As if in a flash, I found yesterday that 17 months have passed since I signed up for an 18 month contract with T-Mobile. This means one important thing: I’m eligible for an upgrade. Hurrah! I signed up back in the formative days of Web’n Walk, where they offered half price line rental for 12 of the 18 months, and in return you got a rebranded HTC Wizard, 200 minutes and 40Mb of data.
These days T-Mobile have unlimited (i.e. 1Gb and you’d better not use Skype or the phone as a modem or they’ll hunt you down and throw you in the Thames). Further, while the Wizard is GPRS and hence offers modem speeds at best, T-Mobile now have a HSDPA network, which offers broadband-style internet for £7.50 over your standard tariff.
So it was with great expectations I headed off to the upgrade page and found that they didn’t want me back. I could pay £27.50 a month for a new plan, and £150 for a new phone. This was taking the piss, given you could get the same thing as a new subscriber for £22.50 and £90 respectively. Needless to say, I was not impressed.
Nevertheless, I went down to the local T-Mobile store and put this to them. It wasn’t until I asked them to cancel my contract that they folded and offered me the same terms as a new subscriber. So much for customer loyalty.
The upside is I have a brand new HTC Hermes (aka TyTN aka T-Mobile MDA Vario II) winging its way to me. Hardware wise it’s a touch nicer than the Wizard, with a faster CPU and 3G support. The upcoming Kaiser would add GPS, but frankly I’m not all that interested in both waiting and paying for such toys. Yet, anyway. Downside is that it still runs Windows Mobile, however an alternative has failed to appear as yet. Most disappointing.
The downside is that I’ve rewarded T-Mobile with my business in exchange for them being tits. The problem here is that most UK providers don’t dabble in data – Vodafone are promising a data plan come August, Orange want £3 a Mb, Virgin want £5 a Mb and 3 start at £40 a month for ‘unlimited’ plans. Hence one is left with few choices.
Still, new toys to play with – huzzah!
