Aehso’s Output

Pat Phelan: Irish taken as fools as O2 Ireland iPhone package comes with attached “Paddy Tax”

Irish company Cubic Telecom today blasted the prices that people will have to pay for the iPhone when it’s introduced in Ireland on March 14th. Cubic Telecom CEO Pat Phelan, speaking on the packages said:
“There is no excuse for paying such high prices and getting so little in return. The minutes, the text bundles and the data package are completely inappropriate for Irish people and the massive difference in what Irish and UK and Northern people get for the same price suggests that they’ll throw any old scraps at the stupid Paddys. ”

Phelan is calling for a boycott of the phone until o2 rethinks their charges. “It’s time for us Irish to tell O2 we’re not going to accept this. We have Apple’s European HQ here in Ireland, the iPhone itself is fantastic but there’s no way we should buy this phone until O2 cops on and looks after their very loyal customers here. We should get the equivalent package they’re getting in the UK and Northern Ireland

Too fucking right. I don’t even want an iPhone - I just want affordable mobile internet access. Irish consumers are and have been gouged by a mobile network oligopoly in this country for years. It is the giant elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but nobody in power has the balls to do anything about. O2’s latest ‘product’ is yet another “up yours” to us stupid Paddies, our inept government and communications regulator. Hey, we’ve put up with with it for so long, why would anything change now?

A boycott of high end packages like the iPhone plans or broadband dongles won’t work. You’d need to get every soul in the country to stop sending SMS messages in order to get attention of these boyos.

[Update: See comments on this post and my followup post before signing up for this service!]

Yesterday I was on the phone to Vodafone “Customer Care” to inquire about their mobile data rate plans. The response I got when I told the rep that I wanted to send/receive email by using my mobile phone as a bluetooth modem was priceless: “That would be very expensive. You really don’t want to do that”.

It is nice when service reps tell you what you do or don’t want isn’t it?

Of course with the pricing plans Vodafone had it would indeed have been prohibitively expensive so he was trying to help. But yet Vodafone were offering USB 3G modems for a flat rate (5Gb cap) a month. So why couldn’t I just use my existing handset instead? Could he explain the price difference? I’ll let you guess the answer.

Clearly I wasn’t the only person to ask this question - or maybe I was and I have far more clout than I thought Later that morning Vodafone announced a flat-rate plan for data access from mobile handsets - 500Mb for EUR9.99 per month for post-pay customers, EUR0.99 per day for pre-pay customers. [Update: see comments below and my followup post - this plan does not allow use of isp.vodafone.ie gateway]. You couldn’t replace your home broadband connection with it but if you are a bit of a road warrior (e.g. N770/N800 users or if you have a laptop and occasionally leave your house at weekends/evenings) then it might be of interest. Don’t even think of using it abroad though - those foreign bits are so different they cost way more to move around.

I suppose you can only strangle the market for so long with exorbitant pricing before the regulators start sniffing around. Of course this plan makes the current O2/3/Meteor data plan offerings pale in comparison so I suspect within a few weeks they will announce either an identical price plan or a plan that effectively costs the same amount per Mb per month - <cough>oligopoly</cough>. Watch this space.

BTW, for OS X users out there here are modem scripts and settings a variety of handsets as a bluetooth modems with OS X. I’ve used the SonyEricsson scripts and they work beautifully. If only the service was as free…