With the iPhone 4 coming out, and O2 changing there data policy on the new contracts, from unlimited to about 50omb, people started to worry, about hitting that; to which the nice man at O2 said that 97% of the users of the mobile network don’t use 500mb a month, meaning that 3% do use more…
Well that is all very well and good, and who can argue with that logic, I for one cant; however, with the change in data allowance happening at the same time as the new iPhone coming out, and its ‘true’ multi-tasking capability, people will be running network attached applications in the background, where as before I would have to wait for a push notification before I looked at Twitter, or would check it on the bus, I can leave the client running while using Skobbler (free, and good) as GPS in my car, and staying signed into Skype, etc.
So why the change now? well at the moment they can say this will only affect 3% of the customer base, however on Thursday with the release of the iPhone, I think that 3% will get much bigger, very quickly, and it wont a be a few users, with abnormal use. but much closer to the norm.
O2 are quick to point out that you have free access to the cloud wifi network, however, every time I try to connect to that, i am required to sign in, so its not much use for jumping between that and the 3G while walking along a street, native, transparent handover between adjacent networks, and 3G would help this a lot though.