By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Gripes moans and whinges, Internet, iPhone, Apple on November 19, 2009 at 7:06 pm
It was a dark and stormy afternoon in the Languedoc’s Black Mountain last week, as we made our way further up the narrow and twisting road. At each hairpin bend the drop on my side of the car grew more precipitous with only a few of the local marble off-cuts to stop us going over the edge. As we drove higher, it got darker, rain clouds swirled around the Peugeot. We had no choice but to follow the signs to the peak because there was no-where to turn around.
The Michelin map indicated two side roads but they must have been the size of goat tracks because we couldn’t find them. My Garmin was back in England and our driver hadn’t put her TomTom in the car. In any case, the top of the range TomTom kept telling us we were still in a Parisian suburb rather than up a mountain north of Carcassonne. If only my iPhone had one of the new sat-nav packages installed, or I could have used Google Maps to navigate a route back down.
Even in the wilds of south-west rural France, you get a better signal than we receive at home in England’s south coast conurbation. Data-roaming in France is incredibly expensive although the reason why is completely beyond any rational explanation. Current iPhone contracts in the UK are only available from France Telecom’s Orange and O2, owned by Spain’s Telefonica.
Goddammit! We could see the Pyrenees and Spain in the distance and France Telecom has a base in Carcassonne, less than 25 miles away and 4,000 feet below. Both charge thirty-five pounds a month for more telephone calls and texts than I’ll use in a lifetime, plus free data downloads in the UK. If I stand next to their transmitters in France or Spain and want to check my e-mail or a web page, I’ll have to sell my soul to pay off the charges. It is so expensive they warn customers in large and very unfriendly lettering in case they accidentally leave data-roaming switched on.
This seems completely ridiculous in a united Europe. The same companies who sell the contracts to use their cellphone network in the UK will charge you an arm and a leg to use their network 50 miles away across the English Channel.
Or am I missing the point? No, I don’t think so. Even if we became a Euro economy as many think we ought to have done years ago, we will still be controlled by pan-European companies charging regional rip-offs. Unless the European rip-off minister decides to do something about it.
Rated: 80% (4 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Jacques Daviault - November 21, 2009 on 6:53 pm
The UK roaming fees remind me of the exorbitant data plans for the iPhone here in Canada - and that’s regardless of the roaming fees. A decent monthly iPhone package with enough data transfer to make it worthwhile costs about £50. That’s nuts…
Glad to hear your trip to France was fun though. When do I get to see more photos that aren’t hardware store-related?
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