind seemed to have blown out of the X-Series blog of late (the last post was back in October 2007).

Nearly four million customers strong, 3UK are the first operator in the UK to launch Google Maps 2.0. 3UK customer? You can probably get it via Planet 3 (the 3UK portal).

The new version of Google Maps, available only through a 3G network, will use your mobile phone connection to establish your location through GPS, and work out directions or find local services and business for you at the touch of a button.

The updated software will also:

* Integrate all your search results on one, easy to navigate page
* Give detailed directions for both walkers and drivers
* Provide a satellite view of all locations
* Display your internet KB usage in the corner of your screen
* Allow easy access to details of local business found in your search

The new application is now available on the majority of 3’s wide range of handsets.

Good news, good news.

Good. Get yourself down to the Carphone Warehouse then…

Link: Free laptop with 3 mobile broadband connection - Mobile Today

3 is offering a Dell Laptop with its mobile broadband package.

The operator has joined with Carphone Warehouse to offer a complete Mobile Broadband solution for £35 per month.

(Thanks Chris!)

I got word recently that the N95 8GB is now available on 3UK. The first 500 folk ordering one get a set of speakers, apparently.

No word on whether it’s running X-Series.  I imagine it will be.   The X-Series portion of the 3UK  website doesn’t look like it has been updated for a good few months.  And when I had a look on the online ordering page, the N95 had the X-Series icon next to it, whilst the 8GB version just had an MSN Live icon.

I don’t think 3UK would launch such a powerful and potentially exciting handset on to the marketplace without X-Series support. This has to be one of the sexiest and advanced handset/mobile operator combinations available on the planet today (excluding the Far East and their 100mb/sec multimedia style  services).  Unrestricted data, a ton of brilliant applications and a wicked Nokia handset… good work.  This would be my choice.  I’d definitely take a look at Vodafone’s rival offering, but I think I use data far too much to be arsing around with Voda’s silly access policies.

More at www.three.co.uk.

Link:  3 launches pay-as-you-go mobile broadband - News - Tech.co.uk

Mobile provider 3 has launched a Pay As You Go (PAYG) version of its popular mobile broadband service. To join customers must first purchase a USB modem ‘dongle’ at a cost of £99. From here customers can ‘top-up’ their mobile broadband credit in increments of 1GB, 3GB or 7GB at a cost of £10, £15 and £25 respectively. Credit can be purchased online at the 3 website, over the phone, or from any shop displaying the 3 Top-Up logo.

SMS Text News Reader Chris Drake spotted this and whacked it over. It’s brilliant news.  99 quid for the USB modem and then a tenner for 1GB of data for the month.

The United Kingdom is fast becoming one of the world’s most data friendly mobile countries.  Next time you fly in, get yourself a USB dongle from 3UK.  No contracts, no arsing around.  This is absolutely excellent.

Mind you I’m still quite happy with my tenner-a-month 12 month contract that I got a few months ago from them.

I hope that won’t screw up my 3UK service. I’ve been a lot happier and more content with service via 3UK than I have with T-Mobile. Although I do thoroughly appreciate T-Mobile leading the marketplace by being the first to launch unlimited data. As for an acquisition, well, each Hutchison geographic territory appears nicely pre-packed ready for a buy out… but I’m not too keen on the concept myself.

Link: T-Mobile shares phone masts with 3 to boost wireless broadband | Technology | The Guardian

T-Mobile is pooling its mobile phone masts with rival operator 3, to bring high-speed wireless broadband to more of the country. The deal, to be announced today, will be seen by many in the industry as a precursor to T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, buying out Britain’s newest and smallest network.

Back in August I reviewed 3’s X-Series tariffs , the ‘unlimited data’ add-on for contract customers bundled with a range of applications , and rather liked them.

However, I wasn’t able to test the Slingplayer Mobile application and was dubious about its value a part of the more expensive Gold tariff. This option, costing double the basic price at £10 per month in the UK, allowed unlimited streaming of media to an X-Series handset from a PC (via the Orb software package) or from a Slingbox ‘place-shifting’ device. Well, the nice folks from Parys Communications sorted us out with one to borrow and now I’m eating some humble pie…

For those not in the know, a Slingbox is a small electronic box of tricks shaped similar to a bar of gold (or so I believe from watching the ‘Italian Job’). It contains both an analogue and a Freeview (DVB-T) tuner, but can also be connected to a set-top box (for cable or satellite TV). It then connects to your broadband service and allows streaming of whatever is being watched or any channel from its internal tuners to PCs, PDAs and now Symbian phones so you can watch them away from home (hence ‘place-shifting’).

Usefully the Slingbox also provides an infrared transmitter that knows how to control most popular set-top boxes, DVD players and the like so channels can be changed, menus can be operated and recordings started and stopped remotely too. 3 were the first network in the world to introduce the Symbian client coupled with unlimited streaming over 3G and it wasn’t until almost a year later in October this year that Sling made the client generally available.

Setting up the Slingbox is easy, even with the spaghetti of cables under my TV the instructions had me hooking it up to my Sky box in 5 minutes with all the various cables needed included. An annoyance I hadn’t anticipated was that the Slingbox requires a wired connection to your broadband router so I had to move that closer to my TV (Homeplug-type devices can work around this - Sling even sell their own), but otherwise it worked straight away.

Once connected to my home network and switched on, I loaded the PC client and configured its network settings. Again this worked first time and I was able to start watching and controlling TV on my PC. Exciting as this was though (read reviews here, here, here for more on its basic features) I wanted TV on my mobile and moved straight on to my N73 handset to download the Slingplayer Mobile application from 3’s portal.

On running the application for the first time I entered the details of the Slingbox I wanted to view (the application can remember several if you have more than one) including a long number and letter sequence that I had written down during the initial PC-based config. Then I hit ‘start’ and held my breath… Around 10 seconds later the client indicated it was connected and starting to stream. Another 20 seconds or so passed and then voila! TV… on my phone. I threw on a hands-free kit to get the best out of the sound and settled in for a play…

I’m not sure what I expected, but the quality was simple amazing. I would have believed it over a WiFi connection, but over 3G streaming from my ropey home broadband? Wow. Although I had the option to switch it off I also left the sound set to highest quality stereo and it was as good as listening to FM radio on the device. I was astounded. Control of my Sky box was slick too… the client received the configuration of the set-top box I had entered on my PC earlier and through a ‘remote control’ menu I was able to access all of the features of my Sky box including the menus – the options appeared to have been customised for my device. Intuitively the mini-joystick on the phone controlled channels and menus as if using my remote control and I selected a couple of buttons I used regularly to add to a shortcut bar.

Showing colleagues at work many wouldn’t believe the video wasn’t being played from a memory card.

However, sat at home or in the office I already had access to TV when I wanted it so I set about testing it properly… on the move. I figured the train was as good a place as any. As a rule, anywhere with a reasonable 3G signal was absolutely fine, but there was nothing doing on 2G. On a 20 minute journey into Waterloo the picture would stutter on 2 or 3 occasions, but even if lost completely it recovered well without intervention after 10 seconds or so. One problem tunnel where only a 2G signal is available routinely caused the connection to fail, but otherwise I was surprised by its reliability. Off public transport and sat in coffee shops or waiting for an appointment the experience was much the same as at home – seamless. The picture was sharp, the sound was stereo and always synchronised with the picture and even text was crisp and clear (if not a bit small).

Although greatly impressed there were a few areas for improvement… The free Slingbox client that 3 gives away presents the image across the width of the phone’s display. This felt like a real waste of screen space as my N73 turned sideways has an almost wide-screen aspect. I eventually solved this by downloading the newer, generally-available client from the Sling website. Although not free (£20) it adds this crucial feature and allows the image to be scaled to fill the screen or displayed fully with letterboxing. However, it is a shame that 3 have not updated their client. Another cause for complaint was the start-up speed of the connection. This varied depending on signal and was a little slower on the move – at it’s slowest (over a minute from clicking ‘start’ to viewing an image) it was frustrating and particularly so if re-connecting after one of the rare disconnections. However, my biggest complaint doesn’t really relate to the Sling product at all… it’s TV.

There’s nothing on. Well, nothing worth watching….

The problem is that I normally only sit down to watch TV when something I want to watch is on. Having mobile TV was great but at 8am on the train into work all I could watch was painful breakfast TV… It was at this point that it dawned on me why so much attention to detail had been put into the remote control features. A Slingbox really is at its best paired with a DVR such as a Sky+ box. I went home, re-wired and configured the Slingbox to work with my hard-disk recorder (no Sky+ in my flat!) and bingo… telly nirvana. With the ability to watch shows I wanted from disk, to pause them when I was interrupted and rewind TV if the signal dropped the Slingbox was complete. Rather than being something to idly fill the time, I looked forward to commuting to catch up with the previous night’s Sopranos. On other occasions I’d watch live TV on the train home, pause it at the station and finish the program on the TV once I arrived. ‘Showing off’ my girlfriend called it, but she always says that when she’s impressed…
So would I recommend a Slingbox and Slingplayer Mobile? Absolutely I would – particularly if you’re a regular traveller. But there’s another factor to consider too… the price. Although not making much effort to publicise it, 3 offer a free Slingbox to Gold tariff subscribers. These normally cost about £95 from internet retailers, but if you intend to subscribe to Silver tariff anyway upgrading to Gold for an 18 month contract will only cost an additional £90. That’s pretty good value for a Slingbox and unlimited media streaming in my book.

Update: Since I started this review Sling have released 2 new products in the UK – primarily adding High Definition features. The original model is now referred to as the ‘classic’ but continues to be available for sale and free from 3. Although I haven’t tested them, reports indicate the new models are compatible with the Symbian client, but that there is no noticeable improvement in quality of mobile experience – that requires a PC or Mac client.

Kudos to the Three UK staffer who thought it would be a good idea to publish a link to the Huawei data card drivers for their USB modem online. They’re easily accessible at the mobile broadband page on three.co.uk.

My only issue? I can’t get my USB modem to work with the new Apple version of Apple’s Leopard operating system. Arse.

Children In Need (wikipedia reference), the annual British charity event aimed at helping out Children, is the focus of one of the UK’s biggest messaging aggregators, MX Telecom, and the UK’s most progressive MN(V)O, 3UK.

They’ve both collaborated to launch a mobile donation service for 3UK users, enabling one-click donation. There’s no financial gain either, no 40% cut — the entire cash donation is sent directly to the charity. Nice.

Here’s some more details (other Charities take note, might be worth a chat with 3UK and MX):

3, the mobile media company is collaborating with MX Telecom to provide a mobile donation service for its users to donate directly to the BBC’s Children In Need 2007 Appeal.

A section of 3’s Planet3 Portal will be dedicated to BBC Children In Need, allowing 3’s customers to donate with the touch of a button.

“By giving customers a simple way to donate, 3 is using its 3G internet service to help raise as much money as possible,” said Mark Williamson, Head of Internet Products at 3 UK. “We’re hopeful a sizeable portion of our customer base will play a part in making this year’s BBC Children In Need Appeal the biggest yet”.

Working in partnership, MX Telecom and 3 have made the donation process simple and effective, delivering the entire donation amount to BBC Children In Need with no financial gain to either company.

The MX Telecom developed donation system also allows for Gift Aid, adding an extra 28% of the donated amount to the total received by BBC Children In Need.

Mark Fitzgerald, Managing Director of MX Telecom commented: “We’re delighted MX Telecom’s technology is providing the most cost effective way of donating to the BBC Children In Need Appeal. It’s also positive that the platform will enable BBC Children In Need to appeal to a broader audience.”

Here’s a quick video I took of the unboxing of the 3 Skypephone.

It’s a very straight forward, no nonsense device:

I just took it out the box, stuck it into my USB port on the Apple, left it for a while then started using it.

I’ve been sat using the 3 Skype Phone for a day now and I’m loving it. I’m in the middle of a write-up about it, and the launch yesterday.

Although not officially unveiled until later today, we’ve got all the details of the new Skype mobile - launched in conjunction with mobile operator 3. Ewan will be at the press launch later, so expect pictures soon!

The 3 Skypephone is a fully-featured 3G Internet phone with Skype built-in. In addition to Skype calls the phone makes conventional calls and can be used to access 3’s broad range of other internet services.

The handset was developed by Skype and 3 in partnership with Qualcomm, using Qualcomm’s BREW platform to enable Skype to work with core handset features such as address book and messaging. It’s got 3G, a 2-megapixel camera, mp3 player, mobile TV and internet access.

According to the information available, it’s a “small and shiny” handset, weighing in at a tiny 86 grams, and comes in black or white, with a blue or pink trim. Standby time is 320 hours, with a talk time of 270 minutes or 170 minutes of video calling. The screen is a 176 x 220 2.0″ QCIF 262K colour display, and the handset itself has 16MB of external memory plus room for up to 1GB of microSD memory card (it comes with a 256M card as standard).

Price-wise, the 3 Skypephone will be available from 3Stores or on the web from 2nd November, at £49.99 on pay-as-you-go or free with a contract. You get free Skype to Skype calls included (as expected) as long as you’re on a contract or you top up your credit monthly.

More news as it comes in..