KEY POINTS:
Whether you love or loathe Apple with all of its schizophrenic evil genius traits, one thing is for sure. When the Apple iPhone goes on sale later this year for New Zealand Vodafone customers, the flawed model for accessing the internet from your mobile phone will be consigned
to history - not just for iPhone users, but mobile users in general.
Vodafone's head of marketing and the former boss of iHug, Mark Rushworth, admitted as much last week.
"Some people say there is a barrier around price," said Rushworth of the mobile internet.
"That will be broken. The walled-garden approach doesn't work."
While it is unclear whether Vodafone will launch the iPhone in 10 markets around the world with the same all-you-can-eat data deal AT&T and O2 subscribers enjoy in the US and Britain respectively, all signs point to a package that for the first time allows flexible web browsing and email access at a reasonable price.
"Price will be sorted," Rushworth stressed to me.
"The network speeds are there. We're fortunate to have the iPhone in our line-up as well."
Here's the current problem with the mobile internet. Everyone is terrified of using it. That's because only business customers tend to have mobile plans that allow you a certain amount of mobile data use for a set fee each month. Business users often aren't the ones who pay the phone bill each month, so they don't care how much data they use.
Casual users of the mobile internet currently pay $11.25 per megabyte downloaded on the Vodafone network. Even the bundled plans available to mobile users are very restrictive. A Mobilise Data 3 plan gives you three megabytes of data for around $11 per month.
According to Vodafone, that's enough to "check your inbox about once per day and read short emails". In other words, do a few Google searches, check an online map or look up a listing on White Pages and you've blown your cap in the first couple of days.
You can increase the data allowance to 15MB for $21 a month. But you can almost get an entry-level home broadband package for that amount these days.
Telecom is no better for casual mobile data users, the pricing is similarly restrictive.
Up until now the high cost of the mobile internet has been an annoyance - I get emails on the issue every week. But because mobile phones aren't great at surfing the web, it hasn't sparked the outrage that brings about better pricing. If people want mobile internet access, they generally go for a mobile broadband card which they plug into a laptop to get broadband access on the move.
But the iPhone will change the model for mobile phones. The iPhone is actually very good at bringing you the internet on your phone, the best example of a mobile internet device I've seen yet.
The clever touch-screen user-interface and well-designed web browser actually encourage you to go online. The current batch of applications that come with the phone - YouTube, Google Maps and the stock quote and weather updates - all invisibly go out to the internet to find the information you need. It's pretty seamless, not like how the mobile internet used to be.
Even better, the iPhone has Wi-Fi networking, so around the home or at Wi-Fi hotspots you're encouraged to get online and surf the web for a reasonable price or even for free.
Contrast that with the prevailing "walled garden" approach Rushworth talks of. While the Vodafone Live portal, which this week had a facelift, offers numerous services for fixed prices, as a gateway to internet access it is still expensive and inflexible.
Apparently the portal clocks up 350,000 unique page views each month. But I bet at least half of those are from people having a look around then backing out when they realise they're going to have to pay for something.
Vodafone Live will remain the log-on point for people who want to download music tracks or watch mobile TV.
But the new approach to the mobile internet lets people simply log on to the web through a browser and surf away, as they would in front of their computer at home. That's the sort of flexibility people want and thanks to devices like the iPhone, it is now available in the palm of your hand.
Vodafone knows this. It is why it is getting into mobile advertising. By offering all-you-can-eat access to the internet as part of a monthly bundle of voice and data services, it has a captive audience of people who will increasingly use the internet. It can then market to those people and generate new forms of revenue, as it is already doing.
It offers Air New Zealand grab-a-seat promotions to Vodafone Live users and one text message promotion for those using Vodafone's IOU credit top-up service sends users an advertisement for the DVD Unlimited movie rental service.
Rushworth said 9 per cent of people who receive the message clicked through for details of the offer. It has taken the iPhone to force this mind shift on behalf of the telephone companies.
Whether you're holding the hottest phone in the world in your hand or not come year's end, you're likely to be using the mobile internet more as a result of its arrival.
