Vodafone 3G Roadtested

[A1c]

A comprehensive aricle has been published by The Sunday Times after testing a SonyEricsson V800 on the new Vodafone 3G service.

Rather than repost the whole (extensive) article I have chosen to post only the conclusion below and included a link to the source where it can be viewed over 3 pages!

"Vodafone is offering big bundles of airtime with a certain amount of “free” video and music included. Sensibly, it will then charge for each song or video, rather than for hard-to-understand data usage. The £40-a-month Anytime plan includes 500 minutes of call time. That looks cheap on a per-minute basis, but relatively few customers spend that much on their mobile each month.

Will 3G find a market? Surely it must do. There can be few of us who do not, at least occasionally, want to listen to music, sports results or hear the latest news — but the key is pricing. And prices will have to fall considerably before 3G is embraced by the mass market."

Sunday Times - Vodafone 3G Roadtest (14/11/2004) (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-1357368_3,00.html)

[colonel]

I really don't understand the price point. The 3G service is no more expensive then the 2G one. In fact Anytime x can be taken out with a 3G phone (I did).

The 'live 3g bundle' tariff of 40 a month is actually competitive, as it includs 50 mins of video calls a month and 12 pounds of data in perpetuity.

3G revilatises WAP and internet services. I have yahoo+ email, which is the best email service, especially its spam filters which mean I have no issues with spam. When I go to the yahoo ****** (wap.yahoo.co.uk or the new beta one wap.oa.yahoo.com) with vodafone 3g, its a pleasure. Instantaneous access to my emails, and not the clumsy pop/imap or blackberry clients that have to download emails and headers first.

I will be buying a Dell x50v soon, and this will hopefully be the perfect internet mobile roaming bundle with my Motorola E1000.

Vodafone would be quite at liberty to charge more for their service, simply because:
1. hand over to 2.5g is almost seamless
2. open internet
3. Customer service in a different league
4. Seamless handover to overseas 3G, e.g. Vodaphone portugal, etc. (cheaper roaming charges then 3)
5. Cheaper for others to call you! Bet lots of you do not know, or care, about this, but one way 3 gets money is to stiff people calling you.

But they don't. If you take away the 1/2 price line rental, which doesn't seem to be a total draw, as most people are still buying Nokia 6230s, Sony K700is and Motorola V3s on 30 quid a month, I don't think 3 have anything to offer consumers ......

[Geoneil]

Colonel - The 3G service being the same price as the 2G one may cause some (very slight) problems should the public associate 3G with 3 and their ultra-cheap tariffs. How many people will be signing up to 3G hoping for cheaper prices? (I suppose they could always go to 3 and I doubt it would be that much of a loss for Vodafone)

and the £40 inclusive data bundle equates to £12 of anything free... well that equates to approx 5Mb of internet browsing, which is fine if you stick to what you'd normally download over a GPRS connection, but if you have a nice ultra-fast 3G connection you'd probably want to use it (in much the same way as those switching from home dialup to broadband) 5Mb = one video from a 3rd party site and should you want to hook the phone to a laptop or PDA and surf 5MB really wouldn't last long, although the paid-for allowances are good value (they are however, contract only, from what I can tell)

As for the remaining points...

1. That will always be the case, 3 don't have their own 2G network, Vodafone do!
2. 3 can (and probably will at some point) offer that service too
3. No argument!
4. Important to those who travel, but wouldn't 3 offer seamless handover to overseas 3G is Italy, Austria or Australia?
5. Once again, no argument, although I think that's a minor consideration for people buying handsets.

As for 2G still selling well, well the bread and butter business of a telco will always be voice and text, anything else (even a provider's own content) is an add-on. The 2G networks currently provide those services more reliably than 3 and GSM handsets are still generally smaller, sexier and, despite not having the capabilities of a 3G handset, still more desirable (IMHO)

My own observations show that 3 are quite popular up here, but I'm betting that it's their 3pay deals that are the main draw.

[colonel]

I agree that the single most stupid thing is keeping the data cost the same. Its like charging ADSL users data costs at a GPRS or dial-up rate.

Roll on fix monthly costs for unlimited mbytes .......

This might not happen until 4G, where we finally move over from a circuit-switched network to a packet-switched network, and all traffic is over IP.

By the way, where is '... up here .....' ?

rgds
c.

[Geoneil]

Up here = Gateshead. I'm commenting on what I've seen people use in and around Newcastle/Gateshead area, seems to be quite a few 3 users, mostly NECs and LGs with the odd A835 around.

[18736]

A comprehensive aricle has been published by The Sunday Times after testing a SonyEricsson V800 on the new Vodafone 3G service.

Rather than repost the whole (extensive) article I have chosen to post only the conclusion below and included a link to the source where it can be viewed over 3 pages!

"Vodafone is offering big bundles of airtime with a certain amount of “free” video and music included. Sensibly, it will then charge for each song or video, rather than for hard-to-understand data usage. The £40-a-month Anytime plan includes 500 minutes of call time. That looks cheap on a per-minute basis, but relatively few customers spend that much on their mobile each month.

Will 3G find a market? Surely it must do. There can be few of us who do not, at least occasionally, want to listen to music, sports results or hear the latest news — but the key is pricing. And prices will have to fall considerably before 3G is embraced by the mass market."

Sunday Times - Vodafone 3G Roadtest (14/11/2004) (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-1357368_3,00.html)

Roadtested? How? By the sound of it, the journalist did not leave his desk to review the handset / service.

Interesting that he did not test the 3G / 2G handover...

Also interesting that his download failed and he had to switch to GPRS and wait for ages for the download to finish.

I say other people need to test the service, and do it properly this time.

Not a comprehensive review methinks, considering the 3 pages!

[Geoneil]

3SellerNW - I think this forum will be very busy over the next coming months, be interesting what those actually on Vodafone 3G would have to say (especially compared to what's been said about 3)