Last week I was attending the annual Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Seattle. It was a great week with with lots of interesting sessions on how the technology world of Microsoft will be like in the near future. Sadly I cannot talk much about it due to the NDA all MVP’s have signed. Hopefully Im not breaching any NDA’s by saying that the future looks good, fun and exciting if you’re not an ITPro. oh.. ah.. all this is a bit off topic…
Seattle, great city, lots of interesting spots. but how do I find them? Im a tourist, i don’t know where stuff is… Going into a tourist office and getting a huge city map or buying a Lonely Planet guide is soo 2000. I work with mobility, and got a great smartphone and a tablet that can connect me to all the interesting spots around with my GPS and location services and I got the apps that will tell me where everything is. Also, this was a conference I i could see where a lot of my friends was, without having to call and ask… Gowalla and Foursquare is great. Google Maps could easily be my city map, taking advantage of the vast amount of POI’s they got in there. This sounds perfect! Mobile technology just makes tourism soo much fun!.
Well.. that’s just in theory… in practice mobile technology is way to expensive for tourists. With my carrier, Telenor in Norway i have to pay a whopping Kr. 112 NOK per MB of downloaded data in Seattle.. That’s about $20 USD for 1 MB of data, or €14.5 EUR. It’s just INSANE. I was on a trip to Gran Canary a few weeks ago and had a similar experience there.
Fortunately there is work in progress around this. The EU commission has voiced their concern/discontent for the “cowboy” practice amongst European carriers for over charging for data roaming and has created a regulation that limits the maximum amount that carriers can charge for roaming. It has been active since July 1, 2010.
I know that carriers are picking their brains to blood to figure out how to cash in on the new mobility trends. Delivering infrastructure and network access just doesn’t give enough revenue, the WAC is one of those attempts and I hope they figure out a business model soon and start collaborating better. Carriers need mobility, and mobility needs carries that invest in better infrastructure and technology that will enable us to create new an innovative mobile solutions.
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Insane pricing on data roaming
Commentary | March 9, 2011 by Alexander Viken
Last week I was attending the annual Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Seattle. It was a great week with with lots of interesting sessions on how the technology world of Microsoft will be like in the near future. Sadly I cannot talk much about it due to the NDA all MVP’s have signed. Hopefully Im not breaching any NDA’s by saying that the future looks good, fun and exciting if you’re not an ITPro. oh.. ah.. all this is a bit off topic…
Well.. that’s just in theory… in practice mobile technology is way to expensive for tourists. With my carrier, Telenor in Norway i have to pay a whopping Kr. 112 NOK per MB of downloaded data in Seattle.. That’s about $20 USD for 1 MB of data, or €14.5 EUR. It’s just INSANE. I was on a trip to Gran Canary a few weeks ago and had a similar experience there.
Fortunately there is work in progress around this. The EU commission has voiced their concern/discontent for the “cowboy” practice amongst European carriers for over charging for data roaming and has created a regulation that limits the maximum amount that carriers can charge for roaming. It has been active since July 1, 2010.
I know that carriers are picking their brains to blood to figure out how to cash in on the new mobility trends. Delivering infrastructure and network access just doesn’t give enough revenue, the WAC is one of those attempts and I hope they figure out a business model soon and start collaborating better. Carriers need mobility, and mobility needs carries that invest in better infrastructure and technology that will enable us to create new an innovative mobile solutions.
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Tags: Data roaming, iPad, iphone, Link:Mobility, Microsoft, MVP, Seattle, Technology, Telenor