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Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:15:13 +1000On the odd occasion there have been a few humble phrases of criticism in this blog about Telecommunications. In this regard our largest provider recently sold to us, even though we originally owned them, may not have served us as well as it could have. |
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Now that the highly paid CEO has filled up his saddle-bags with loot, and departed he leaves a rather depleted and devastated communications landscape.
And in all humility, your humble blogger would offer himself as a candidate. After all your humble blogger is well versed in all the necessary jargon, to be an articulate leader in the telecommunications arena in Australia. And will humbly demonstrate some of it here:
Quack, quack, quack, quack!
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!
As you can see dear reader, your humble blogger is fluent in the language of corporate leadership in the telecommunications industry.
But still your humble blogger has other interests in telecommunications. For example, he is still waiting patiently for a commercial release of the Google Android in Australia.
However although prepared to wait, your humble blogger's spouse is rather more impatient. So eventually your humble blogger ventured forth to buy an iPhone for she who must be obeyed.
Now at this point dear reader, your humble blogger must confess that he has been a Telstra customer for well over 35 years. Well, strictly speaking it wasn't even called Telstra when your humble blogger first became a customer of the great Australian phone company. Not that such fealty seems to count for much these days. It seems that many communications companies regard constancy as proof of low intelligence and so they treat their most loyal customers with indifference that at times borders on utter contempt.
And this is what fuels the propensity towards churn in the communications market.
However despite the poor customer service and high charges, Telstra does have something that other network providers don't have. Namely, a nation wide network that works outside of the metropolitan area. And so your humble blogger, who has been known to occasionally venture outside of the metropolitan precinct, has stayed with Telstra, although his fidelity has not been entirely due to customer loyalty.
Now having decided to purchase an iPhone, your humble blogger looked online. And discovered ... Hooray! Telstra does offer a plan for the iPhone. Although at first glance they did seem rather expensive!
Before long your humble blogger could be found at the premises of the nearest Telstra dealer, asking about the iPhone plans that they advertised online. But it turns out the dealer did not have any iPhones. The dealer had been unhappy with the lack of flexibility in the Telstra plans and the fact that he had not received any training in how to use the iPhone and so had returned them all! And it seems that many Telstra dealers had also done this!
And so your humble blogger went to the Optus dealer next door, signed up for a two year plan and took away a nice new 8GB iPhone.
No sooner had the iPhone been unpacked, when it was pounced upon by the younger members of the family. It has been difficult to wrest it away from them, but eventually your humble blogger was able to get some hands on experience with the iPhone. And if you have used a computer, especially a Mac, you will find the iPhone interface intuitive. One of the few criticisms your humble blogger could make was in regard to battery life, but this is a criticism that is almost universal for all smart phones.
There is also a disturbing trend to not make it easy to run the iGoogle desktop with Safari. As the iPhone came out of the box, Safari had difficulty remembering login details for an iGoogle desktop ... On a Mac workstation this can be remedied by selecting the option Safari->preferences->Autofill. This will display an Autofill form which includes the option of filling in user names and passwords. Your humble blogger tried for quite a long time, without success, looking for the equivalent menu selection on the iPhone.
Yours humbly will investigate this further.
Another discovery made by your humble blogger, almost as soon as the phone came out of the box, concerned the tiny silver switch on the top left hand side of the iPhone (which slides up and down) called the silent switch. It's a great little feature! But one needs to be aware of it's existence! So if you have just purchased an iPhone and are wondering how to get the blankety-blank thing to ring, you will find the answer to your problem quite quickly if you Google for "iPhone doesn't ring" as your humble blogger did.
Overall, the iPhone is a simple and effective design and it does what it does very well. All the things that Microsoft say that their systems could also do ... If only the phones where ten times larger and equipped with a 1000 GB hard drive ... And if only customers were willing to carry a 300 gram battery pack and wait five minutes for their phones to power on!
Currently Apple are doing well mainly because of the iPhone. And in the USA AT&T owe a lot of their new sales to the marvellous little device. And having used one, your humble blogger can appreciate why this is so. The iPhone really is a neat package. Customers use it a few times and become attached to it. Some other bloggers would have you believe that it is Apple's marketing that has made the iPhone a success. But in your humble blogger's opinion it is Apple's design that has given them the edge. Best of all for Apple, the corporation doesn't even need to advertise (they still do -- of course). Because consumers actually come to them, almost beating down the doors, demanding more of the product. It is every sales and marketing managers dream!
And in your humble blogger's humble opinion, if Telstra don't get their act together and show that they are fair dinkum about the iPhone, they are going to lose out big time. Consumers have already tightened their belts. But they are still willing to fork out some cash for a good product. And the iPhone is a good product. It has already achieved critical mass. And you don't just have to take my humble opinion for that. Just check the sales figures for mobile devices.
Of course Telstra could also be losing out for other reasons. Their decision, last year, to deal themselves out of the tender process for Australia's broadband network left your humble blogger almost lost for words. And the decision a couple of weeks ago by the Australian government to build the network themselves left your humble blogger equally gob-smacked!
Well not entirely speechless. Perhaps there will be a blog about this coming up shortly.