South American UMTS vacuum cleans your wallet

LOCAL LOOP monopoly Telecom Argentina started trumpeting its expensive mobile 3GSM/UMTS service available in a small area of Buenos Aires city through its mobile phone subsidiary, Personal.

The mobile operator of incumbent Telecom Argentia -owned in part by Telecom Italia- is running full-page ads on the local papers for "Personal 3G Connect", the firms' UMTS offering running at a speed of 1.2 Mbps and also promoting an associated UMTS cardbus adapter to be used with notebooks, at a price of around $390 greenbacks -including VAT-.

Personal's Flash-infested web site showing the firm's UMTS/3GSM
cardbus adapter offering

The firm's adverts offer two service plans, and surprisingly none of which are "flat-rate" so if you choose one of these you are insanely billed per traffic, on a 1.2Mbps connection. Can you feel the sound of the vacuum cleaner emptying your wallet?, if not, better get ready for it. The first advertised service plan is around $32 greenbacks per month -plus VAT- and allows a "whopping" 200 megabytes of data, which at over 1 Gbps means your included data transfer allotment will be exceeded less than 25 minutes after you start a big download, like for instance Microsoft's infamous 260MB XP Service Pack 2 behemoth. Or think what would happen if you don't realize it and your notebook begins downloading the 70+ post-SP2 patches available over "automatic updates" while you are connected through your new nifty 3G connection.

The second plan advertised includes a "generous" single gigabyte of data transfer included in the monthly price, and runs for $64 greenbacks per month plus VAT. It should be noted that in both instances, prices are for data plans only -no voice calls are included, and those should be added to the monthly cost. A true rip-off if you ask me.

Full-page ads on the local paper

With operators like Telmex's Ertach and Nextel's Velocom already operating WiMAX networks for the last few years and with mobile WiMax soon to become available, the question is who in his right mind would want to pay per megabyte on a 3GSM/UMTS link?. If the company seriously wants to make UMTS a contender, they should make this a flat-rate service like it's available from some operators in Euroland, otherwise the service is one big joke that should be avoided at all costs.

This scribbler thinks both Telefonica and Telecom execs in their ivory towers should stop treating local consumers as second-rate colonies. Until that happens - or hell freezes over - we advise local users to contact the smaller alternative WiMax providers and press them to deliver their upcoming mobile WiMax solutions sooner rather than later. µ

See Aso
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