GeekLawyer’s Blog

Geeklawyer has a spiffy 3G mobile phone; a source of envy and even potential larceny. His phone company is T-Mobile. So some concern then when that the Register reported that T-Mobile have it in their terms and conditions that voice-over IP and instant messaging are banned. For those not familiar with voice-over IP it is a totally whizzy way of making free, or very cheap, phone calls over the Internet. The down side for phone companies is that it means you may pay 2p a minute to someone else to ring Moldova rather than pay 25p a minute to them. Predictably they are not that happy with the threat VoIP poses. All VoIP needs is a permanent net connect and suitable software and hardware: most people with PCs will only need to buy an external microphone. Skype provide an excellent VoIP service that lets you talk for free to other Skype users or at a very low rate, 2 eurocents a minute, to non-skype phone users. Skype provide a package for Geeklawyers T-Mobile MDA Pro Windows Mobile phone which he has installed and used very successfully.

The reason for the ban? Well of course it’s nothing to do with the damage to their revenue stream, no, heaven forbid. It’s because;

VoIP isn’t sufficiently consistent or capable of providing calls of a high enough quality calls to be allowed into its mobile phone network …

The quality of VoIP, they say, is so poor that you may suffer the inconvenience of a poor quality call (not Geeklawyer’s experience it has to be said) and to protect you from this they’ll terminate your contract invalidate your SIM card and, presumably, impale you on the nearest set of railings.

Interestingly the personal user plan offers an alternative rationale: it’s about fair bandwidth useage: they worry that VoIP and peer to peer will absorb lots of bandwidth. On this they are on better grounds but this argument is inconsistent with the reason given in the professional plan for not using VoIP. Also if you offer an unlimited phone plan it should indeed be unlimited and not subject to a 2 gig limit.

Geeklawyer is also unimpressed with the contract drafting that also says ‘messaging’ is banned. This doesn’t absorb significant bandwidth usage: again one suspects that they’d rather you used SMS at 10p a shot and not free MSN. But, ‘messaging’ would also include email and SMS - oops try arguing against a contra proferentum construction of that before a judge, T-Mobile!