The USS Quad Damage

In Australia, one thing you might not know about your 3G mobile is that you can actually connect your mobile phone to your laptop and use it to connect to the internet. However, you’d never really do this. You’d probably do what Tim’s done, and get a three mobile, and separately get a three broadband connection. The broadband connection will get you a USB modem and cheaper internet access, and the phone connection will get you a phone with really expensive internet access.

Basically, if you want to add internet access to your phone, which will effectively be the same as the broadband connection, except you can make phone calls, you will have to pay, on top of your plan, $40 for 2 GB on x-series. If you don’t want the extra crap that x-series provides, and simply want internet on your mobile, you have to pay only... wait for it... $49 for 2GB.

Contrast this with the $25 if you get a USB modem and a whole new account with 3. Basically, the less you ask for, the more you pay. What the fuck? To be fair, the $25 deal is a special “half-price” deal which only goes until tuesday, but using your mobile phone to access the internet does not have that special apply to it.

My guess is that this happens likely because the part of the organisation which handlesphones is different from the organisation which handles broadband, and they’re possibly competing with one another. This is kind of the suck. I wouldn’t be interested in mobile internet unless I can get it without having to lug around another device. Hopefully 3 will fix this up sometime...