In Bed With Ed

Within the last 24 hours, 3 Australia have launched a new website, http://www.three.com.au/iphone, in order to petition Apple into giving 3 Australia the iPhone. I’m sorry, what? A well-reputed, multi-billion dollar company has to publicly lobby a handset provider to get a phone? They must be desperate, and negotiations must have broken down completely for this to be happening now!

But that isn’t the biggest problem. The biggest issue, for me, is that I was lied to by Three. Two weeks ago, I called them and asked them point blank “Will the iPhone be coming to 3 Australia?” In no uncertain terms, I was told that yes, it would be and that an announcement would be coming within the next few weeks with pricing details and upgrade deals for existing customers.

I then confirmed, on 2 seperate occasions, this information with Three stores around Melbourne (Elizabeth Street and Melbourne Central), who both said that the iPhone would be coming to Three and that it would be out in August. So definite were they about this that they told me I should not cancel my contract, because I would be eligible for upgrade deals.

And then this website! It just blatantly annoys me that they lied to me and so many othe customers. A simple “We don’t know yet” would’ve done the trick just fine. But instead, they give customers misleading information and have to resort to the public humiliation of launching a petition! I’m sorry, but this is just outrageous and utterly ridiculous. Because of this, I will be cancelling my contract with Three. As most web users are aware, online petitions simply do not work. And if Three can’t convince Apple that they would be a good carrier for the iPhone, then they can’t convince me I should stick around waiting.

Defuddle has been up and running for a few weeks now and it’s been really interesting and a great learning experience to put up a new web site and to promote it. We’ve been constantly looking at how people have been using the site and have added a few new features:

Categories
When you ask a question, you now catagorise it. You can customise your question by assigning tags to it. This way, the site is kept organised and neat while tags create sub-catagories and dynamic groups between questions.

Twitter
Now this a cool feature! You can now ask Defuddle a question using Twitter. Simply go to your Defuddle.com account page and link it to your Twitter account. Then all you need to do is send “defuddle” a direct message on Twitter with a question and it will appear on Defuddle a few minutes later! You will even get a SMS message to your mobile phone with your answer Iif you have enabled this feature in Twitter).

We have also made a whole lot of bug fixes and have made a few changes to the interface. So if you haven’t already, check out Defuddle now!

Last week, the iPhone 3G was announced and I’m sure you already knew that, unless you have been living under a rock. No offence.

What isn’t known about this device is how much and what plans will be available for Australia. Shortly after the announcement, Optus came to the party with http://www.optusiphone.com.au, allowing people to put a $100 deposit down.

Vodafone quickly followed suit, with its own iPhone web page. Noticably absent were two major telco companies, Telstra and 3. So where are they?

Telstra has long ties to Microsoft and their Windows Mobile platform. This is a relatively minor point, compared to a much larger one: Telstra charges a huge amount of money for data transfer at the moment. Carrying the iPhone would require them to offer a very low-cost, high-usage data plan. This would cause Telstra to lower their data prices across the board and drastically affect their bottom lines. Optus and Vodafone have long been promoting their cheap data plans, so the iPhone fits quite naturally into their current mobile plans and would not negatively affect their bottom line.

3, also, has relatively cheap data plans. But it hasn’t come to the iPhone party because of it’s X-Series mobile offering. It has spent many, many years developing relationships with Microsoft (by offering MSN/Live Messenger), eBay and Orb. None of these relationships could exist with the iPhone, as these applications are not available for the iPhone. Also, the Apple iTunes Wi-Fi Store and Apps Store is in direct competition to 3’s current offerings (it makes a sizeable chunk of money from charging for games). All of these things would cut into 3’s bottom line.

It is difficult for me to list these reasons against 3, as I’m currently with them and won’t be able to get an iPhone if I stay with them.

So there are two questions that remain - will I be able to buy an iPhone outright with no contractual obligation. If not, how much is it going to cost me to cancel my 3 contract?