Orange and Nokia vomit out more rubbish, probably

So, the Guardian carries a rather positive viewpoint about Orange and Nokia getting into bed to do ‘services’ together. One click access. 10 different phones. Blah-bloody-blah.

Here are the first two opening paras:

Orange has signed a three-year deal with Nokia to bring the Finnish phone maker’s mobile maps and games services to its customers in nine European countries, including Britain, this year.

The deal, to be announced today, is a step back for Nokia, which had threatened the position of mobile phone operators with the launch of its own suite of mobile services under the Ovi banner last year.

Nothing wrong with The Guardian’s reporting. The issue is that this is press release bollocks from both companies. Orange is busy making sure every single one of it’s mobile subscribers DOESN’T use mobile internet services by charging them through the roof for doing anything other than ‘browsing’ and by making the service — literally — unavailable (it’s been offline for most UK customers for the last 6 days).

The amount of times I’ve seen Orange vomit out YET ANOTHER RUBBISH CONCEPT in the many years I’ve been watching them, geez. Music service after rubbish service after rubbish half-working nonsense.

This is an eat-my-hat moment.

I really hope that there are some smart people in both organisations who are going to deliver a series of services that their customers will LOVE and adopt tomorrow. Rather than shovelling out half working, half interesting, generally irrelevant proofs-of-concept that your average normob doesn’t care about.

Will I eat my hat if that happens?

You know, I retain a degree of positivity. Here’s hoping it’s all going to be good. You never know.