Tag Archive for 'vodafone'

Sometimes you just gotta push people

Published by Ben Kepes on September 14, 2008 in Business, Business and the Environment, Design and New Zealand. 1 Comment

Awesome to read that Vodafone New Zealand are unilaterally ditching printed invoices. I’d consider myself at least marginally green (not forest-green for sure, more sort of a lime-y shade) but I have to admit I still get printed statement - mostly because it take a bit of effort to go out and cancel them and, given an existing status-quo, most of us won’t.

So big ups to Voda for seizing the bull by the horns and going electronic only - sure a bunch of customers will moan and even more will just keep printing statements out but there will be a few that take this move and use it to start their own little eco-crusade.

Me - I think I might just need to do some statement cancelling….

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Voda joins the 20th century, and other carrier gossip

Published by Ben Kepes on August 7, 2008 in Business, IT and New Zealand. 4 Comments

It seems Vodafone New Zealand have rolled out their own forums. Thus far there are a few posts - mainly from Voda spin doctor (and really nice guy by the way) Paul Brislen.

We should be positive that Voda is creating a forum for discussion - I feel for Paul - I’m sure he evangelised the forum thing - now he gets dangled out to be eviscerated by the masses - it must be lonely being the primary voice in a forum - it’s kind of like a community… of one.

It would have been great to deploy it internally initially to get some content up, and time will tell how receptive Voda are to criticism. But I can’t help but think that once Geekzone takes it’s traffic, there’s not many potential customers for the Voda forum site. Maybe it would have been better for Voda to partner with Geekzone - let a neutral and independent voice run the community side of things?

On another note there are rumours that Telecom will be announcing some big network changes tomorrow - which, if correct, could balance the cards somewhat given the hype that Voda has enjoyed of late thanks to the iPhone. Miki, my CTO in waiting, has an analysis over here which, while way over my head, should mean lots to some people (or some to lots of people)

Interesting times…..

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All’s now here to test the hypothesis…

Published by Ben Kepes on June 16, 2008 in Business, IT, New Zealand and Web x.0. 1 Comment

It’s all here - services tailored for mobile delivery, the soon-to-arrive iPhone 3g and now a sensible mobile data offering. With a hat tip to Rod who saw it first it seems that Vodafone is introducing a $1 per day, 10Mb cap plan for mobile data. There is now no excuse to not use mobile data - if uptake doesn’t increase significantly, the issue is outside of price and service availability.

Bring on an interesting anthropological experiment! Press release follows;

Vodafone launches $1 a day mobile broadband

Vodafone has blown apart the mobile data market with the launch of its new casual rate of $1 a day.

From July 28, customers will be able to surf the net, download music and games and play on their favourite sites without committing to a fixed monthly data contract.

The $1 a day casual rate gives customers up to 10MB of data – more than enough for most casual users on their mobile devices. Customers who go over that limit will be charged at $1 per megabyte and users who regularly need more can take advantage of our suite of data plans.

Vodafone’s GM of Products and Services, Kursten Shalfoon, says the new casual rate will change the way customers use the Internet on their mobile devices.

“Over the past year we’ve increased network capacity, the handsets are evolving rapidly and now we’re able to bring mobile Internet alive with sharper prices.”

To make sure customers can take advantage of the new rate, Vodafone’s network is optimising  websites for viewing on customers’ mobiles – a first for New Zealand.

“There’s nothing to install at the customer’s end, and it works with all our WAP-enabled mobiles. It means customers don’t spend ages downloading a page they can’t read on their mobile device. Instead they’ll get a page that’s optimised for their own personal device making the experience that much better for all concerned.”

The new pricing is simple and affordable, and now applies to almost all internet data, including the Vodafone Live! portal. Sky Mobile TV and Vodafone Compass will continue to be free of data usage costs.

“We have great content deals, and Vodafone Live will still bring the best of the internet to Vodafone customers, but it means the customers can decide what they’ll want to look at and what they want to get involved with.”

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iPhone 3g in New Zealand - UPDATE

Published by Ben Kepes on June 10, 2008 in IT and New Zealand. 1 Comment

I see over on Rod’s blog the following comment;

I went into a Vodafone store today and was told that the iPhone to be released here is NOT the 3G one announced today, but a different “3Gi” one to be announced in a low key manner by Apple next week. They didn’t know the difference, but one assumes that support for 3G on 900 MHz might well be the main one.

They also said that 1) the iPhones will not be SIM locked, and 2) they *will* be available on prepay at a non-subsidized price, probably around $800 - $1000.

Take this with whatever “shop staff don’t actually know anything yet” grain of salt you think appropriate, but they seemed very sure of the 3Gi business.

So what of Steve’s promise re a worldwide maximum price of USD199????

False advertising - no?

Any chance of a comment from Voda NZ?

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