Orange today informed us that they’ve become 3. High-powered mar­ket­ing blitz to exist­ing cus­tomers of Orange has begun, and is expected to con­tinue in force. This line typ­i­fies the level of crap I’ve come to expect 3 (and most other 3G tele­phony — not data, that’s okay — net­works) to spew:

So, on our 3G net­work, you can enjoy the same great value, plus inter­na­tional roam­ing, Blue­tooth™, pic­ture mes­sag­ing and more.

Okay. Let’s analyse this a bit. My call rates are going up, even though the vol­ume of users on Hutchinson’s 3G net­work “is now larger than our CDMA net­work” (cost/volume should go down, but hasn’t). I could get inter­na­tional roam­ing with Orange, albeit only in places with CDMA: no-one should ever choose CDMA with­out being aware at least to some degree how the tech­nol­ogy works/is applied glob­ally (if that’s some­thing they care about — I don’t, global roam­ing is still way too expen­sive + I don’t go over­seas often enough). Blue­tooth is the pin­na­cle of crap in this line, hav­ing absolutely noth­ing to do with the net­work — unless it’s a provider-supplied phone with Blue­tooth dis­abled because they’re scum­bags. I don’t need to elab­o­rate on this point, suf­fice to say I sin­cerely hope no-one with any tech­ni­cal knowl­edge copy-proofed this. Pic­ture mes­sag­ing is arguably the most use­less thing that ever hap­pened to telephony.

As for the other crap HT have spun, I espe­cially love this line from their FAQ:

What hap­pens to my Orange contract?

Your Orange con­tract will remain valid, how­ever, as a spe­cial offer we are allow­ing a full waiver of all remain­ing hand­set instal­ments when you upgrade to 3G.

Mar­vel­lous. Not only am I being forced onto more expen­sive plans + call rates (call rates mat­ter for where I’d like to take my mobile phone usage pat­terns — at present, I’m price-conscious to the point of mak­ing less calls than I oth­er­wise would, and SMS usage is triv­ial at 11c to any mobile in Aus­tralia. With 3 I get some free SMS, but I’m not at all helped on the call rate front), there’s also absolutely no exit option.

Effec­tively, HT would love to change my con­tract so I’m on a volume-economics-powered 3G net­work on which they have higher mar­gins and I see no real ben­e­fits. Get this:

Can I keep my cur­rent phone when I upgrade to 3G?

Yes. The phone is yours to keep, how­ever we will not be con­nect­ing any new ser­vices to Orange and this phone will not work on any other net­work, includ­ing our 3G net­work. We have devel­oped fan­tas­tic upgrade offers that include a free hand­set within the plan. We are in the process of set­ting up a recy­cling pro­gram to take all old mobiles.

The phone is mine to keep, but there aren’t any CDMA net­works left in Aus­tralia (WCDMA is actu­ally noth­ing to do with CDMA and has no inter­op­er­abil­ity with it). “Fan­tas­tic upgrade offers” refer to mar­gin­ally reduced SMS costs (which, so far as I can gather, is the most prof­itable part of non-business-account tele­phony ser­vices in Aus­tralia: namely, Orange’s core mar­ket. They never made a big impact on the busi­ness telco scene, and their flag­ship prod­uct — before they ditched it — was a landline-replacement plan) and increased call costs if I were to choose a plan based on my cur­rent usage. “Include a free hand­set” refers to the abil­ity to get a free phone if I agree to be shunted onto a new con­tract term. Not ter­ri­bly likely. In fact, I’m going to see this con­tract term out, then switch to another telco.

Or maybe not, but I’d cer­tainly like to. Any­one have rec­om­men­da­tions for a $35 – 40 plan, prefer­ably with cap? Yes, even Tel­stra is an option if the cap is good enough. It’d mean we could get rid of our land­line, still have a dis­count on Inter­net (two or more Tel­stra ser­vices on one bill), and switch to VoIP. Sure, Tel­stra are still get­ting our money but they’re shoot­ing them­selves in the foot doing it! I just want the fam­ily to get past the “learn­ing curve” of VoIP so they’re hooked on the idea and then we can find a more com­pelling ISP, pick the cheap­est pos­si­ble land­line rate with a non-Telstra provider, and then they’re only get­ting ULL money from us.

Did I ever men­tion I hate telcos?