John Linton
....or just the worst journalism?
I raise that question simply because whenever I read any 'article' that relates to the Australian communications industry all I see is total nonsense invariably with some screaming headline that, apart from being hysterical, seldom relates to the actual words subsequently written. Annette read me a really good (or should that be bad?) example of such articles yesterday over breakfast. Now admittedly it was from a NSW Sunday tabloid 'newspaper' which itself is only loosely associated with what any other country in the world would think is related to journalism overall but doubtless the people who actually 'read' it take some notice of what it says - I haven't read it for over twenty years and then only for the sports section - I have no idea why Annette reads it but assume that she can't kick the habit of reading something while having breakfast.
In any event the article also appears in the on line SMH site here:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/consumers-being-abused-by-text-message-price-rort-20100123-mroo.html
The article makes the following claim:
Last financial year, total mobile telecommunications revenue increased
by 10 per cent from $10.8 billion to $12 billion, while mobile phone
subscriptions increased to 24 million.
which I find surprising because I very much doubt that last year's figures are available yet - it's far too early - and I don't see the relevance of a gross revenue figure or even a growth figure as having any relevance to anything. The table at the bottom of the article denies the head line as it simply shows that the 'retail' cost of an SMS is the same as that charged in the UK and the USA. Charges for SMS in SE Asian countries are as relevant as comparing the cost of any other service in Australia to the costs of countries where the base income differentials are so different.
However, even that is irrelevant when other quotes in the article point out that the majority of Australian mobile users buy their service using "capped plans" which means the actual prices of SMS (and calls) can't be represented by picking one 'retail' charge for part of a service and then have some cub journalist write a "we're all being ripped off by some dreadful companies" piece of garbage like the cited article. I am not, for one moment, denying that a rate of 25 cents per SMS isn't price gouging of the most disgraceful type - simply that no-one I know would be paying such ludicrously high prices....and I assume no-one who uses a lot of SMS would either.
I am pretty sure that building and maintaining a mobile network costs quite a bit of money and I'm equally sure that the people who put up the money for those networks require a realistic commercial return on their investment. For some prat of a 'professor' to make a ludicrous statement like "the cost of carrying an SMS is either free or of miniscule cost" and to have it printed just beggars the imagination - only some twit who has never had a real job in his life can make a claim that a $A4billion+ network can deliver anything for "free". While the cost, depending on the rigour you apply to the calculations, can be very low for sending an SMS, the point is that it is simply a part of an overall pricing matrix that includes giving away hardware (and therefore recovering the cost of that hardware) and, literally, dozens of other call types and service provisions.
Now, its quite possible to buy SMS services that allow even a company of Exetel's size to provide a residential user to send an SMS for far less than ten cents a message as a 'stand alone' service (not cross subsidising voice call rates or free hardware etc). In fact Exetel, like several other companies supplies business SMS services at less than 5 cents a message and both the supplier to Exetel and Exetel itself makes a profit on such services... but those customers use tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of SMS a month.
Ever since Krudd launched his first raft of lies ("I will deliver 12 mbps of data service to every child in Australia by the end of 2009 or some other speed by some other date....") the Australian press has printed possibly millions of words on just what is happening and will happen in Australian communications and I have serious doubts that not one sentence in all of those millions of words has been either true or has demonstrated any understanding by the writer of the subject he/she tried to address....certainly none of the articles I have read has had a clue.
The article cited is appallingly incorrect. The tsunami of words written about Krudd's lies is equally incorrect. It seems to me that Australia's fourth estate is as much use in conveying anything resembling 'truth' in 2010 as the then equivalent of Der Spiegel was in the first half of the 1940s.
I think that Australian journalism far outstrips the Australian communications industry for the title of "worst in the world".