MTN is feeling a little backward lately. The outages on the network (which may or may not be Telkom’s fault) are just part of the mix. It also seems that Vodacom has managed to snag all the cool devices that are heading this way. One good example is the iPhone 3G which Vodacom secured the right to distribute when it came out last year. This morning I read that Vodacom is the network you need to go through to access Facebook Mobile.
Ok, this isn’t exactly the death knell for MTN but it is another indicator Vodacom is the network for the cool new gadgets and better access to social services on the Web. This may be due to Vodafone’s stake in Vodacom (Simon Dingle or Duncan McLeod can better speak to those things than me) but whatever the enabling mechanism, all I get from MTN is offers of crappy phones when I am due to upgrade and an average service.
I think I am due for an upgrade soon and I am starting to think about moving across to Vodacom. The one thing that holds me back is that I have been told that MTN has a lower subscriber density (or whatever the term is) and I believe MTN is currently building trenches and building capacity. If only I could get better than EDGE connectivity in my house …
It turns out Vodafone has reached an agreement with Apple to distribute the iPhone in 10 of Vodafone’s customer countries including South Africa:
Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.
I hope this means we don’t become a dumping ground for older version iPhones while the 3G versions are (hopefully) released next month. If Apple puts out an HSDPA (or, perhaps even just a 3G) iPhone with an 80GB drive and up, I am there like a bear! I’ll happily ditch Nokia and move on. Android devices are only going to really start coming out later this year so we’ll have to wait and see what those devices can do.
I wrote about whether I would want to use a single device or multiple specialised devices a while ago (not sure where I published the post though). Lately I think I have come round to the single device camp. I tend to take my iPod with me pretty much everywhere I go in addition to my phone so if there is an iPhone that has fast data access through the mobile network and has enough space to take most, if not all, my media then what more would I need?
