Don't like AT&T? Too bad.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)If you polled a group of iPhone owners on their biggest complaint about the handset, I'd guess that most would name the AT&T service. Yes, spotty coverage and the sometimes abysmal customer service are not to be ignored, but those issues are hardly unique to AT&T. On the other hand, one gripe is very legitimate: the fact that AT&T has a monopoly on Apple's device. It's aggravating and just not fair, they would say, and I have to agree.
A quick look abroad offers a much better model. I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Australia (as if you could have any other) where three carriers offer the iPhone. There you will find it at Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone. I knew this before I arrived in Oz, and it's worth noting that Australia is not the only country to offer the iPhone on multiple carriers, but I had to see just how the services differed.
According to my colleagues at CNET Australia, Telstra offers the best coverage at the highest price. Optus is just the opposite, and Vodafone is in between. The plans did seem to vary, but an unlimited data model was less prevalent. Perhaps that's why I noticed far fewer iPhones in the wild. But even so, the concept of a real customer choice is a great thing.
The reasons for AT&T's dominance here aren't a mystery. Apple doesn't make a CDMA version of the iPhone, and Verizon Wireless passed on the opportunity when Apple was first shopping for carriers. And even though T-Mobile in Europe offers the iPhone, T-Mobile USA isn't quite an option either, mostly because its 3G technology is incompatible. But just the same, it irks me that the home of Apple, and a country with 306 million people (a few more than Australia), restricts iPhone owners to just one provider. Sure, the carrier-driven U.S. cell phone market has always been in a class by itself, but that doesn't make it right.
HTC, the company that made the G1 phone for T-Mobile, reportedly is working on a new Android-based touch-screen phone for Australian carrier Telstra.
The gadget-focused Smarthouse writes Monday it heard that word from a senior Telstra executive at the just-ended Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:
The Open Handset Alliance is Google's rallying point for Android work.
(Credit: Open Handset Alliance)The new touch phone has been developed using a combination of the Google Android operating system and Linux based software written by HTC. The screen is believed to be bigger than current offerings from HTC.
Meanwhile, our colleagues at ZDNet Australia report that Telstra--and other Australian phone companies--aren't showing much interest in what's likely to be the country's first Android phone, the Kogan Agora. The Agora is scheduled to ship to buyers on January 29.
Telstra seems inclined to hedge its bets on Android gadgets. In November, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo--in the company of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer--was somewhat dismissive of Google's phone technology: "My view is, (Android is) interesting, not compelling," Trujillo said. He also wondered aloud whether Google could follow through. "First generation, you make the sale. The question is when you get into the second, third, and fourth generation(s)," he said at the time.
According to Smarthouse, Telstra executives at CES took a look at the new Palm Pre, one of the highlights of the show, and found it lacking:
We have seen both and we believe that the new HTC phone will be a real competitor to the iPhone and the Pre which at this stage looks nice but is still not delivered to market.
Palm says that the Pre will become available in the first half of 2009. The phone offers Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a 3.1-inch display, GPS, 8GB of storage, and a slide-out keyboard. It runs Palm's own WebOS operating system.
Star Trek lovers drooled earlier this week when Telstra, the Australian phone company, used a hologram to beam its chief technology officer from Melbourne to a business meeting about 460 miles away in Adelaide.
Hugh Bradlow, Telstra's CTO, was filmed in Melbourne by a high-definition video camera. The video was then sent in real time across Telstra's high-speed network to an optical projector in Adelaide where the 3D life-size image appeared and interacted with the audience.
(Credit:
Telstra)
A camera was also set up at the event in Adelaide, so that Bradlow could know who he was talking to and interacting with.
Telstra set up the demonstration to show its business customers the power of its high-speed data network. David Thodey, group managing director for Telstra's enterprise and government division, said the hologram symbolized what had become possible using the company's network, which has become fast enough to transmit huge data files such as 3D high-definition images. He said the new technology is ideal for industries like health care and education.
"We've all seen this sort of thing in futuristic sci-fi movies," he said in a statement. "But the reality is that it can be done here and now, as we have just demonstrated, because of the scope and capability of Telstra's world leading networks."
While the hologram technology demonstrated this week is available today, it's still too expensive for most businesses. But Telstra executives say that within four to five years that could change. And as costs come down, holograms could become a new way of doing business.
Telstra isn't the first company to see an opportunity in improving virtual meetings for business customers. Other companies, such as Cisco Systems, have already begun dabbling in high-definition video conferencing. Cisco's telepresence systems don't project 3D holograms, but they do provide high-definition video meetings that give people the feeling that they are in the same room.
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