10 February 2010

PhonePayPlus need to adopt a zero tolerance policy

Posted by: Stephen Williams
zero tolerance

Hard measures needed

A random, unsolicited text appears on your phone. What do you do?

If you are like most people, you will growl with annoyance at what appears to be spam and then delete it, assuming that is the end of the matter.  Well, that is possibly a mistake as you might unwittingly have paid that spammer £3 just for receiving the text and by deleting it you have lost the evidence.

A simple fraud

A colleague in the office got the following text last the week from number 83023.

“Win4Fun!Last months winner grabbed £500!This months questions is Who sang the song Paparazzi?Txt Enter plus you answer 83023 care? 08445796354. Close 13/02.”

She hadn’t subscribed to anything or texted the number before and she definitely didn’t respond. However, after thinking about it she decided to check her mobile account online and saw that she had been charged £3 for receiving that text.

That is wrong. It is illegal and this is what PhonePayPlus, the regulator, was set up to stop. Well yes, in principal, but the system is broken.

Getting the money back

PhonePayPlus encourage you to use their number checker, on their website, which reveals the service provider to be 2ergo Limited. This is the same 2ergo that has 20 previous PhonePayPlus adjudications against services it has provided.  However, when she contacted 2ergo they explained they were just the aggregator and she would need to seek recompense from the content provider, Win4Fun… whoever they are.

Meanwhile, a complaint direct to PhonePayPlus solicited a call back. Whilst they were sympathetic to her complaint they explained that they could only investigate if they received 5-10 complaints from the public over any one service. They hadn’t received five complaints so in effect it was, “Terribly sorry but we will be adding to our files and we won’t be investigating further”.

A complaint to Vodafone resulted in an immediate, no quibble refund.

Too much hassle for £3?

The problem is of course that the charge for receiving the text is relatively small and the effort of recovering it so long winded and laborious that most people let it pass. If the rogue content provider is clever, they will have targeted contract-based, mobile phone users who seldom check their bills until the end of the month and by then have often deleted the offending message anyway. Add in the lack of faith that regulator will even investigate, is it any wonder that the public lose faith in premium rate industry?

Too many links in the chain?

Part of the problem is that it is unclear exactly who is policing these services. Vodafone is the network operator who takes the money off the customer. They in turn pass some of it to 2ergo who, as aggregator, have the contract with Win4Fun and deal with payments to them. With three levels in the chain it is all too easy to abdicate responsibility.

We need action

What is needed is for everyone in the chain to adopt a zero tolerance policy to these rogue services and create an environment where it is impossible for them to operate. Until the regulator gets a grip of this problem, acts quickly and bars these rogue services the problem will just go on.

20 previous adjudications against a service provider should be prima facie evidence of poor controls and poor business practices. This in itself should be grounds for investigation of any complaint from the public. My article uses just one example but it could so easily have been another service. In the last 3 months of 2009 PhonePayPlus published adjudications on 21 services and these were just the ones that a full warranted investigation (presumably because they each had 10 complaints or more). 2 Ergo Limited are in many ways the unfortunate carrier of the text in this instance, especially as there are many other aggregators who have way in excess of 20 adjudications involving services supplied by them. However, it highlights the fundamental nature of the problem.

We believe that PhonePayPlus needs to look at adopting a zero tolerance policy. Any complaint should be investigated and any complaint that is upheld should be punished. The fines and other punishment (such as withdrawal of licenses) should be increased so that the industry is forced put its house in order and rogue services find the cost of operating to be prohibitive.

30 November 2009

Clearing the path for the apps goldrush

Posted by: Colly Myers

Network operators don’t really want you to run apps.

Apple has created a market for mobile apps that is the envy of the major players in the mobile marketplace. The result is that apps and app stores have become something of a modern day gold rush. Anyone looking at this frantic activity could be forgiven for imagining that mobile apps were a brand new phenomenon. Yet this is not the case -  Java ME apps have been around since April 2001, when Motorola launched the i80s and i50sx models.

Java ME (Micro Edition)

Java technology is in not one but several things: a programming language, an execution environment (the Java Virtual Machine or VM) and many, many code libraries including GUI interfaces. Java ME is the combination of the CLDC (Connected Limited Device Configuration) Java VM plus the MIDP mobile device GUI and a number of APIs (application programming interfaces). Together these allow programs written in the Java programming language to run Java ME applications, called Midlets, on a very wide range of mobile phones. The history of Java ME’s evolution is as below:

MIDP 1.0 specification was completed on 1st September 2000.

MIDP 2.0 specification was completed on 27th September 2002.

MIDP 2.1 specification was completed on 26th May 2006.

So the technology has been around for quite some time. It is pretty difficult to get reliable numbers on how many mobile phones in the UK are running MIDP 2.x but it would be surprising if it were not in excess of 50 million phones. In the world market, the figure is in billions.

What went wrong ?

With the mature Java technology, and a substantial market, why did nothing happen until Apple arrived on the scene? Part of the answer lies in the way Java ME apps were marketed – or rather, not marketed, as covered in “Only one App Store can compete with Apple”. More interestingly, though, was the fact that the network operators did not really want to have apps run on their phones.

Network operators considered that apps would pose risks in three major areas:

1. Security – apps could prevent the phone working properly, or access sensitive user data. Worse still, being able to communicate easily meant that virus programs could spread quickly, potentially leading to phones, or even networks, being compromised.

2. Commercial – apps could use the communications facilities of the phone without authorisation, leading to unauthorised costs for users.

3. Support – apps would lead to a flood of support calls that would have to be dealt with by the network operators’ already-costly customer support organisations.

While the security and commercial concerns were and still are very valid, the network operators were overly concerned over the support issues. So much so that they put the cart before the horse and ended up seriously crippling the Java ME platform. There are several dimensions to this crippling of Java ME:

1. From the phone the customer has no idea how to download an application. There is no app store on phones to solve this problem, nor a single market for all Java ME applications across all networks.

2. If a download link is sent via SMS to the phone, there is often no obvious way for the user to know how to open the link and download the program. Often phones don’t have the internet enabled by default, so it could not be downloaded in any case.

3. If the user does manage to download the app, it is then hidden deep in the phone’s menu structure -  i.e. it seems just to disappear.

4. If the user does manage to download and run the program, the very first thing the user is confronted with is a series of questions asking for permission for the program to access the internet, with options like “Allow once” and “Allow for this session”. And this happens every time the program is run. Permission needs only really to be asked once.

5. Application signing – this made matters worse, since every operator, handset manufacturer and software platform had their own master certificates, so that the chance of actually running a signed program on a wide range of phones was virtually nil, leaving developers no choice except to ship their applications unsigned which gives the charming message to the user “You are about to install an unsecure application. Continue?” Not likely.

All of which creates a tremendous barrier to adoption of the Java ME technology. These are all small issues that could have been easily resolved. That they have not been resolved in the three and half years since MIDP 2.1 was released is a terrible wasted opportunity.

Where is MIDP 3.0, the next Java ME release?

The MIDP 3.0 specification was started on 25th March 2005, four and half years ago, and is only due to be completed today – 30th November 2009. What has taken so long for the MIDP 3.0 specification to be completed? Clearly, making Java ME applications work properly on mobile phones has not been a priority for the industry. And it remains to be seen whether it will actually fix the problems

Is it now too late for Java ME? I hope not, because Java technology has a very important part to play in the mobile industry. Java technology is more than just a language; while the Java language is effective, it is not the star of the show. The real star is the Java VM and the code libraries.

The Java VM is a technology that allows software programs to run on a huge number of hardware/operating system combinations by providing a Virtual Machine environment. It is a “virtual” machine because it does not exist but is synthesised by the software using resources available to it through the various hardware/operating system combinations that it executes on. The same Java VM is powering the majority of the server applications on the internet. This is important because the Java VM provides a heterogeneous environment across servers and clients for software and data. As the internet grows and mobiles phones get more powerful, software becomes more and more interconnected, and so the advantage provided by the Java VM grows.

There are new and exciting languages such as Scala and Closure that offer the promise of easing the burden of software development in massively distributed and concurrent environments such as the mobile phone marketplace that will lead to new and interesting applications. But none of this will happen if a fragmented and dysfunctional marketplace is allowed to continue to exist in its current state.

Work together

Many of the issues holding back Java ME are easy to fix but it depends on the will of the mobile industry leaders to work together to solve these problems. This has happened in the past to the great benefit of everyone involved in the mobile phone marketplace. Chief amongst these are the roaming agreements hammered out in the early days of GSM to allow handsets to roam from one network to another.

Mobile apps can be the next gold rush, but only if the industry leaders, working together, deal with the few remaining problems of the Java ME platform. If they do so then they will create a mobile marketplace that is as significant as the internet itself.

11 November 2009

Are you being ripped off calling a 118 DQ service?

Posted by: Stephen Williams

118 services are still not coming clean about the true cost of directory enquires (DQ) calls. It is an amazing fact that after years of phone regulation it is still mind-boggling difficult to find out the cost of calling a DQ service from a mobile phone.

We have all heard or read statements similar to the one below when looking at an advert promoting a DQ service. 

“Calls to 118118 cost 79p per call, 29p per minute from most landlines. Mobile charges vary”

It’s an official statement, approved by the regulator and it is there to protect the public.  But hang on, what is the cost of making a call from a mobile?

Who uses a BT landline these days?

This is 2009. More and more of us use mobile phones and we don’t ring from a BT landline. From discussions I have had with industry insiders there are upwards of 50% of people calling DQ numbers from mobiles and in some age groups that figure is considerably higher. I have tried to get some evidence of the exact figure but I can’t find it anywhere on the web. Perhaps one of the DQ companies can come on line and tell us the correct figure?

So what is the cost of a call to a DQ service using a mobile phone and why don’t the DQ companies make it clear?

Well I thought I would try and find out how much it would cost. But rather than make the call and wait for the bill to come in I thought it would be good to find out before I made the call.

My thought process went, “I’m going to make a call to a DQ service so I will go on their website and find out the cost”.

Mission impossible

Ahem, it is not that straight forward. Indeed, it is next to impossible. I challenge anyone to find out the cost of mobile call to a 118 number by searching the specific DQ website. Next I rang someone at Yell to ask them what the price was. After a number of escalations within the organisation someone knowledgeable about these matters explained that part of problem is that the price varies by network. Since the prices vary the DQ companies are allowed to state “Refer to network operators for prices”.

So if you want to find out how much it costs you actually have to go to the network operators rather than the DQ companies to find out. That is strange, to say the least. It should not be too complicated for each DQ company to put a simple table showing the prices from each network operator on their website? Anyone would think they didn’t want to show them to us or they were in some way embarrassed?

So, onto the next stage of my search and a visit to the websites of each of the network operators.

In order to keep it all simple and make the comparisons work I chose to find out the prices of just one 118 service. I chose 118118 because back in 2007 they claimed to be the largest DQ suppliers with a market share of 53%.

The search for evidence proved quite difficult and the ease of finding information varied from site to site. I used the various website search engines and tried,  “Cost of a Directory Enquiries call” then, “Cost of a DQ call”  then, “cost of a call to 118118” and then, “Cost of a premium rate call”

Virgin ask you to call the team to find out this information. This call put me in a waiting list where unsurprisingly all of their operators were busy and expected wait time would be 20 minutes. I emailed instead and got an answer 2 days later.

T Mobile told me “for the cost of 118 refer to customer services”. However, a search on customer services brings up 100 hits, none of which is customer services unless you want a job. Eventually I emailed them and they called me back.

The numbers they don’t want to publish

Ok so what were the results? I have tabulated them below

Network

Fixed cost

Per min cost

Cost of a 1 minute call

O2

Zero

£1.00 per min

£1.00

Orange

£1.15

£0.40 per min

£1.55

Three

£1.22

£0.73 per min

£1.95

T Mobile

Zero

£1.50 per min

£1.50

Virgin

Zero

£1.00 per min

£1.00

Vodafone

£0.79

£0.49 per min (starting from  2nd minute

£0.79

For anyone new to DQ charging models the distinction between the “fixed cost” and the “cost per min” is actually very important. You see DQ services make money by keeping you connected. This is not just through the, “Do you need anything else sir?” but also when they ask, “Would you like us to connect you?” If you say yes the cost per minute keeps on ticking. If you are on T Mobile that clock is ticking at £1.50 per minute. You might only have connected to a standard number, perhaps the dentist or doctor, but all the time you are booking that appointment or describing your symptoms you are incurring a premium rate charge. It is enough to make you ill all over again.

 So what is the message ?

More people call DQ services (and other premium rate services) from a mobile than from BT. It is therefore misleading and inappropriate to quote charges from a BT landline especially when charges from some mobile networks are higher. Cost of calls from mobiles should be on the DQ website and be much more prominent and easy to find. If the pricing structures are too varied and take up too much space the industry should rationalise this. Pricing should be the same across all networks, as it is for texting.