Gossip

Orange "fair use" policy looks holier than fish-net

Six pounds a month for all the data you can download? I can download a lot in a month! Some catch, surely? No; apparently, this is the one that got away ... Well, the Orange launch was at Billingsgate fish market.

Orange was "first" with the Microsoft Smartphone. Actually, since Sendo was showing everybody who cared to look that it had a smartphone too (its own version) and a rather slimmer one, too, it's understandable that Sendo was miffed. Not that anybody said anything rude; they just gave out Sendo-badged caps in an ostentatious way. But there aren't enough phones for T-Mobile to launch it yet, it seems. So Orange was first, again. Erm, when were they last first?

Data, they said. Of course, ten years ago when Orange announced itself on the phone market, it wasn't a phone company. It was a PCN or personal communications network; and it didn'tjust have voice calls, but also texting. Your Sniffer, following the great and the good around the old fish market on the Thames last night, was delighted to learn that "data" now earns Orange something like 1.7 billion Euros a year - and of course, what Orange didn't remind us, is that at least 85% of this comes from text messages.

So how on earth can Orange make money out of a six pound per month data deal? Easy, said orange bosses. We have a "fair use" policy, they said. After that, if you abuse the system, they call you and say "oy! - you're over-cooking it!" And how, Sniffer asked, do they do this?

Right now, our best guess is, they can't. Oh, they said they could. "We will monitor data usage," they said. "How?" asked Sniffer. "Erm ... "

Is this a deliberate loss-leader, designed to pump the SmartPhone out into the market? No! - "We genuinely have a fair use policy!" they shrieked. OK, how do they control it? "Erm ... "

So if you do have an Orange GPRS deal, you might consdier getting the videophone instead. It won't do for the girly element, being nearly an inch thick. But until the Sendo phone appears ... and until Orange works out exactly how to cap usage, it just might be the bargain of the year. It might pay for the phone in six months, indeed!

The launch was, Microsoft told the world, at a posh London nightclub, which is a fishy way to describe Billingsgate. Perhaps the bargain will tip the scales in favour of Microsoft, instead of Symbian? Or is this the one that got away?