Mobile `hang-ups'
Newcastle Herald
Monday August 10, 1998
A MOBILE phone starts ringing and instinctively hands within earshot reach for pockets.
Then the hands pause while the head adopts alistening position.
Is it mine?
No, it's over there.
It's mine, somebody might say, and all bar one of the group return to general business.
It's a little drama played out whenever and wherever people get together. At train stations, in pubs, in lifts.
The mobile phone has arrived, in case you hadn't noticed.
There are 5.8million in Australia, which isn't bad given our population of 18million. That's close enough to one in three.
I know people who have bought mobile phones to keep in touch with their school-age children. I know women who've bought them in case their car breaks down.
Big industry, perhaps the biggest new industry of the '90s.
How big?
I can't tell you because neither Telstra nor Optus nor Vodafone will tell me. Commercially sensitive information, they say.
But the extent of newspaper advertising by these carriers and phone dealers gives a hint. One Sydney paper's Friday edition, for example, had eight display ads in its first 13 pages and each of the eight was trying to sell mobile phones.
All the prices were discounted, which reflects the vigour of the competition, and in some instances prices were down to $1 and $0.
We all know that the phones don't cost $1 or $0. We know that you've got to sign up for 12 months or 18 months at a minimum monthly rate. We know that the phone is going to cost $540 or more even before we've made a call.
Obviously the cost of the phone is subsidised by one of the three carriers, a subsidy that is now at least $250 to $300 a phone, according to Telstra.
But what most don't know is how the retailers of Telstra and Optus phones make their profit.
They get an upfront payment for each sale, which is the only profit for Vodafone dealers according to Vodafone.
But then they also get a share of the cost of your mobile calls.
Neither Telstra nor Optus will say what that share is, but I am told by a former retailer that it's up to 10%. Telstra does say the call share deal lasts only three years while Optus says it lasts while ever the customer is connected with that phone.
Interesting. The retailer who sold you the phone gets a share of every mobile call you make for at least three years.
That explains the advertising. L YN Johnson tried 23 times without success, you may recall, to get a television program's fax sheet on soapmaking over two days in March.
The cost was $57.50 at $2.50 a go, as detailed on her Optus phone bill, and she never did get the fax sheet.
There's good reason why.
Lyn was trying to fax the Our House program fax phone instead of phoning it. I can understand how she made the error.
The Our House program's directions, which seem to be much the same as that for other shows, distinguish between mail and fax and it's in this difference that Lyn became confused.
The first option is: By mail ? phone 1900 185035.
The second: By fax ? phone 1900 185033.
A voice tells the viewer `for our fax service phone 1900 185033 and follow the instructions'. Lyn has understood this as offering two ways of ordering a fax sheet, by mail or by fax. She is not alone, apparently.
Our House says it encounters the error quite often and that the service provider always refunds the bill.
Optus has refunded the $57.50, which was nice of it given that it is not at fault.
© 1998 Newcastle Herald
