iPhone 4 to 4S and Vodafone to Telecom in under 24hrs

In my previous post, I was less than impressed with Telecom NZ**. However, in this post, I must say that I am extremely IMPRESSED with them.

You see, I recently got my hands on a new iPhone 4S, flawlessly migrated every single setting, app, contact, account and picture on my iPhone 4 to 4S using only iCloud (no cables at all), and then started using the "Siri" voice recognition abilities of the new phone. To say that Siri is impressive would be a BIG understatement. You can dictate txt messages to send, you can book appointments, you can dial, you can do all sorts of things. In addition, you can ask Siri such things as the meaning of life (and get an answer), you can ask it inappropriate things, such as "Do you love me", and get clever responses. In short, Siri is pretty bloody amazing.

However, the Siri service uses 3G data to send your voice to Apple servers to process and do the voice recognition, and this means that the service is only as good as the data service of your provider.

I have been a loyal Vodafone NZ customer for over 15 years, never really questioning that they were doing a good job, and regularly paying a phone bill of around $400 a month. I have suffered from having 1 bar of signal strength on my iPhone at my castor bay house, and generally blamed the iPhone and not vodafone, and figured that 3G data was just never going to be that great, and would never compete with DSL or wifi type speeds.

So it was with some amazement, that yesterday when my friend and I were playing with Siri, that he was getting almost immediate responses (via Telecom XT), and my phone barely seemed to be able to work (on Vodafone). That was the last straw for me, and I promptly walked into a Telecom XT store at 5pm yesterday and asked them to port my number across. I expected this porting process between telephone companies to be a horrible process, fraught with stuff-ups where I would probably lose access to my phone for a day or so, and maybe even my number, but I HAD to get Siri working, it's just that cool.

So I was surprised to wake up at 7am today, and find that my phone was reporting "no signal". They can't have done my porting already? can they. To my delight, I put my XT sim into my phone, and found that it was connected with Telecom XT. Even more impressive, was the fact that at my house, I now had FULL signal strength, where I had previously only had one bar. And EVEN more impressive, was that I started surfing around on the Internet on my phone for an hour or so, before I realized that I wasn't connected to my Wifi network, but to Telecom XT. Using data on Vodafone is workable, but it's often slow and Facebook needs to be refreshed, shut down the app etc. On XT, the speeds are just incredible - I highly recommend the switch if you are a power smart phone user. The XT network is 3G ONLY, so there is never a time when you're on GPRS or no data or some slow speed connection.

Even nicer, I found a plan on Telecom for $120 a month that gives me 3Gb of data (not one), 5 times as many txt messages (2,500 not 500), and about double the calling that I have been making on Vodafone. and my bill is now a fixed $120 a month, instead of a variable $400 a month. Thank you Telecom XT!

The only issue I had, was that all my contacts no longer seemed to recognize the names in my address book. (see picture) If I looked at my phone, all my txt messages were now just numbers, despite the fact that the contacts were still there. Initially, I thought my exchange account must have been deleted, but upon calling a friend, I found that this is a bug. To solve the issue, you simply need to connect your iPhone to iTunes and download a carrier update, which fixes the issue with Telecom sending through spaces in the phone numbers, and the iPhone not recognizing the numbers.

**I am not, and have never been a Telecom hater, I just call things as I see them. I think Telecom is a great company, with a marketing department that doesn't always do them justice.

Did Telecom steal a young father's song?

I'm sure most kiwis will remember the disastrous Telecom "Abstain for the game" campaign, which consisted of getting poor Sean Fitzpatrick to drive around in a giant pink fist on telly, encouraging everyone in NZ to give up sex for the duration of the world cup. 

Widely regarded as one of the WORST ideas for an advertising campaign in history, the concept cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As a result of a public backlash against the campaign, Telecom decided to put their efforts into a much more conventional, and family friendly "Backing Black" campaign, which has so far picked up a massive 131,000 followers on their Facebook Group.

Recently, as part of Telecom's new "Backing Black" campaign, Telecom ran an "All Blacks Anthem competition" on Saturday 15th October, which was won by a young kiwi father called Franko, with his song entitled "We are one", and who has been campaigning for his song to be an anthem for the All Blacks for several months.

When Franko won Backing Black's song competition, he asked Telecom's representative at the venue, James Sommersett, if his song could possibly be posted to the Backing Black Facebook group since he had won the competition. Franko was told by Telecom that they would "think about it".

Today, on the 20th October, 5 days after Franko won Backing Black's "Anthem" competition with his song "We are one", Telecom released a video advertisement on their Facebook group ALSO called "We are one - backing black" that was immediately "liked" by around 500 people. The imagery in the Telecom video is of historic moments in rugby, inspirational quotes, and backed by a random classical music track. Quotes include "United together", "One Nation", "One land", "One voice". 

All of this is fine and dandy, except that a LOT about Telecom's video (including the name), is VERY reminiscent in concept and execution to Franko's "We are one" video, including the lyrics in his song.

After people started making comments to this effect on the "Backing Black Facebook page", that their new "we are one - backing black" video reminded them STRONGLY of Franko's song, Telecom quickly changed the name of the video to "We are backing black", instead of "we are one - we are backing black", although the attached screenshot still shows the old title, as it was posted.

I should mention, by way of disclaimer, that I do have a personal interest in this matter, because I gave Franko the money to produce his "We are One" video, as I was inspired by his song, and by his desire to create a song that truly brought all New Zealanders together in sporting events such as the RWC, The America's cup, and the upcoming 2012 olympics. There are people who have cried upon first watching Franko's video, and I am proud to have been able to help make it happen, as it is a great song, and has been a labour of love for Franko.

Now, it's nice of Telecom to voluntarily change the name of their inspirational video, but wouldn't it be better if they had simply promoted Franko's video, since he DID win their OWN Talent competition with HIS song? Perhaps Telecom's marketing department has correctly deduced as a result of their disastrous "Abstain for the game" campaign, that they should NOT use their own ideas under ANY circumstances.

Like Adidas, charging people for over-priced jerseys, Telecom might do well to learn that brand goodwill comes from actually walking the walk, not from your marketing team taking the key elements from a young father's song who wins your talent quest, because they can't come up with anything original.

I'm sure Franko would be interested to hear from Telecom on this matter...

Advice for Kiwis wanting to minimise roaming charges when in the USA

I am a frequent traveler, and get to the USA from New Zealand probably four times a year.

A dilemma that often faces travelers, is:
a) do I use my regular mobile number overseas and pay huge roaming charges, but not have the hassle of stuffing around getting a new SIM and/or phone in the country I'm in,

or do I:
b) go to all the effort of setting up a new local number, often for a short period of time, just to save a bit of money?

In previous years, I simply put up with huge roaming charges, because of the convenience of landing, turning on my phone, and having it work straight away. But each time I went to the USA, I'd often end up with $500-$1,000 bills for a week or two abroad, and this only started getting worse and worse more recently, as the need to use data has increased to answer the odd email, or cache an invaluable google map. In addition, I now have a broad circle of friends in the USA, and some of them didn't like calling my NZ number to get hold of me down the road, as then they're paying through the nose, and so am I to receive the roaming call.

I started looking for a better, more permanent solution. And now I wish that I'd done this the first time I landed in the USA. You can potentially save a lot of time and money by following my recipe, whether you are going to the USA on a short holiday, or travel there for business regularly.

Investigating the options

A year or so ago, I spent about three solid days going through all the carriers, plans and options for a temporary traveller in the USA. The USA has a BIG choice of phone companies, unlike a fairly simple telecommunications market like NZ, and let me tell you, it's downright confusing to work out the best deal, even for a techie like me.

There is AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile, Boost mobile and more. Verizon runs a CDMA network (like Telecom NZ used to), which means that their phones don't have SIM cards, which ruled them out for me, as I wanted to use my iPhone and have all my contacts, settings and things preserved. AT&T had no pre-pay options, and I didn't want to sign into a term contract. Sprint was hard to deal with and I couldn't understand some of their pricing, and in addition, their pre-pay credit expired every month.

Choosing a carrier

In the end, I settled for T-mobile, as their service was good, their rates were decent, they have an international presence (which means you can use your account for things like hot-spot access in Germany etc), and they had a pre-pay option. Most importantly, they have a feature that none of the other carriers had - which i discovered by reading the fine print. if you top up your account by $100 or more, then they increase the expiry time on any unused minutes to 1 Year, instead of the usual pre-pay 1-3 months. Note that this is a VERY important feature for me, as it allows me to keep the SAME number every time I go to the USA, without having to worry about getting a new SIM, topping up, etc. In addition, T-mobile has 4G support, which is nice.

Every time I land in the USA now, I simply pop in my USA pre-pay SIM & I'm up and running in one minute flat. If by chance I wasn't going to be in the USA for over a year, I could still keep my number by topping up $100 on the T-mobile website. So basically I have a permanent number in the USA for a maximum of $100/yr. The ONLY options with other carriers would have been to:

a) go pre-pay and have to get a new number every trip (as my SIM would be de-activated after a month of no usage), or

b) go on a contract at $50/mth for 1-2 years.

Cutting my SIM down to size

Now that I had my T-mobile SIM, and permanent number, I had to get it working in my phone. I happen to have an iPhone 4, and these take micro-sims, which are smaller than a regular SIM. The bad news is that T-mobile doesn't sell micro-SIMs, because they don't support the iPhone. The good news is that you can cut a regular sized sim down to micro-SIM size with a pair of scissors. How I did it, was by taking out my existing NZ micro-SIM, lining up the contacts with one SIM above the other, and then cutting off all the excess plastic around the edge of the normal SIM, making sure it ended up exactly the same size as the micro-SIM I was using as a guide. I worked it out myself, but if you are scared, just google for more detailed instructions on the process.

Getting mobile data working

Once I put my cut-down SIM into my iPhone, calling and txting on the T-mobile network started working with no problems - as you would expect. However, it took me a while to figure out how to get Internet data on my iPhone, as the iPhone is not supported by T-mobile.

The first step was that i had to go into the "settings / general / network / cellular data network" menu of the iPhone, and enter the APN ID "wap.voicestream.com". This tells the iPhone what gateway to use to get cellular data.

The next step was that on pre-pay, Internet access is disabled by default. You can buy unlimited access on your pre-pay SIM for just US$1.45 per day, but you have to go to "home.web2go.com" on your phone, and enable the "T-mobile Web-day pass". The cool thing is that the iphone now has a portable wifi-hotspot feature, once you have internet on your phone, you can turn your phone into a portable hot-spot, and then you have Internet access for your laptop, Ipad etc, for just a total of $1.45 per day, rather than having to spend $30 a night on Internet like some rip-off hotels charge. It's not always particularly fast, but fine for checking emails and the like.

Keeping costs down

Calling to any number in the USA on T-mobile is about 10c/min (it's cheaper if you top-up higher amounts as I described above), and TXTs are 10c each (to USA, NZ or anywhere). so basically for US$100, you get about 1,000 TXTs (anywhere) and combined minutes of calling (USA only), which seems to be plenty for me. I went to the USA for four weeks on one trip, and did a bunch of calling to all my friends in the USA every day, and it only cost me around US$15/week.

Note than in the USA, unlike NZ, cellphone users have to pay to make AND receive calls. US landline users don't pay a different rate to call a cellphone than any other number. (This also means that no-one needs to know your USA number is a mobile - it could be a landline in the USA for all anyone knows).

Calling back to NZ from your USA mobile will empty your pre-pay balance REALLY FAST, so it's a good idea to avoid it if possible. My solution was to simply TXT anyone in NZ I needed to speak with, and it's usually only a few cents a minute for them to call me. I am lucky in that I own a phone and Internet company (www.voyager.co.nz), so I get good calling rates to the USA! However even at Voyager's RETAIL rates of 5c a minute from NZ to the USA, someone calling my number in the USA from NZ is only going to cost $3 per hour. At that rate, I can afford to divert my Auckland work DDI, and have it permanently diverted to my USA mobile for anyone who wants to call me, and who might be worried about the NZ to USA toll charges.

Apps to use

Another way of keeping costs down, is of course to use the internet as much as possible, which at $1.45/day is a bargain. I have an app called "whatsapp" on my iphone that allows me to send unlimited txts and picture messages to anyone else on the network for free. I also use another called "heytell" that is a push-to talk application that works over the Internet, and allows you to use your phone like a walkie-talkie to anyone else in the world. This allows me to push to talk anytime I have a thought, and then my business manager in NZ can push to talk back and respond whenever she likes. Email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype are also of course communication options, and there are many more. Skype for iphone can be used for video-chatting with the iphone's front facing camera, likewise Apple has FaceTime for that purpose too. All in all, I found on my most recent trip that I was spending $2-3 a day on TOTAL communications costs, and I had full access to the Internet and communications all day long. My friend who came over at the same time as me spent $500 over a short period, and this was just from turning his phone on in emergencies to grab the occasional email, and download google map data as required. Estimated savings - $100/day at least.

Miscellaneous comments

Before I left NZ, I changed my mobile voicemail to say "please don't leave a message, txt me, or call my USA mobile". So then every few days, I put my NZ SIM back into my phone, get any txt messages, and then use my USA mobile to respond to people at much lower costs.

I couldn't get PXT messaging working natively on my USA number, although I didn't try very hard. I haven't bothered to put any effort into getting it working, because as above, I use WhatsApp for that purpose. It will be a case of fiddling around with MMS settings, but because T-mobile doesn't support the iPhone, it's a matter of trial and error. It may also be because I don't have a plan with native data support (just the Web-day pass system).

I have put all of my numbers into my phone into the format "+64 xxx xxxx or +1 xxx xxx xxxx" for NZ or the USA, this way, the numbers work perfectly for all my contacts no matter which SIM I have in, and no matter which country. If you have numbers stored for Vodafone NZ as "021 xxx xxx" for example, and you txt using your USA SIM, the txt's won't go to the correct place.

Summary of the steps
1) buy T-mobile SIM
2) cut SIM to micro-SIM size if necessary
3) top up SIM with min US$100 credit so number won't expire
4) change APN on phone to "wap.voicestream.com"
5) go to "home.web2go.com" on your phone's browser to activate web day pass - unlimited Internet access on your phone for US$1.45 per day
6) communicate via email, skype, whatsapp, heytell etc, basically any Internet method, and your costs will just be that $1.45/day
7) if you need to talk or txt people in the USA, it's not expensive, will just cost you 10c/min or txt
8) likewise of you want to TXT people in NZ - it's the same price 10c/txt
9) if you need to SPEAK to someone in NZ, TXT them, and tell them to call your USA number for cents per minute, rather than you emptying your pre-pay credit. Calling NZ off your pre-pay number will empty your credit in no-time. Voyager.co.nz and Skype offer calling from NZ to USA for just a few cents per minute.

10) put NZ SIM back in to phone every few days to check TXT messages.

11) Save all numbers in phone in full, correct International format.

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