iPad And The Mobile Data Scam

Last week I was having wonderful winter skiing holidays in Tyrol Alps. Tech and gadget wise, it was again a connectivity nightmare. Having some experience in this area, related to traveling to Austria, I scheduled my previous blog post before my departure, to publish automatically Sunday evening. My other preparations (not counting sharpening the edges of my F2 Speedster snowboard) included tasks like pre-purchasing 10MB data package from Orange for my BlackBerry and searching the Internet for currently available prepaid data SIM cards in Austria.

Austrian holiday apartment houses usually do not offer WiFi connectivity. How different it is when I travel to the USA and every budget hotel in any remote town has WiFi, most of them offering Internet as a complimentary service. But in European resorts very often we have no alternative, but use cellular connectivity. The coverage is usually not bad, but roaming costs kill.

When we opt for a mobile data plan at home, it usually is between $15 - $50 a month, with some monthly transfer limits in the range of several gigabytes. So far a gigabyte or two has been enough for typical mobile web activities - email, news, social networking, without heavy video (real world mobile speeds are still not very comfortable to watch mobile video anyway). And then comes the concept of roaming - using networks different than the home one, while traveling abroad. Roaming is very rarely experienced by Americans, as they have to cross an ocean to experience this phenomena. But it is very painful and frequent to Europeans. As soon as I leave Poland (my home country) and go to Czech Republic (that is just a 90 minutes drive), my phone logs on to one of networks operating there and I get an SMS message saying (or warning) "data transmission is now $10 a megabyte". How come? Before crossing the border it was $10 a gigabyte and now it is thousand times more expensive? Three orders of magnitude! This is probably the biggest legal scam of mobile Internet era. Then after three hour drive I enter Austria and the same warning SMS arrives. MNOs are forced by law to send such messages, but still I can imagine how many innocent people who have their iPhones or Androids or Blackberries on flat data plans at home are being ripped off as they roam across the borderless now Europe.

This is the reason I never use my USB cellular modem to access Internet abroad. $10 a megabyte is just this. A scam. I will not be paying such rates voluntarily. Period.

There is a workaround. It is a pain to implement. But sometimes you just have to. Like this time - I wanted to watch the on-line transcript of Steve Jobs presentation of the new iPad device. Silently I was hoping the mighty Apple will cut an international data transmission deal for the iPad owners. Stupid me. I tell you - they would love to. But the monopoly of the GSM cartel cannot be cracked that easily. The iPad - among other things - is meant to be the traveler's choice. Leave your laptop at home. Take the iPad with you. It has all you need when traveling. Music, navigation and maps, email, news, social networking. Just grab the 3G - enabled model... and be prepared to pay a monthly bill of $1000 or more.

Being a David against the Goliaths, Steve offered one strong message. All iPads will be SIM-free, meaning you can use any carrier's SIM card. May be not so important for majority of Americans (who statistically do not roam abroad too often), but a life saving feature for Europeans.

So - using my skiing holidays story as an example - I end up in Austria. The day I arrive I head directly to the nearest post office and spend EUR 15 for a "bob breitband" prepaid SIM card (it has 1 gigabyte of data included and then it costs just EUR 4 for subsequent gigabyte). Honestly it took me two days to figure out the post office was the right place to ask for prepaid mobile SIMs. I was asking at gas stations and grocery stores, until a friendly baker told me "SIM cards you buy at the post office" one morning...

I am not sure when Europeans are going to get a union - wide mobile data plans. Before it happens we can either pray there will be WiFi coverage where we head to, or be prepared to pay thousand times more for what is available at home, or make an effort to get a local prepaid SIM. At least the new gadgets not being SIM-locked, including the iPad, let us use the third option. One hint for the device manufacturers: build a database of connectivity settings. I wonder if Apple will require users to manually enter all the APN's/usernames/passwords when a SIM card is plugged in? iPad should just recognize the SIM and autoconfigure itself. Similar hint to prepaid data SIM providers: make your settings as foolproof as possible: no PIN required, accept any username / password / APN combination. Austrian "bob" has it all wrong... They need to supply a booklet manual telling you how to configure the connection settings.... why???

And finally a hint for the potential iPad owners, trying to decide whether they should go for the high - end 3G - enabled model, or just settle with the basic, $499 one. The extra $130 Apple wants for the 3G option, will buy you a standalone pocket 3G - to WiFi router, like the Novatel MiFi, available for both GSM/HSPA and CDMA (think: Verizon) networks. The MiFi will create a personal WiFi cloud around you, allowing other devices (like your iPhone or laptop or another iPad of your significant other) share the data connection.

The World could be so simple, yet it is so complicated... The mobile data roaming charges set up by the GSM cartel are so frustrating. Not only frustrating, they prevent many breakthrough and innovative services from being widely implemented. One day they will be a history. In the meantime we have to be smart and learn the ways to avoid the scam. The sooner the roaming revenues come down, the sooner the entire scheme will collapse.