ThreeUK has Coverage for 99.5% of the UK – Just Not Me!

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

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Mobile Data Enough to Force a Man into Bankruptcy?

Full of Christmas cheer Vodafone UK landed a whopping £27,322 bill on British customer Ian Simpson’s lap.

As part of Simpson’s £41.50 per month contract was a £7.50 data plan maxing out at 120Mb per month.

It appears that Simpson may have forgotten to switch on his ‘Dumbdar’ when he hooked up his mobile as a broadband modem at home as it was faster than his existing connection! After downloading what was thought to be “20-30 TV shows and four albums” Vodafone UK pulled the plug.

Now I’m not sure whether this speaks worse of the state of broadband in the UK or Vodafone UK for helping to perpetuate the widely held belief that mobile network operators are determined not to offer up sensibly priced mobile data. These downloads equate to something like £18 per minute!

Only last month we had the case of the Canadian running up an $85,000 with Bell Canada, for exactly the same thing, using his mobile as a modem.

Vodafone UK have stated they will “try to come to some sympathetic arrangement” with Simpson but is this enough? With Vodafone’s mobile data revenues up 49% to £1bn for the six months to Sep’06 surely they would be in a position to i) wipe this silly bill and ii) leverage their size to open up mobile data when and where the customer wants it for a sensible price?

Don’t Pack the Batteries Dear…

As of 1st January 2008 the every thoughtful Transportation Security Administration brings in some new daft rules for the frequent and business traveller.

“Spare lithium batteries – extra batteries not installed on devices – will no longer be allowed in checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries may be packed in carry-on baggage and lithium batteries installed in a device may be packed in either checked or carry-on, as long as the battery is installed in the device.”

www.tsa.gov

To be clear on this, if your battery is installed in the device you can check it in BUT if not don’t bother as it is a security risk?

Just to make the whole thing even harder there are limits on the size/capacity of any spare battery as well.

• Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
• You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
• For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.

Got it? Nah – me neither. Thankfully I don’t travel much in the US, but certainly these silly rules will spill over into the global scene soon enough.

So for all you hardcore gadget freaks you will need to purchase a humble calculator soon as, just to add up all those batteries you are toting around before you next hit the terminals.

For help with all the wierdness of the new rules head over to safetravel.dot.gov.