Max Mosley is now on twitter.  He’s following 38 people at the time of writing, and I’m one of them!  I had no idea I was so influential!

I read his tweets and they seem credible so far, but I’m quite net-savvy so I’m not going to assume anything here.  He did say his IT team had helped him secure the @maxmosley username, which sounds credible too; if anyone else had it they would be making fake comments by now.

To confirm, I called Mr Mosley’s secretary in Monaco.  She didn’t know for sure, but said she would ask him when he returns to the office tomorrow and contact me to confirm whether it’s actually him.

I’ll let you know.

Edit: Max’s secretary never got back to me. The Twitter account has been suspended, so I assume it was fake. Would have been nice is someone had thanked me for bringing it to their attention, but that’s Max and the FIA for you.

I just noticed that visitors to this website increased sharply over the last few weeks.  Looking into it further, it seems that 60% of the people who visited the site had searched for something about T-Mobile’s ‘Fair Use Policy’ (see earlier posts).

My guess is that most (if not all) of those people had had letters about so-called ‘excessive use’ of their T-Mobile broadband. 

T-Mobile still has “Browse as much as you want and never worry about cost with our unlimited price plans” on its website.  It is not unlimited!  There is a maximum speed, and if you download too much they slow the speed down so much that surfing is impracticable, and it’s slowed for the rest of the contract term.  How is that ‘unlimited’?

No other (major) mobile broadband provider caps the speed if you exceed the usage limit, but they do charge for any data you use in excess of the limit:

Vodafone Mobile Broadband charges £15 per GB if you exceed their limit.

3 Mobile Broadband charges £100 per GB thereafter if you exceed their limit.

O2 Mobile Broadband charges £200 per GB if you exceed their limit!  £200 per GB!!!!

If you feel that these caps and charges are unfair and/or extortionate, please leave a comment (even if it’s just “Me too”).

Still want to buy mobile broadband?  If so, check the ads to the right, and send a few pence my way (at no cost to you).  Thanks.

Well, I guess that ends any hope of a mobile telecoms company sponsoring my motor racing career.  Come to think of it, I’m looking for work at the moment too, so I guess these are four companies I won’t have to contact.

Argh!!!  I want to subscribe to all the Darwin programmes as podcasts, not just one of them.  Why do you insist on trying to force me to use the stupid iPlayer?  I don’t want to listen at my computer, I want to listen when it suits me, on whatever device I choose.

iPlayer looks nice, but it doesn’t function in a 2.0 way.  Maybe I’ll call you Broadcaster 1.1 (instead of 1.0) because you are trying, but iPlayer is just like a TV on a PC; it doesn’t give people the on-demand watch-anywhere experience that people now want.  We want to download when it’s convenient, and watch when it’s convenient; on our PCs or mobile devices (without using proprietry software), whether or not we have access to the internet at the time, on the train, in the car; whenever, wherever, however.  Only when we can do that will you be Broadcaster 2.0.  Come on!  It’s not the future, it’s now!

For my previous post, I was going to embed a link to a YouTube video of BBC’s Top Gear where Clarkson reviewed the Tesla.  Unfortunately, BBC removed the video because it violates their copyright.  Rant starts:

WHEN ARE YOU CONTENT MAKERS GOING TO REALISE THAT YOUTUBE IS FREE ADVERTISING?!!!!!  Sorry to shout, but this makes me mad.  The programme is not for sale, and it has been broadcast free over the air.  What possible loss could the BBC face by having it on YouTube?  Indeed, the clip ended with a teaser stating that James was going to explain “later” why battery cars would soon be killed off.  Seeing this made me think “Oh, I’ll have to go and watch that when I have time”. 

I usually record Top Gear anyway, but I delete most of them un-watched because I don’t get much time for TV.  I tend to record more than I can watch so that when I do want to watch something I have a choice of viewing.  Those that I watch get deleted, together with anything old that is unwatched.

SEEING THE YOUTUBE CLIP MADE ME WANT TO WATCH THE WHOLE PROGRAMME, BBC!  DON’T YOU GET IT?!!!

Oh my god, these people are so stupid!  They get the clip taken down, but I bet that if you go to www.youtube.com and search for “top gear telsa” as I just did, there’ll be another clip of it. 

BBC!  You can’t beat them, join them!  I really don’t see the point in trying to get these clips taken down.  It’s futile.  Taking them down doesn’t increase your viewers, but leaving them up might.

I still feel mad about this but you get the point, don’t you, dear reader.  I’ll stop typing now so we can both get on with something more productive.  Thanks for letting me ‘vent’.

Customer services told me that they can’t deal the matter further, and suggested I write to their customer services department in Doxford.  Sent the letter yesterday.  Will let you know the result.

What she did say on the phone is that the 64kbps speed will last two weeks, but if I subsequently exceed the data allowance then they’ll make it permanent.  I’ve asked for confirmation or clarification of the policy as I can’t find it on their site.

My phone, an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II) uses WiFi or HSDPA mobile broadband.  If I leave WiFi on, when I leave the house I get an annoying popup every time the phone finds a WiFi connection asking if I want to connect.  So, I’ve been using the mobile broadband exclusively.

What was putting me way over the data allowance was downloading audio and video podcasts overnight.  I use the excellent Beyondpod, a “free, open source, RSS feed reader and podcast manager (podcatcher) for Microsoft Smartphone and Pocket PC. “ 

I’ve set BeyondPod to download new podcasts at 4am daily.  What I didn’t know (and there was no way to find out) is that the podcasts used 4.27GB in October.  The T-Mobile ‘fair use’ amount is 1GB.  1GB = approx eight one-hour audio podcasts or less than three video podcasts a week.  I think it was October that I found the video podcasts, and BeyondPod will have downloaded some older podcasts too.  In any case, three hours worth of video podcasts isn’t that much.  That’s without any surfing too.

The day after my call to T-Mobile about their ‘fair use’ letter, BeyondPod released a new beta version.  One of the features of this new version is an setting that prevents the downloads if the only data connection is mobile broadband.  In other words, it only downloads if I’m connected to my home broadband via WiFi.  I also found a button on the keypad that toggles between WiFi and mobile broadband, so all I have to do is remember to toggle when Ieave or return to the house.  Even if I forget, BeyondPod won’t download the podcasts if the phone is set to mobile broadband.

In summary, I’ve worked out a way of reducing my mobile broadband usage considerably.  I’ve told T-Mobile about this in my letter.  Now I’m waiting to see whether they’re going to take a ‘fair’ view of my situation.

It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, but I hope that’s behind me as I look forward to the new week ahead.  More on that another time.

This is just an unplanned post about some ‘discussions’ I’m having with T-Mobile about their ‘fair use’ policy on their mobile broadband.  This isn’t the broadband USB dongle that I plug into my laptop, it’s the surfing I do on my mobile phone.

They’ve written to me to explain that in October (2008) I exceeded the amount of data that they think is a ‘fair use’ of their service.  The letter explained that if I continue to exceed that amount in November then they would cap the speed to 64kbps (just over dial-up speed).  The problem is that the letter arrived on the 24^th of November, by which time I had probably already exceeded their fair use allowance again.  Basically, I feel like I’ve been stitched up.

I’ve got over a year to run on the contract too, so I’ll be paying the full amount for a ‘broadband speed’ service, but will have little more than dial-up speeds.  Surfing at those speeds nowadays is not practicable.

Okay, so I exceeded the fair use amount in the contract (there are other issues too, but I won’t complicate things at this stage).  The thing is, there’s no way to monitor how much data I’m actually using.  The first I know about it is the letter I receive, and by then it’s too late to do anything about it.

I’ve had a lengthy phone call with them tonight, and will be faxing them a letter tomorrow to try to resolve the situation.  This is T-Mobile’s opportunity to show whether they are ‘treating customers fairly’.