Teknovis

There was an article in the media during the week describing how people are charged more for sending SMS messages in Ireland containing accents. See Texters charged for the síneadh fada.

Personally, I do not see the problem here! If you are sending characters that are outside of the normal character set then you should expect to fit less characters per SMS message (or else pay more for more SMS messages)!

I had the opportunity to discuss this with some Spanish, Polish, and Italian friends yesterday. Some of them said that they get charged more for using accents on their home networks, and others did not know. More interestingly, none of them use accents when sending SMS messages either because it is too slow or akward to find the character, or because it is never needed to understand the message. It was also pointed out to me that this is the same in English, for example, where people use “u” instead of “you”.

Tags: Ireland, SMS

I read Irish start-up to revolutionise in-game payments at E3 last week, and I was quite impressed. Well done!

My only reservation would be that SMS feels like a fading technology to me, but perhaps it can succeed with the intended target audience!

Tags: SMS

There was lots of talk about Apple‘s announcement of iOS 5 last week. For an overview of the new features read See new features included in iOS 5.

The most interests aspects are:

• Notification Center – This seems like very expected functionality to me! Actually, it is interesting that Apple is playing catch-up to Android in this respect!
• iMessage – A potential SMS killer? Some think so! See Apple Has Finally Stuck A Dagger Into SMS. I Love It. and Apple surprised iPhone carriers with iMessage. I think that this must have the telcos worried!
• Reminders – I just think this looks good, at the same time as being functional.
• Twitter – Interesting that Twitter was chosen ahead of Facebook. Why did Apple choose Twitter over Facebook for iOS 5? gives some insight into this decision.
• PC Free – Big advantage to me! I hate having devices coupled to a single computer!

I am not an iDevice user, but I am becoming more impressed :)

Finally, Google Android vs. Apple iOS: Handicapping the 2011 death match gives a good comparison of iOS and Android.

Tags: Apple, Facebook, SMS, Twitter

Vodafone has updated its Irish website recently. The two changes that excite me the most are:

• I can now send 600 free SMS messages every month! I send the majority of my SMS messages online!
• I can now send SMS messages to mobile phones in other countries.

The timing of these changes is perfect for me to send all my Christmas greetings :)

Tags: Ireland, SMS, Vodafone

I was delighted to read that the EU states set to agree to cap cost of texting from abroad. Under this proposed legislation the maximum cost of sending a text message while roaming within the EU will be capped at 11c! That is significantly lower than my current rate!

The proposed legislation also includes a cap of 1€ per MB of data while roaming within the EU. I think that this would benefit a lot of business travellers. However, it would not be of any use to me, because I am always able to use WiFi when I am abroad.

In general I feel that the telcos have not yet embraced the concept of the single European market, and they are still charging their customers extremely heavily for intra-EU services. It is unfortunate that it requires legislation to force the telcos to reduce their charges, but if that is what is required then it must be done!

Tags: SMS, WiFi