Mojo no go in Oz
During my research on the mojo phenomenon, I can’t help but mourn how far behind the times Australia is in terms of our broadband and 3g data charges.
I had a friend from Germany stay with me last week and he could not believe I pay $99 a month for my home ADSL2 account with a 20 GB download limit.
His german account is 20 euro a month with a terabyte of downloading at his disposal.
Mobile phone browsing plans in Australia are even worse.
Much has been made of the Iphone’s brilliance, but little of the whopping excess data charges users are being slugged with for surfing the web, downloading music or turning their phone into a lightsaber.
When the latest genY magnet was announced, no carrier announced how much it would cost.
But this didn’t stop thousands of people from pre-ordering one.
Even once it was released, Vodafone still didn’t announce the cost.
A quick check of the latest iphone plans reveals that no carrier is offering no more than 6 GB download plans.
That’s not much if you plan on streaming video to the web, watching Youtube clips or using it as an all-in-one journalism tool.
Of course, iphones aren’t made for mojos, but the point here is the miniscule data limits that will keep the mojo phenomenon out of Australia for now –it’s just not a viable alternative here until we get better coverage at cheaper prices.
The latest Vodafone plans for the Nokia N82 -considered by many as the best mojo phone- say nothing about data limits and costs on their website or in the fine print.
This means one of two things:
Either they are hiding the costs because they are too high, or even scarier, web capability isn’t even a selling point for mobile carriers. This article from PC mag gives a neat rundown of vodafone charges though.
