Data roaming fees can be a crippling expense, and some clients reckon mobile operators should have a cap on usage.
That was the response of several eNCA.com readers on learning of a hefty data roaming bill worth tens of thousands of Rand that Vodacom sent to customer Kyle White.
Vodacom spokesperson Richard Boorman said the operator was investigating the details of White’s grievance, but recommended that clients research data roaming options on the company’s website.
Several clients who had bills from R7,000 to over R30,000 responded to a query on the cost of roaming fees.
They indicated the cost of data roaming proved stunning for consumers who, like White, travelled overseas, but also those using the service in South Africa, and on several mobile networks, not only Vodacom.
One consumer claimed he received a bill of over R30,000 after travelling to two destinations but eNCA.com was not able to independently verify the report.
Vodacom slammed White with a R46,000 bill for data roaming fees incurred while he was in Mauritius on honeymoon last year. He is just one customer who has received a shocking bill.
The operator “generously” waived over R14,000 from White’s original bill and granted him extra time to settle the account.
Once he settled his bill, however, White decided to warn others about exorbitant data roaming fees. He wrote an irate post out of sheer frustration at what he perceived to be Vodacom’s apathy towards its customers.
Thousands of people have read the damning piece, which White sponsored on Facebook and published online. On Wednesday, 12 May 2015, he said the blog had been read 8,000 times in six days.
“Why did Vodacom not block the account when such a high bill was being tallied?” wrote White.
He said he found Boorman’s response to be “a very soft explanation”. Vodacom did not explain why White never received SMS notifications of data roaming abroad once it exceeded the R2,000 mark.
Plenty of people these days are prepared to augment their bodies with face furniture, piercings, rings and tattoos.
But would you implant a chip in your hand to show how easy it is to exploit an Android phone?
That’s what former US navy petty officer Seth Wahle did, in an attempt to demonstrate how business networks could be compromised.
Wahle took an NFC chip, similar to the kind found in many of today’s smartphones, and injected it between the thumb and finger of his left hand. According to Forbes, the injection was something of an eye-watering experience.
But implants aren’t for the squeamish. Wahle says the needle was bigger than he’d expected when he had the chip implanted by an “unlicensed amateur” for $40, enough to make him want to vomit. He says he had to go through a backstreet operation due to Florida’s restrictive body modification laws.
Unfortunately for lovers of Hollywood techno-thrillers, the attack itself is fairly lame.
As the article in Forbes describes, for the exploit to be successful the victim has to click on a link sent to his Android device by the implanted NFC chip:
It has an NFC (Near Field Communications) antenna that pings Android phones, asking them to open a link. Once the user agrees to open that link and install a malicious file, their phone connects to a remote computer, the owner of which can carry out further exploits on that mobile device.
Put simply, that Android device is compromised. In a demo for FORBES, Wahle used the Metasploit penetration testing software on his laptop to force an Android device to take a picture of his cheery visage.
The police will deploy Nyala armoured vehicles at malls across Gauteng in a fight-back against the upsurge in shopping centre robberies by seemingly highly organised gangs.
But detectives made a breakthrough early yesterday when they arrested five men, in raids in Brixton and in Doornfontein, Johannesburg.
The men, aged between 28 and 44, were found with a 9mm pistol and three semi-automatic rifles.
Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Lesetja Mothiba said the men were linked to at least two recent mall robberies, including Saturday’s at Black Chain Shopping Centre, in Diepkloof, Soweto.
They are also suspected of being involved in ATM bombings, taxi violence and robberies at business premises.
The police said there had been 11 robberies at malls across Gauteng since the middle of last month targeting cellphone shops and Apple iStores.
The police said they will strengthen their deployments at 12 Gauteng shopping centres, which they refused to name. Armoured vehicles will be part of the deterrent.
Criminologist Rudolph Zinn said the recent spate of shopping centre robberies had been predicted.
“Two or three years ago there was a security summit and what came out is that these guys are going to start hitting malls.”
He said the reason for this was that hijackings, house robberies and ATM bombings were becoming more difficult to pull off.
Armed security guards are hamstrung in engaging robbers in malls because of the danger of hitting bystanders in a shoot-out.
They are targeting cellphones, said Zinn, because phones are small but have a high black market value.
Hennie Lochner, a senior researcher in the department of police practice at Unisa, said blacklisted phones can be reactivated.
The police are to brief mall managers in Gauteng on improving security.
(Reuters) – HTC Corp on Wednesday unveiled two smartphones running Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone 8 software and said the devices would be available in November with several operators around the world.
The two brightly colored devices — the Windows Phone 8X and the Windows Phone 8S — will pitch HTC directly against Microsoft’s main partner Nokia, which also unveiled two phones based on the Windows software earlier this month.
However, while Nokia did not name any customers for its devices, HTC said theirs would go on sale at three of the top four U.S. mobile operators – Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA. It also said that several operators in Europe and Asia agreed to sell the devices.
HTC is under a lot of pressure to generate strong sales from its next round of smartphones as it has been losing ground to Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.
Until now, HTC has been betting on its One series of phones but so far this year sales of those phones have failed to keep pace with the Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy range.
Until the second half of 2011, when it suffered a sharp decline in its fortunes, former contract smartphone maker HTC had build a strong brand around the world with phones based on Android software.
Apple Inc’s share of China’s booming smartphone market slipped for a second straight quarter in October-December, as it lost ground to cheaper local brands and as some shoppers held off until after the iPhone 4S launch last month.
China, the world’s largest mobile phone market, has not been easy for Apple, which is grappling with a lawsuit from a local firm over the iPad name and issues at its suppliers’ factories over wages and working conditions.
With the number of mobile subscribers set to top 1 billion in China this year, there is cut-throat competition among South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Nokia, Apple and local firms Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp.
While Apple regained its top spot as the world’s largest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter and for last year as a whole, it slipped to 5th place in China, overtaken by ZTE. Apple’s China smartphone market share slid to 7.5 percent from 10.4 percent in July-September.
In the last quarter, Samsung knocked Nokia off the top slot, taking 24.3 percent of the market, more than three times Apple’s share, data from research firm Gartner showed. Nokia’s market share more than halved last year, from above 40 percent in the first quarter to below one fifth by the fourth quarter.
“Chinese handset makers have been actively promoting their smartphones with China’s three telecoms operators, so we saw ZTE and Huawei gain significant market share,” said Taipei-based Gartner analyst CK Lu.
Gartner said this week it expected Apple’s iPhone market share to slip for a couple of quarters as the novelty of its latest 4S model wears off.
In the first quarter of last year, ZTE had a market share of just 3 percent, but ended 2011 ranked 4th with more than 11 percent market share.
Chinese firms are gradually shifting up towards the higher end of the market, unveiling more feature-packed smartphones.
“If you want to sell handsets to the mass market, a simple rule of thumb in China is that the handset price has to be close to 70 percent of the monthly salary,” said Jayesh Easwaramony, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.
“Today, an iPhone is more than two months salary.”
This, said Easwaramony, gives the likes of Huawei and ZTE the opportunity to cater to a mass market that is captivated by the iPhone, but doesn’t have the purchasing power for it.
VALUE FOR MONEY
“The quality of Huawei’s phones is quite high and it’s good value for money compared to the iPhone,” said Dale Dai, a 28-year-old sales executive from Beijing.
Dai, who uses his Huawei phone to write weibo, or Chinese microblogs, surf the Internet and make calls, recently bought a new Honor smartphone for 1,800 yuan ($290), almost a third of the price of a new iPhone 4S at 4,988 yuan.
But given the sheer size of the Chinese market, just targeting the highest end users should be enough for Apple, though it’s not always been a smooth ride.
Last month, shoppers in Beijing threw eggs at the Apple store and fought with police when they were told the iPhone 4S would not be on sale as scheduled.
In Shenzhen, some genuine iPhones and iPads are smuggled in from Hong Kong, while sellers also take advantage of Apple’s popularity by packaging fake iPhones in iPhone 5 boxes – even before the 4S was launched.
In Hong Kong, Apple resorted to an online lottery reservation system for the 4S model after crowd control issues disrupted initial sales.
Analysts expect Apple to stem its slide in market share in China by signing up another carrier.
China Unicom, the country’s No.2 telecoms operator, is currently the only carrier to officially carry the iPhone. It has not officially given its iPhone sales, but analysts estimate it has sold around 3 million iPhones since signing a contract with Apple in 2009.
China Telecom Corp Ltd, the third and smallest operator, is expected to be next to clinch a similar deal with Apple later this year, and analysts predict it would sell about 1.4 million iPhones this year if it can reach a deal with Apple by May, rising to 2-4 million new iPhone users in 2013.
($1 = 6.3016 Chinese yuan)
– Reuters
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