Mobile phone users not quite digging heavy multimedia prices
By Paul Miller 
posted Mar 20th 2006 12:34PM
posted Mar 20th 2006 12:34PM
This might not come as
much of a shock to you, but we're not sure carrier really realise how much of a drag it is to pay for lame multimedia that you can get for free over the wide open
internets. Hopefully this new survey by KPMG will wisen them up a bit, since of 3,600 users surveyed, 40 percent said
they wouldn't pay nothing nohow for music videos, television clips, news, or other content if it meant tacking extra
charges onto their bill. When it came to users who actually did purchase content, Asian users were much more likely to
go for entertainment, while European and US users went for news and information services. KPMG reasons that carriers
should use multimedia to build brand loyalty, but we're not so sure. Just give us a decent browser, unlimited data, and
a QVGA screen and we're sure we can find plenty to keep us occupied.
Cingular Subscribers - CHECK YOUR BILLS!!!
There is something going on with a company called M-Qube.
If you purchase a rigntone from your phone/handset/device sometimes it will automatically sign you upa for a 10.00 a month subscription.
CHECK YOUR BILLS!
Make sure you aren't over charged...on anything. The only clue I had was that I was over charged $140.00 for something else and happened to continue to check past that.
CHECK YOUR BILLS!
These wireless companies get a %age of subscription fees and stuff like that so you may need to continue to check.
I let Verizon give me a Razr V3c, but I most decidedly did NOT opt-in to the great big nothin' that VCAST is right now.
Good thing I didn't pay a dime for it, or I would have hit the roof when I discovered Verizon's lame interface and crippled BT.
Not a surprise to me. If they would develop services and applications that could allow phones to act like extensions of the PCs people already use and are used to they would be a lot more successful in selling capacity on the networks they have spent so much to build. Instead we are stuck with crap like music videos and ring tones. I have no interest in buying a poorly designed handset to pay an overpriced data fee to download crap, especially when I can whip out my laptop and get wi-fi in most any home, office, coffee shop, mall, etc for free. I think T-Mobile USA may have the best model; wi-fi equipped phones that can use free public networks and a combined EDGE+HotSpot data plan at a reasonable price. Too bad their handset selection sucks.