What can I do to limit mobile phone costs?
Use pre-paid mobile phones or special offers from mobile phone providers that limit your handy costs to a predefined maximum per month.
Be aware that the usage of certain mobile services can be expensive (e.g., MMS, mobile phone chats). Be especially careful with premium services, such as premium SMS. Simply, these are services such as directory inquiries, weather forecasts, voting for reality TV shows, download of ring tones etc. which cost customers more than regular mobile services. When consumers buy ring tones or download logos, for example, they may be automatically ordering a subscription without realising it. Premium service numbers usually start with short codes (e.g. prefixes 60 61, 62 or 64 etc. in the UK). If you are having problems with premium texts, contact your mobile operator who may be able to bar that number or can certainly provide more specific advice on how to stop losing money from them.
You should not let other people use your mobile phone except in an emergency, and only if you are present. Never leave your mobile unattended.
As a parent, remain a trusted contact person for your children when problems with high mobile phone bills occur in your family. Do not flip out ;) It is crucial to keep the lines of communication open at all times.
Be extra careful with mobile phone costs when you are abroad. A recent European regulation now limits costs on receiving and making phone calls within Europe, however the lower rates do not apply for countries in the rest of the world.
MOBILES PHONES
Be aware that the usage of certain mobile services can be expensive (e.g., MMS, mobile phone chats). Be especially careful with premium services, such as premium SMS. Simply, these are services such as directory inquiries, weather forecasts, voting for reality TV shows, download of ring tones etc. which cost customers more than regular mobile services. When consumers buy ring tones or download logos, for example, they may be automatically ordering a subscription without realising it. Premium service numbers usually start with short codes (e.g. prefixes 60 61, 62 or 64 etc. in the UK). If you are having problems with premium texts, contact your mobile operator who may be able to bar that number or can certainly provide more specific advice on how to stop losing money from them.
You should not let other people use your mobile phone except in an emergency, and only if you are present. Never leave your mobile unattended.
As a parent, remain a trusted contact person for your children when problems with high mobile phone bills occur in your family. Do not flip out ;) It is crucial to keep the lines of communication open at all times.
Be extra careful with mobile phone costs when you are abroad. A recent European regulation now limits costs on receiving and making phone calls within Europe, however the lower rates do not apply for countries in the rest of the world.
MOBILES PHONES
NOKIA 6300
Why Mobile E-learning Fails To Make A Move
All telecommunications companies are stifling the economic benefits of mobile e-learning (m-learning). Dr Marcus Bowles, director of the Institute for Working Futures, says the incumbents are defending market share by confining mobile data transmissions to high-cost cellular networks.
This is being accomplished using clever marketing and interconnected blocking of cheaper technologies.
"They say mobile is the cellular network," Dr Bowles says. "That's a big misconception. There's the cellular network, wireless network and satellite technology. The misconception is it's all going to happen over the cellular network. There are extremely viable options beyond the mobile phone but there's a lot of ignorance about it."
Dr Bowles' interest comes from a belief in m-learning, which he defines as the ability to perform training and assessment tasks using any device connected to any network. The institute, in collaboration with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, is doing several m-learning research projects that could significantly benefit the economy - if only there was a fix for our mobile telecommunications chaos.
"The marketing of the telcos has shaped the way people look at mobiles - away from the competing technologies," Dr Bowles says. "The incumbents have shaped the mindset of how we look at mobility."
An m-learning software researcher should not need to become an expert on mobile telecommunications simply to get his applications to work. However, in the over-regulated and under-planned Australian market, Dr Bowles says the private sector and local governments are resorting to build their own networks to resolve the problems.
"Switching across any network is impossible in the Australian market because it's all been cut up. For example, you can't data cast using TV frequencies. But in Korea, freeing the market was a national competitiveness imperative. It's pretty stupid to divvy up the dog by saying which fleas can have it."
Network switching is important for m-learning to avoid dead spots and dropouts interrupting training and real-time assessments of work in progress. For example, most of the time a device may prefer a faster wireless network, with the ability to switch to cellular, wired or satellite data transmission as the occasion requires. But network switching means freedom of choice, cheaper prices and lower margins. In Australia, the standard surcharge is being maintained at about 12 cents per megabyte if you go over your mobile plan's data limit.
"In the US it costs one or two cents," Dr Bowles says. "So they are gaining share by limiting market growth. If I'm sitting with the telco executives, I would know my share price will plummet the instant it looks like I'm cannibalising an existing market to gain a potential market."
This means cheaper wireless technology - which can transmit up to 80 megabits of bandwidth up to 80 kilometres away - is being introduced by many undercapitalised start-ups instead. The result is a patchwork of non-switchable overlapping networks, which are concentrated in big cities. Yet despite the communications mayhem, the institute is starting to test some promising m-learning applications.
"There's one client that conducts 10,000 assessments a week relating to product knowledge," Dr Bowles explains, "which ties back into legal compliance reporting and their pay structure. At the moment they pull all their people to a fixed internet connection."
The institute is researching this type of application for corporate and government m-learning areas. Part of their experiments deal with how m-learning results can be sucked up into human resources, learning management system or manufacturing system. The idea is for singular data entry in the field to be linked into multiple reporting systems back in the office. Apart from networking issues, the biggest problem is making sure student assessment is relevant to their location and time.
Mobile E-learning
This is being accomplished using clever marketing and interconnected blocking of cheaper technologies.
"They say mobile is the cellular network," Dr Bowles says. "That's a big misconception. There's the cellular network, wireless network and satellite technology. The misconception is it's all going to happen over the cellular network. There are extremely viable options beyond the mobile phone but there's a lot of ignorance about it."
Dr Bowles' interest comes from a belief in m-learning, which he defines as the ability to perform training and assessment tasks using any device connected to any network. The institute, in collaboration with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, is doing several m-learning research projects that could significantly benefit the economy - if only there was a fix for our mobile telecommunications chaos.
"The marketing of the telcos has shaped the way people look at mobiles - away from the competing technologies," Dr Bowles says. "The incumbents have shaped the mindset of how we look at mobility."
An m-learning software researcher should not need to become an expert on mobile telecommunications simply to get his applications to work. However, in the over-regulated and under-planned Australian market, Dr Bowles says the private sector and local governments are resorting to build their own networks to resolve the problems.
"Switching across any network is impossible in the Australian market because it's all been cut up. For example, you can't data cast using TV frequencies. But in Korea, freeing the market was a national competitiveness imperative. It's pretty stupid to divvy up the dog by saying which fleas can have it."
Network switching is important for m-learning to avoid dead spots and dropouts interrupting training and real-time assessments of work in progress. For example, most of the time a device may prefer a faster wireless network, with the ability to switch to cellular, wired or satellite data transmission as the occasion requires. But network switching means freedom of choice, cheaper prices and lower margins. In Australia, the standard surcharge is being maintained at about 12 cents per megabyte if you go over your mobile plan's data limit.
"In the US it costs one or two cents," Dr Bowles says. "So they are gaining share by limiting market growth. If I'm sitting with the telco executives, I would know my share price will plummet the instant it looks like I'm cannibalising an existing market to gain a potential market."
This means cheaper wireless technology - which can transmit up to 80 megabits of bandwidth up to 80 kilometres away - is being introduced by many undercapitalised start-ups instead. The result is a patchwork of non-switchable overlapping networks, which are concentrated in big cities. Yet despite the communications mayhem, the institute is starting to test some promising m-learning applications.
"There's one client that conducts 10,000 assessments a week relating to product knowledge," Dr Bowles explains, "which ties back into legal compliance reporting and their pay structure. At the moment they pull all their people to a fixed internet connection."
The institute is researching this type of application for corporate and government m-learning areas. Part of their experiments deal with how m-learning results can be sucked up into human resources, learning management system or manufacturing system. The idea is for singular data entry in the field to be linked into multiple reporting systems back in the office. Apart from networking issues, the biggest problem is making sure student assessment is relevant to their location and time.
Mobile E-learning
