money is choking australia's communications future
The future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed.
- William Gibson
In the past few weeks I've seen two presentations about the mobile web and the future of mobile phones. Both presentations talked about the need to educate the user, particularly as a way to increase adoption of new features/technology. Neither presentation discussed cost as a key factor, which seems odd to me.
I think people don't use new technology because it costs too much. In Australia, telecommunications of all kinds are a classic case. Consider mobile phones for a moment:
- Sure, you can get a great phone that does everything and even has an MP3 player and 3 megapixel camera in it. It will just cost you anything up to a couple of thousand dollars (for a phone)..
- Sure, you can do video calls and picture messaging; but you'll regret it when the bill turns up.
- Sure, you can browse the web; but you'll be paying by the kilobyte.
That last one is a kicker. I'd use mobile web content all the time, except for the fact that more or less on principle I refuse to pay for any form of "web" content that is charged by the kilobyte (and it's slow).
the total spend
When you consider the total amount being spent on communications, you find that in some ways new technology is being sabotaged by the old. The cost of landlines keeps people from spending more on broadband or mobile content.
The calls made on my landline could easily be switched to mobile or VOIP calls. So why keep a landline? I have to maintain a landline to get ADSL. No way around it, particularly when your average unit block's body corporate won't let you install cable.
With caller ID enabled my landline costs as much as my internet connection. So actually I spend quite a lot of money to get basic broadband. If the landline was cheaper, I'd spend that money on better broadband.
An average person can be easily be paying AUD$100 every month just to be connected with a landline, mobile and internet - then you pay for calls and data. The telcos do offer bundles for these services, but the so-called "broadband" is generally pathetic so they're not a good option.
how pathetic is the broadband?
It's 2006 and Telstra is still selling a $29/month plan with 200megs of included data. Megs, not gigs. Even at 256k speeds that's a joke. After you burn through 200megs, you pay $0.15/MB for the rest of the month. If you go through 20 megs a day - hardly a stretch - you'll have a $90 bill at the end of the month. Hope you didn't plan to update your operating system or download some podcasts.
Meanwhile Optus charges the same amount for just 100megs (300megs if you bundle it with other products), after which point your connection drops from 256k to 28.8k. That's right, after 100megs you'd have a better connection with 56k dialup. But at least you're not paying for extra data.
These plans are far worse than my first broadband plan (256k/3gigs), which a co-worker once described as "ghetto broadband". To really put the icing on the cake, the TV commercials for both telcos tout the benefits of "lightning fast" broadband, letting you download music and videos at broadcast quality with no delays. Some even made a big deal of how cheap it was for this amazing experience.
The reality is the connections are slow and expensive... and that's in the cities. Don't even get me started on Telstra's TVCs showing people using broadband and standard mobile phones in the outback.
wifi?
Wireless access in Australia is rare and usually expensive. There is some talk of wireless coverage for major cities, but those cities who have run trials all seem to have ditched the plan after the pilot.
Nobody seems to want to pay for bandwidth... probably because it's so expensive.
what about other media?
It's not just phones and internet. Australia also has a low adoption of digital TV and pay TV.
Digital TV was greeted with hostility - nobody could recall asking for digital TV, yet suddenly we were told our TVs would stop working and we had to spend several hundred dollars to buy something called a "set top box". There was no incentive, it was just free-to-air TV with an added cost.
Unsurprisingly, takeup has been so bad that the date for analogue switch-off was pushed back from 2008 to 2012. We finally have a couple of extra channels; but I still don't have a set top box and in fact few of my friends have them either.
Meanwhile pay TV is priced firmly in the "luxury" bracket, then to add insult to injury you get commercials anyway. That's right, you pay for it; then they take money from advertisers as well and make you sit through ads.
Even so, most people would still love to have pay TV - maybe some sports, movies, comedy and music channels. Right? Well they saw that coming so each of those options is in a separate, additional package. To get that selection you have to buy everything, at a grand cost of around $92 per month.
That's on top of the $100 you're already coughing up for your phones and internet. Feeling broke yet?
digital radio?
No, we don't have that. Next!
education vs. cost
Getting back to mobile phones, there is a plan afoot to run an advertising campaign to explain How Mobile Stuff Works™. People buy expensive phones yet don't really know how to use them; and the industry thinks that telling people how to use their phones will have them MMSing and video calling like mad. The Shareholders Will Be Appeased.
The thing is, people will learn even the most arcane of interfaces if their level of motivation is high enough. Think of SMS - the interfaces aren't great, yet it's wildly popular. People haven't complained to mobile phone companies that it's too hard to send an SMS - they've developed ambidextrous thumbs.
So why aren't those same users going wild for MMS? Well, SMS seems cheap and MMS seems expensive. The motivation just isn't there.
filthy lucre
Everything boils down to money. We could all have fantastic experiences with available technology if things were cheaper, but then various companies wouldn't make so much money. So we drag along with slow broadband, overcharged mobile phones and landlines which continually degrade in value and quality.
It costs so much for our phones that most people can't seriously consider pay TV even if they wanted it. It simply doesn't make financial sense to pay all that money, unless you have a large family that won't leave the house ever again if you get pay TV (thereby replacing your entire entertainment budget).
The Future™ is already happening - if you have enough money you can have it right now. But for most of us, we're cancelling pay tv and hoping this month's phone bill isn't too high. As long as the tyrrany of price continues, Autralia will remain a communications backwater.
Labels: australia, broadband, landlines, mobile phones, pay tv, telcos, telecommunications, wifi
I use Internet on my mobile device (i-mate JAMin) occasionally; it's freakin expensive yes, but I'm on a 3 phone business plan so it's all included in the monthly allowance. I would not even consider using Internet or MMS if I was on a personal plan.
I also have iBurst - which is not cheap, has limited coverage, highly unreliable ... but I need to have mobile Internet access so I just try and ignore the "No signal" or "Service unavailable" errors.
But yes - the situation with telecommunications, broadband, wifi etc is just disgusting. With the Government's new plans for wifi I anticipate it'll be like in the old days when your ISP ran out of dial-in modems; low speed, unreliable performance and connectivity. I can't imagine they'll invest what it takes to provide a quality wifi network.
Yeah, it is pretty bad actually. I used mobile a little, for the web, but now I really only use Opera mini and SMS from Australian (the compression is enough that I can live with those bills). I have found Autralian providers particularly painful to deal with, and their offerings pretty hard to understand. On top of which, it isn't hard to get straight-out misinformed. There is a reason the country has a telecommunications Ombudsman - they need it :(
There is quite a lot of technology available in Australia, but it does seem to have gone from being a leader to a backwater. I wonder if selling off the relatively efficient and productive farm that Telstra used to be has anything to do with it.
Oh well. It's depressing to watch, while everywhere else things actually get massively better, and the prices mean that using and learning about he technology is feasible.
Sigh.
At the end of the day the problem in Australia is competition. We may have a large number of ISPs but there is only one backbone. While this continues wholesale prices will only change when the ACCC steps in.
I keep my post short as I could go on for hours :(
Ok, you guys do have it better than us here in South Africa when it comes to broadband, but we don't get charged by the kilobyte in mobile surfing. We get charged by the megabyte. Truth be told, it's not much better either, and it seems that if there is any cool feature you want to use on your phone you'll get charged for it. Everything has to be charged for. Even caller ID is charged for despite the fact that its mandatory.
3G is pretty expensive too, compared to other parts of the world. I think you guys do have it better, but hey, we could both do with a significant upgrade here.
You are super correct! For example in the case of iPhones most articles I’ve read are about its best features. And my usual reaction – yeah yeah yeah I’ve already heard and read that.
But one thing in my mind why cost is, let’s say, almost overlooked. It must be understood or taken automatically that the article is for people who has the gadget. And whoever reads this is understood to be capable of buying the said gadget or can afford.
Thank you so much for taking some time to discuss this with us. For once and for the first time, someone had the courage to discuss this matter. People are just so insensitive sometimes that they tend to forget the fact that not all people can afford. And for this and that applications or features to be actually and factually seen or proven, it must be made sure that the gadget is already held by the reader of the discussion.
It was recently noted in my local newspaper that Australia has the largest credit debt in the world. This doesnt makes matters worse for inflation. We pay more for less.
Broadband article was also on Yahoo's frontpage concerning cheaper broadband for Aussie ISP's but no drop in prices??
I must admit Virgin Mobile Wireless have become the first affordable ISP with the most coverage. Check them out, I believe others will follow, Australia needs a break.
I totally have to agree with you! At least we have Naked ADSL now, which frees us from having a home phone any more. I got rid of mine about 6 months ago when Internode first started rolling out their Naked ADSL - I haven't looked back.
Hi
well here in Finland costs of mobiles are so low even I use mine all the time. Back in Oz I struggled to keep my bill below $30 a month and was conscious of every call and how long they were taking. In contrast in Finland:
- there is no call connection fee
- charging is per second
- calls are cheap per minute
how cheap? well I'm on a low volume plan with DNA and I pay 2 (yep two) cents per minute to DNA clients and 7 cents per minute to all other national calls.
I now spend about the same and have far more meaningful calls.
As a result VOIP providers here are nowhere near as well pervasive as they are in Australia (why would you bother?) and I'm sure that the network is actually utilised well.
The telcos' will no doubt come up with a litany of excuses as to why radio signals are more expensive to send in Australia.
.. but ... but ... butt ... ouhh butt fu_ked again!
Sigh ... its a lovely little colony in which we have privilege to be domicile.