No, not what you’re thinking. I do ok as far as that goes.
I took a step back and surprised myself today - surprised myself at the lengths I was going to, simply to save £2 a month on a service that I will find genuinely useful.
I’m no flash-Harry, but I don’t buy value baked beans, and I certainly wouldn’t walk out of a pub because the round was a quid or two more than I was expecting, so why do I have such an aversion to paying for data and data services? It’s data that I’m using, it’s for a legitimate purpose, and it will make my life slightly easier.
Since I moved away from a Windows phone I’ve been trying to use google calendar to organise my life.. but there’s no easy way to sync that with a phone (unless I use my mac). But then I found this:
www.gcalsync.com - syncronise your google calendar with your phone.
Great. It’s a lovely little java app that sits on your phone, connects to your calendar, and syncs it up for you - a hell of a lot easier than having to manually sync using cables and blueteeth and all that witchcraft.
But for some reason that’s not enough for me.
I have a problem with paying for data when it’s charged per unit. I don’t like texts, I don’t like using GPRS/3G on my phone. I get a 50GB limit on my internet access and I make sure that I stay within it. Why? If I go over a little it might cost me a few quid extra. I can afford it, yet I make it an absolute principal not to have to spend anything extra on it. (A friend of mine even worked out that the ISP sell extra bandwidth at more or less cost, assuming it’s transatlantic, so again I have no reason to skimp).
I pay for my travel per unit (petrol -> miles). My food, my electricity and heating, my water, all per unit consumed. Until recently, people might have considered these things the staples of modern existence. I would argue that data access is now also essential to modern living - it’s definitely essential for me. Why can’t I apply the same thinking to it? I have absolutely no idea.
I think the way we look at connectivity prices is largely to do with dial up. Back when we were using 56k modems we were essentially paying per unit, with the obvious caveat that the unit was minutes instead of bytes.
Then along comes broadband and its flat fee and its… always on. So our perception of connectivity shifts because NOT paying per unit was one of the key selling points. The internet starts to look like the other premium home entertainment services like Sky or cable.
Users of Sky/cable are happy to pay to receive the signal, but they don’t want to pay extra every time they turn on their TV. And thats one of the reasons it’s good. This principle saturates internet culture. I pay for an online mailbox, I don’t want to pay per email. The whole point of VoIP is that you don’t pay per call, and when you do it is far cheaper.
Weirdly for the mobile telcos, SMS is the most expensive data going, and people love it! Txt all the time. So you can understand their confusion that GPRS and 3G bytes are considered extortionately expensive. In reality, this is partially because we’re used to getting it for free in the home, partially because the internet has a pay for the service not the use of the service culture so YouTube doesn’t easily fit into a 3G mentality and partially because they’re extortionately expensive.
With the advent of P2P, Torrents and other more legally legitimate services like Joost, we’re rapidly moving into a position where the current economics of ISPs don’t hold. The average user will be flogging their connection all the time.
So get used to paying per unit, the days of freeloading are numbered.
Dan
P.S. When can we expect your take on Supreme Commander?
And the iPhone
See, Dan knows all about this shit.
I know the economics aren’t going to hold, and price per MB isn’t dropping as quickly as the relative cost of MB/second either (as far as home ‘broadband’ goes), so we’re all going to have to get used to it, as you say. I was just really surprised at how much I oppose it, without even thinking about it.
You didn’t answer my question though - is it something you do, or do you just pay for it when you need it and not really think about it?
As for SupCom, I was in the beta, and it’s looking like the business for multiplayer. Will it be another TA? Will we have more epic 7-hour games? I couldn’t say yet, but my copy arrived this morning so I may post up a few notes in a week or two. It’s about time someone made use of multi-monitors though.
I’ll probably leave the iPhone for someone else to rant about. You know me, I don’t really get in my element unless something pisses me off.
I realise that I’m about 3 months late with my opinion here, but the reason that you (and I) have a problem with paying for data per unit seems fairly obvious to me.
The way I look at it is that if I eat a chicken, then there is one less chicken. If I drive my car somewhere then I’ve burnt some petrol. However, if I send or receive some data, then nothing in the physical world has changed. I haven’t consumed anything by doing it, so therefore why should I pay per unit. Once the network infrastructure is in place to carry the data then surely that should be it, and they should factor the cost of running and maintaining that into my monthly fee.
This might not be the way it works in the real world, with the core networking companies charging each other per unit, but this is my perception of how it should work and so I’m not happy if it doesn’t.
This is why I always get a mobile contract with far more included texts and minutes than I ever use. I find that if I don’t then I’ll always think twice about calling or texting someone, and I don’t think thats the way it should be. I’d also like to take this opportunity to “big up” T-Mobile for their £7.50 flat rate internet access. Its great, especially as they haven’t worked out how to bill me extra if I use it abroad.