Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
You may have heard of a new gimmick, aimed at teenagers: a downloadable ringtone for their cellphone that is of such a high pitch that the older ears of parents, teachers and other such undesirables can't hear it. The ringtone is free but it comes with some rather unpleasant baggage.
I've just seen an web site advert for this 'free' ringtone. The site was US based but the ad, cleverly, identified me as being in Australia and was tailored appropriately.
The advert came from Dublin based 'Celldorado' who invited me to test the 'silent' ringtone - "a guaranteed success at home or at school" - by clicking on a button "Can you hear it?" Of course I could not. If it's beyond the frequency response of my aging ears it's quite likely to be beyond the frequency response of my laptop's inbuilt speakers.
However suitably convinced I was invited to submit my mobile number and download this silent ringtone "free". Then I read the small print. By doing so I automatically signed up to receive three ring tones per week at a cost of $4.00 per message. Total $24.00 per week or about $100 per month, charged to my mobile account! (If the maths doesn't seem right that's because it takes two messages to send each ringtone).
Of course I could stop the service by texting STOP to 191192, but let's say I didn't realise how much this was costing me until I got the first bill. By which time I'd be about $100 poorer and 12 ring tones better off. It's hard to imagine too many teenagers (remember this ad is targeted at those still at school) having a spare $100 per month to spend on ringtones. And anyway why would you want three new ones every week?
The small print also provides the assurance that "Celldorado operates according to the Australian code of conduct for SMS services." No doubt it does, but perhaps that code needs tightening. And no wonder they call it 'Celldorado': there's gold aplenty here.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
