Oh Orange UK customers, you lucky dogs, your carrier is giving you a bit of a break as we enter globe-trotting season. No longer are you chained to absurd per-MB roaming charges or unecessary monthly plans. Instead, you can shell out £3-a-day (about ) for 30MB of data — which is plenty for checking e-mail and doing some light browsing. If you don’t use any data then you don’t get charged (sweet!), but go over that limit and you’re back to the normal £3.07-per-MB rate (not so sweet). It’s a perfect option for the traveler who only spends a week or two abroad at a time, and it closes the gap with fellow UK provider Vodafone, which offers a £2-per-day, 25MB option. Now, if only others (especially our friends here in the US) would offer sensible roaming plans of their own.

Orange UK offers daily 30MB for £3 roaming option for fee weary travelers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last Wednesday, on my way to Hewlett-Packard’s WebOS and Touchpad launch, I dropped my BlackBerry somewhere. It was time for me to panic, considering how much I depend on that device to do everything. By chance, I had a Sprint   Android-based Evo 4G phone that I could use, otherwise I would have been in trouble.

In an odd coincidence, I lost my phone a day before Apple launched the iPhone on Verizon Wireless. This past Thursday morning, a review unit from Apple showed up. Still without my BlackBerry, I used the Verizon iPhone (through Google Voice) as my primary phone. Boy, it sure was fun.

As you might remember, I had broken up with my iPhone in disgust about two years ago. Frustrated by AT&T’s network coverage in the two metro regions where I spend most of my time — the San Francisco Bay Area and New York — I knew it was time to switch to T-Mobile’s BlackBerry service with UMA.

I liked the idea of a Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry, which allowed me to make calls from any place there was Wi-Fi, without worrying too much about international roaming charges or pokey networks. And when all else failed, I could hop on to the Sprint Hotspot for making calls via UMA.

Sure I had an iPod Touch for testing out apps and mobile web services, and yes, I had access to all sorts of Android devices, but it was the ease with which I could BBM, text, email and use Google chat that made the BlackBerry an ideal solution for me. I missed the touch interface and a full-fledged browser, but my BlackBerry worked. T-Mobile has a decent network and UMA is a great workaround for any network shortcomings. Frankly, I preferred the BlackBerry over Google Android.

But then, the iPhone on Verizon happened and I got to play with it for four days — and today, I can safely declare, this is how the iPhone was meant to be. No dropped calls, decent Internet connectivity (1.2 Mbps to 1.4 Mbps) and SMS messages that show up without any delay. The apps performed, as they should, thanks to the stable network connectivity.

The only problem I can see when it comes to using the iPhone on a CDMA network will arise when I am traveling overseas. Sure, it is not possible to check the web when talking on the phone (which is a shortcoming of CDMA), but I will take ability to complete my phone calls without dropping them once a minute over that inconvenience.

I like the idea of carrying a single device. It’s like being in love again. I will miss my BBM, but it’s time for me to mosey over to the Apple store and make the switch back. I’m on my way!

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Mobile 2011: Data Consumption Will Explode
• 5 Companies That Ruled Mobile in 2010
• Mobile App Developer Survey: Profiles, Platforms and Monetization

GigaOMTech

A technologically important creation is the Telecom Billing System. The world telecommunication industry is speeding towards growth. It has become essential to have an organized Telecom Billing System to manage the services used by consumers. The system needs to be good enough to convert the services used by these millions of customers into a billable format.

The data utilized by consumers needs to be categorized by the telecom OSS. This system will track the customer use and accordingly help the billing department to present a detailed account of their usage with the bill. In this world, the customer support and billing section of a company work together to give customers better services.

Let us find out how a billing system is created. In a standard system, a customer will apply for the services with the relevant documents. The credibility of the person is checked and the wireless service will be provided. The customer preferences are saved and their account is activated.

A unique customer ID will be provided to them. All their services used and call records will be saved under this unique ID. Call Detail Records (CDR) will be used to bill the customer as per the rates in their tariff plan. Additional service charges, roaming charges and long distance calls will be added as per the usage data sent by other supporting network operators.

Wireless internet usage data will be charged separately depending on the data usage tariff plan. Details like call duration, caller number, call start time and call end time will be recorded In the Call Detail Records of the customer. In a similar way, outgoing calls are also saved. These details are reflected in the bills as well. Whenever a customer calls a customer support number, the call details are recorded. These details can lead to manual changes in the billing system, such as errors reported, discounts offered or description of the complaint for future reference. The complaint history of a customer and call history can help the telecom company in case it is needed in the future for solving issues.

Every month a computer generated invoice is sent to the customer in the form of a bill. Customers whose records show no payment processed for the earlier month/s are sent a warning message or their service will be temporarily deactivated.

At the end of the month, the invoice is generated, taking into account the usage, automatic invoices generated, reported errors, past payments and payments under process. If the payments are not processed on time, the account holder will receive alert messages or the account may get discontinued temporarily. If the customer has chosen an auto-debit service, then the payment will be automatically processed.

Customer Relationship Management plays an important role today in the Telecom Billing System. Due to cut-throat competition, better customer support options such as real-time billing, multi-lingual support, and the like, are being offered. More and more applications and billing options are available to consumers now. Now, we can wait for a future with a high-end Telecom OSS where customers will be the kings in true sense.

Fake Steve is rustling some feathers this week with his Operation Chokehold, a planned bit of corporate disobedience against AT&T. He’s telling iPhone users to go nuts with the data on Friday, December 18, just to show AT&T’s CEO De La Vega, the man who suggested education would encourage users not to use his network so much, what uneducated users really can do to his preciously twee airwaves.

The call to action:

Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. THe idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

I would do it, obviously, but I’m overseas right now and if I turned on data I could buy De La Vega a new yacht with the roaming charges.

Now I’m all for a bit of fun, obviously, but isn’t it ironic that this is what passes for political action these days? Our forefathers went to union meetings, we use Pandora all day. Oh well. At least AT&T can’t hire the Pinkertons to bust our heads.

If you spend your free time going gaga over cell phones, here’s a chance to make money from your Twilight-level geeky admiration. Cell Phones Etc. (cellphones.ca) is looking for writers, those with a masterful written command of the English language, and with a sense for the latest cell phones (duh), including what they can do.

Just email branden -at- cellphones.ca (replace “-at-” with “@”) for more information. Here are some things the site requires:

Regular Contributor: 1-2 articles / how-to’s a week (ie. “10 Hottest Phones Under $10″, “A Look At The Richest Men in Mobile”, “The Complete Roundup of iPhone Clones”, “How to beat roaming charges while traveling abroad.”

Columnist: A weekly or monthly opinion column covering a mobile topic of your particular interests or expertise.

Phone Writeups: We need some help with short writeups for each phone that we add to our database. Those should be 1-3 paragraphs, not a review, rather a general overview of the device, who its designed for, etc. Think a Coles Notes version of wikipedia entries. Unbiased, concise but more consumer friendly.

What about compensation? More from Branden:

Payouts will depend on the length of the piece of course. Shorter blog posts and commentary will run between $5-10 per post. Longer length articles / features will run $15-$50. All will depend on the piece, the quality of writing and how big of role the individual takes on with our new site.

This opening looks intriguing enough; if my schedule wasn’t so full, I would’ve started pimping my articles on cellphones.ca on The Gadget Blog by now!

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Canadian company Datawind, the guys behind the Pocket Surfer, has entered the netbook market with the UbiSurfer. Spec wise I’m afraid it gets absolutely blown out of the water compared to other netbooks available. An Arm processor with just 128GB of RAM is pretty poor. As is the SSD of just 1GB. But it does have a few features going for it that make it an attractive proposition. Firstly, it’s tiny. If you’re looking for a really compact netbook you’ll struggle to get more compact that this. The screen is just 7-inches and it weighs just 700g. Secondly it’s only £159.99. Lastly, and by far the most crucial aspect of the UbiSufer is that it comes with a pre-installed Vodafone SIM that will allow 30 hours of GPRS web surfing a month. It’s not 3G but it’s better than a poke in the eye. If more than 30 hours are needed a £5.99 a month fee will allow unlimited usage. The 30 hours a month deal lasts for a year, and then it’s just £29.99 a year after that. Roaming charges are pretty cheap too – just 5p a minute in Europe and the States. 30 hours should be more than enough for most surfers – the netbook has Wi-Fi as well so it wouldn’t be totally dependent on the Vodafone connection. So overall, fairly poor netbook, fairly good data deal. For £159.99 it might be worth a punt. Get it online from Maplin.