It’s now just over a month after the launch of the new iPhone and users are receiving their first monthly bills – and already problems are starting to emerge.
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has reported a spike in the number of mobile phone users reporting huge bills – some running into the thousands of dollars – from phones with web-browsing capability, such as the iPhone.
Paul Wallbank, founder of PC Rescue and SmartCompany blogger, says the worst story he has heard involves a businesswoman who used her mobile for web browsing and email while travelling overseas and racked up a bill of $60,000 in just one month.
He is expecting to hear more stories like this as iPhone usage grows.
“The risks are real. The core problem is that most people who are getting an iPhone have never used their mobile for web browsing and have no idea about how much data they will actually use.”
He says new iPhone users need to be conservative with their web browsing in the first two months and monitor their data usage through the online meters provided on the websites of the iPhone carriers.
Of course, this isn’t a sure-fire solution. Wallbank says the usage meters are unreliable and slow to update and mobile phone bills make tracking usage difficult. “The real problem is that those phone bills are so complex. Comparisons are not a simple thing.
One natural barrier to exceeding your data limit may be problems with the iPhone’s web browsing capabilities.
Users in overseas and in Australia (including members of this Apple forum) have been complaining about slow browsing speed, poor reception and calls dropping out.
So far, the telecommunications companies are pointing to Apple, claiming the issues are related to the iPhone itself, rather than telecommunications infrastructure.
Apple is yet to comment on the problems.
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