Mobile data in Australia
As I was writing this post last night thoughts were buzzing through my head about what the mobile data market is like abroad. I wondered if the T-Mobile £7.50 a month for ‘unlimited’ (1gb) data was an international market leader, or if we were lagging behind.
Not 14 hours later, Dan Warne, News Editor of APC Magazine in Australia added the following comment to my post. I’ve highlighted it here because it gives a fascinating insight to what’s going on in the Australian marketplace at the moment.
I am sooooo with you.
On the flip-side, it’s also so frustrating to see mobile application and device makers who put no work into data optimisation and compression. (The vast majority of mobiles that have ’email built in!’ which turns out to be POP3 with no server-side compression and reformatting at all.)
I envy your position in the UK to be able to get unlimited/1GB data for GBP7.50. Here in Australia 1GB costs around $99/mth… (GBP39). And even then, most carriers don’t allow it to be used with a SIM card activated for voice, which is an attempt to keep people paying outrageous over-the-air rates for downloaded ringtones and casual web browsing.
Hopefully T-Mobile will get an influx of subscribers BECAUSE of its reasonably-priced data plans and other carriers around the world will sit up and pay attention.
I am starting to get the impression that there is enough consumer interest now for using web and email properly on mobiles that carriers will have to start offering some better value plans. Certainly the first carrier in each country to “break” will lead the charge for all the other carriers I think.
(Incidentally I was fascinated to discover that in Australia, Telstra, probably the most expensive telco in general overall because it’s the incumbent ex-monopoly telco, has a plan that offers unlimited email on a Blackberry for $39/mth — GBP15. I’m yet to find out if this ‘unlimited’ usage model includes other internet data or only email. If it does, I’m changing to Telstra!
I’ve no doubt that they’ve probably worded the contract to insist that it’s email data only, Dan!
