Friday, June 11, 2010

Vodafone - FAIL!



Back in April I switched my iPhone from o2 to Vodafone; the original impetus for this was signal and missed-calls issues:

  • randomly the phone would not ring, sending calls to voicemail
  • my office building has Vodafone pico-tower
The missed calls was the most annoying issue, I can't seriously afford to be having calls randomly dropping to voicemail. And it seemed random, I could call my phone from the landline, it wouldn't ring, I could call it again, moments later, and it would ring - without touching the iPhone. Wierdly it only started after I moved from my original contract to a 30-day rolling contract.

On a whim, I called Vodafone sales, explained I
  • wanted to switch from o2, where I was getting 300mins+TXT+Data for £20/month on a 30-day rolling contract.
  • wasn't interested in a long contract, as I intend to buy the (at that point unanoucned) Next-Henteration iPhone (at that point hoped for in one of the summer J-months)
  • wouldn't believe any rubbish from any sales reps who claimedthey would be carrying the NG-iPhone

Vodafone offered 600mins+TXT+Data for the same £20/month (well a different £20, cause my current £20 goes to o2!). They suggested that the offer was only valid for that particular phone-conversation (bull-crap!) and tried to avoid the need for me to get a PAC code by selling me a gold-number (pick your own number) for another £20. Well no, I need to keep my number, fool.

A couple of weeks later I find myself on Vodafone, I miss a call and click on the voicemail button. Now o2 and AT&T iPhone users would expect to enter VisualVoicemail (VVM) at this point:

but I find myself dialled into the traditional Vodafone voicemail system. After various se
tup/config messages I get to my message, listen to it, hang up. Next I dial 191 to speak to customer services, at this stage I'm
thinking that maybe this is because my phone came from another network and hasn't been correctly configured for VVM. No:

"Vodafone don't provide VisualVoicemail for any UK customers"

Oh.

This isn't what I was expecting. I thought the differentiator between the contracts was 300mins, not 300mins in return for VVM.

VVM requires a certain amount of customisation and additional hardware on the carrier's side; iPhones communicate directly with the system storing the messages and provides them to the user in an email-fashion, you can jump directly to a specific message, you can see which message is form which caller, etc. Another useful feature is having the speaker button on screen at all times (when you're in traditional voicemail on an iPhone, you need to use the keypad keys lots, but the speaker button is on another screen):

What I find sad is that when I talk about VVM to non o2 or AT&
T subscribers, I have to explain what it is (this isn't their fault but it's such a shame).

OK VVM isn't a deal-breaker, but having had the feature before, I am starting to miss it. The traditional voicemail system is just.. FRUSTRATING!!! Here's Vodafone's offical suggestion via their own forums:
"Visual Voicemail is not supported on our network, and there are no current plans for this to change.
As a workaround, some customers have recommended the popular app "HulloMail" which offers the same visual voicemail experience."
Great. Thanks.

Why can't you just loose some inertia and invest in some hardware? 


On the face of it  HulloMail looks great, however:

  • do I want a third party storing my voicemails?
  • it's a free service, so the SLA is worth what you pay for it too, right?
  • their business plan is free to individuals whilst they chase the enterprise to pay (so we're really just beta testing)
  • if this was Google we'd know they had the money behind them to fund good infrastructure, but a small business (as this appears to be) might not be able to provide something that holds up to a large and rapid expansion when they're not even charging for the App
Anyway the way these things normally work is this: a third-party product comes along and provides a feature everyone thinks is great and then Apple incorporate into their product (normally without payment or acknowledgement to the third-party). What tends not to happen is for Apple to implement a feature (albeit already available already on some other phones) and then the carrier ignores is and instead encourages customers to use a third-party product instead. Becuase they are too greedy to make capital investment.

On further research I find that VVM isn't by any means standard on iPhone-carrying networks. In the UK it's clear Vodafone aren't providing it:



As the iLounge article quoted by allaboutiphone.net reported various carriers around the world were citing various excuses for not committing to VVM.

This:
Mobile Phone Provider Avoids Unnecessary Capital Investment

isn't news. But what is of interest however is that the control-freak teenager in the room (Apple) has agreed to new carriers taking the iPhone without committing to provide the infrastructure needed to support this feature. Apple go to such great efforts to control delivery of their message, how come they crumbled? If suspect the proposed product populous-wide proliferation outweighed their principles. They got greedy.

@Vodafone: FAIL! Pleased I dipped my toe.
@Apple: See me after class, I would have expected better of you.

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