Using the iPhone now almost two years, I was very curious to get hold of the iPad, to see if that tablet thing is as good as it has been advertised. I am using it now since more than a week, and I must admit that I am positively impressed. I have since abandoned my MacBook and netbook for the iPad. It is like an iPhone with a much bigger screen, now typing with ten fingers is possible, typing is really quick. Switching it on is quick, no booting time, it does not make any noise, no fan. It’s size allows you to take it with you easily, you do not have any barrier to use it if you just want to look up some informations, check your emails or social networks, it is just as simple and fast. Apple has a strict software distribution policy which is contested by many people, but in the other hand, the user can be sure that the software installed via the Apple store are of a good quality and hopefully free of any malware. That what is also great with it, one does not need anti virus, firewall or malware protection, like in the old times…
I was not really keen in getting the 3G version, as getting to know that it is using a smaller sim card, this would have ment to have a new contract with a mobile phone operator, meaning more expenses. As officially the iPad would not support the tethering and I am not very enthusiastic with jailbreaking, I found an easy way round: using a Nokia E51, I purchased a software called JoikuSpot for less than 10€, it creates a local wifi which I can use to connect the iPad so that I can have access to the Internet through the Nokia. A great workaround which makes my iPad totally independent of available wifi hotspots.
Archive for Communications
my first experience with the iPad
After two years of often bitter debate, the European Parliament approved a raft of new telecom laws.
After two years of often bitter debate, the European Parliament approved a raft of new telecom laws.
Majority support for the package was achieved after the Parliament reached a compromise with national governments earlier this month on the controversial issue of illegal file sharing over the Internet.
The laws are designed to give European citizens cheaper telecom services, more privacy and a faster Internet.
Incumbent operators will be forced to compete fairly with smaller rivals or face. An E.U. regulatory authority will be able to intervene if it is dissatisfied with how national regulators police their markets.
Consumers will be able to switch fixed or mobile operator in one working day while keeping their number; they will have the right to be better informed about the services they subscribe to; and have the the right to be informed about data breaches from their telecoms operator. Operators must also give consumers the option of signing a contract which lasts no longer than 12 months.
With regard to file sharing, those suspected of illegally sharing copyright-protected content over the Internet will be assured the right of defense and the assumption of innocence rather than being summarily cut off from Internet access. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned, subject to the need for appropriate conditions and procedural arrangements in duly substantiated cases of urgency in conformity with European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Today, for example, the French Hadopi law does not fulfill this criteria as since it does not include the right to be heard of the person concerned.
This last point nearly derailed the entire package a few months ago, when the Parliament tried to insert a safeguard for consumers that would have forced national authorities to seek a court order before cutting off a file sharer.
“The compromise approved by the European Parliament today is certainly not the alpha and omega of protecting Internet users’ rights, but we did achieve the best possible result under the current constitutional constraints,” said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian member of Parliament from the Green Party.
A new pan-European telecom regulator, equipped with veto powers over its national equivalents will help ensure that all 27 countries in the E.U. play by the same rules. The new agency, called the body of European regulators of electronic communications (BEREC) will be able to overturn a decision by a national regulator if they believe it unfairly favors the former local monopoly. It will share this veto power with the Commission. BEREC will be established in spring next year. E.U. member states have 18 months to transpose the new laws into their national statute books.
Clear rules on the use of cookies, files placed on Internet users’ computers by web sites they visit are also welcomed. The E.U. legislature kept the existing opt-out regime for cookies (meaning that users can deny a cookie) and improved it to the benefit of Internet users.
As this telecom package is an EU directive, it has only effect if the member states follow it. It is now up to activists on the national level to make sure that the governments of their respective countries do so.
Go abroad if you want to save on your international SMS
Why is it more expensive to send a SMS from Malta to another E.U. country (eur 0.23) than from another E.U. country to Malta (eur 0.13)?
Why is a German for example charged eur 0.13 for a SMS to Germany while a Maltese is charged eur 0.23 for the same SMS?
This questions remains unanswered by all 3 mobile phone operators and the regulator.
Internet interruption of several hours
Once again the Malta Communication Authority (MCA) is urged to strengthen the regulation of internet provision of in Malta. As already happened in August 2008, recent events have shown how fragile the current provision of internet in Malta can be. Despite having increased the number of cables connecting to the international internet grid, it is clear that no failover policies are in place. Customers of one of the major ISPs have been left stranded for several hours, depriving them of basic internet and international telephony.
It is amazing that since last major internet disruption in August 2008, no failover and no alternatives are given to the public. It is not understandable why the MCA has failed in its role of regulator.
The recent interruption of services (Enemalta, Melita) has caused damage to the business community; the regulators and the government should make every effort in order to avoid these situations in the near future.
AD welcomes consumer protection regulations in mobile telephony
Following new EU regulations regarding mobile telephony, Prof. Arnold Cassola, AD Chairperson, said:’Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party, welcomes the introduction of the new EU roaming regulation proposed by the European Commission in September 2008 and approved by the European Parliament in April 2009. The new EU Roaming Regulation makes sure that the prices for SMS roaming are harmonized and capped. Consumers will also be able to surf the web, download movies or send holiday pictures with their mobile without experiencing ‘bill shocks’ on returning back home from holidays this summer.’
Henrik Piski, Spokesperson for IT and Communications adds: ‘Alternattiva Demokratika notes that Vodafone, Melita and GO mobile have implemented the new regulations. GO Mobile is also urged to revise its price for sending a SMS from Malta to another EU country, currently priced at 23 euro cents, while sending an SMS to Malta while visiting another EU country is charged at 13 euro cents.’
EU seals mobile roaming deal ahead of summer period
Prices of mobile phone calls made between EU countries will be further lowered as of July this year, according to an agreement sealed yesterday (24 March) over the EU’s so-called ‘roaming regulation’. As part of the deal, however, telecoms companies will still be able to subject users to an initial charging period of 30 seconds, which should enable operators to maintain some revenue.
According to the text
of the final agreement, mobile phone calls passed from one EU country to another will be capped at €43 cents per minute from July 2009, down from the current limit of €46 cents. This cap should be further decreased to €39 cents from July 2010, and to €35 cents from July 2011. All prices exclude VAT.
The compromise stems from an initial European Commission proposal to limit roaming calls to €34 cents per minute by 2012. During the first votein Parliament at the beginning of March, MEPs proposed a cap of €40 cents per minute, to be applied from July 2010 to mid-2012.
Mobile users will also benefit from lower charges for phone calls received while abroad. These fees will be capped from the current €22 cents per minute to €11 cents per minute from July 2011 (VAT excluded). Moreover, a new cap has been introduced for roamed text messages, which should cost a maximum of €11 cents (VAT excluded) from July 2009.
Operators are of course allowed to offer much lower prices than the maximum charges identified by the EU, although this was seldom the case under the first roaming regulation.
No more bill shocks
More good news for consumers came with an agreement on a new system to prevent so-called ‘bill shocks’ for data roaming, which frequently hit mobile Internet users when abroad. The new regulation sets a €50 limit for data roaming per month (excluding VAT). Once a customer reaches 80% of this amount, the mobile operator will send a warning message, giving details of a procedure to continue data roaming. Should the user fail to respond, the operator must automatically cut the service once the cap is reached.
Negotiators rejected suggestions from the Parliament to consider a specific volume of data as a limit for data roaming, which MEPs proposed capping at 20 megabytes per month. “This would have discouraged companies from offering lower tariffs for mobile Web traffic,” a Commission official explained.
Compromise on billing system
The Parliament also had to give up its proposal to apply per-second tariffs as of the first second of a roamed phone conversation. Currently, most operators impose per-minute tariffs for roamed calls, a practice which ends up billing customers for 24% more time than they actually spend on the phone, according to the European telecom regulators group (ERG). “It’s like taking the train from Brussels to Paris and being charged to go to Rome,” explained Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva.
The compromise will allow operators to impose an initial charging period of 30 seconds, after which the per-second system will be applied. This means that if an operator wants to exploit this advantage, a roamed phone call lasting 15, three or 27 seconds will always be charged as though it had lasted 30 seconds.
Does the airspace belong to everyone?
Since a week, we are out of internet at the office in Sliema. As we are using the wireless internet provided by Vanilla, we climbed on our roof to check the connection of our antenna just to realize that as a new building has been finished in Tower Road/Bisazza street, we have lost our connection to the emitting antenna. I wonder if there is some sort of regulation, it is not correct that with the erection of buildings, one looses the wireless services one used to enjoy in the past…
Mobile phone prepaid time window
Simon Busuttil has published today an article in The Times regarding his enquiry at the E.U. Commission about the mobile prepaid time window in Malta. The Commission made it clear that it is for the national authorities and/or national courts to determine whether specific practices in Malta constitute unfair (and, therefore, illegal) practices.
So the question is whether, in Malta, MCA and the Consumer Affairs Division consider this practice as illegal or, at least, one that merits a change in our national law. I will be raising this matter with them accordingly.
He will continue to follow this issue very closely while I will continue locally my legal inquire.
Link: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090121/opinion/your-phones-time-window
Reply received from the E.U. regarding the prepaid mobile time window
E-5323/08EN
Answer given by Mrs Reding
on behalf of the Commission
(22.12.2008)
The question of the Honourable Member concerns the time period within which credit must be used by pre-paid subscribers in Malta. The issue of time windows for mobile top-up cards was already addressed in the Commission’s reply to written question E-0182/071. This issue is particularly relevant in view of Malta’s high proportion of pre-paid mobile subscribers (91% in 2007), the highest percentage in the European Union2.
This particular issue has not been addressed in the Directives constituting the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications. It is a contractual issue between the operator and the subscriber, regulated by the market itself according to the specific characteristics and consumer’s needs in the different national markets.
The Universal Service Directive3 nevertheless provides that national regulatory authorities shall promote the interests of end-users, by ensuring that transparent and up-to-date information on applicable prices and tariffs and on conditions for using electronic communications services is available. The issue of transparency of tariffs and conditions is also being addressed in the ongoing review of this regulatory framework in order to increase consumer protection.
Failure to provide the consumer with clear, appropriate and complete information relating to the prices and other important features of the telecoms services (such as the usage limitation in time/expiration date of the service) by a telecommunications provider also falls under the scope of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive4 and can be regarded as a misleading practice. Under the Directive, operators / retailers must provide consumers with all the material information they need including prices and expiry dates in order to make informed choice and purchase decisions. Competent national authorities and courts may on a case-by-case basis rule on such commercial practices. Malta has transposed the Directive in January 2008.
In addition, consumers’ rights in respect of standard consumer contracts are safeguarded by the Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts5, which prevents significant imbalances in the rights and obligations of consumers on the one hand, and businesses on the other. This general requirement is supplemented by a list of terms which may be regarded as unfair and taken into consideration. Terms which are found by a national court, tribunal or administrative body to be unfair under the Directive are not binding on consumers.
The competence to enforce national measures transposing the abovementioned Directives rests mainly with national competent authorities, in this case the Malta Communications Authority or consumer protection bodies, which may wish to investigate this matter and take any necessary action in accordance with national laws.
1 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/QP-WEB/home.jsp.
2 Source: 13th Implementation Report, March 2008.
3 Directive 2002/22/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 March 2002 on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services; OJ L 108, 24.4.2002.
4 Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council, OJ L 149, 11.6.2005.
To be continued…
Imposing a better mobile phone spending control for clients to the mobile phone operators
Personal debts are often created by mobile phone usage in Europe. It is
mainly due to the non-transparency of costs and the myriads of different
prepaid and post paid contracts. Matters got even worse with the
introduction of mobile phone number portability as customers are not
anymore aware of the mobile phone operator they might be calling. The
pricing of calls inside a mobile phone network operator is usually much
cheaper than calling a number of another mobile phone operator.
The situation of prepaid users is even worse as they have absolutely no
control of their spending, they can not review their communication
history as they do not get statements or there is no online statements
available. There have been in the past some sms scam where people have
been invited to reply to a received sms (participation in a lottery for
example) while the reply number was a premium number costing often a few
euros…(actually if you want to invent a system to get very fast rich,
just set up a system like that 
)
So the action I would like to take is to oblige the operators to send a
sms to the client after each call, sms, mms or data connection informing
him about the costs involved in the last service been taken.
