The Mob Squad: The New Technological Terrorism

As once read on an American comedy quiz, there are three types of student mentality towards the old cash cow you call your bank statement. 1. Just reach into my wallet and grab a fifty. 2. Can’t complain. 3. I dream of bagel. Friends, when I saw my Vodafone bill last month, I’d be lucky to dream of toast.

Yes, I know I’m with the old-ripper-offerer network Vodafone. But that still doesn’t excuse the exorbitantly high prices we are charged for sending a few letters detailing all manner of banal things. We text about the quality of the coffee we drink, some nice pair of eyes we saw on the bus, dresses (especially dresses), sly comments in the classroom, and even the widely-abused weather topic. We laugh, we love, we lie, sometimes we even have borderline-cheating relationships over the trusty old clicker. However, we do pay the price.

The part I’ve found the hardest to stomach is, having come back from the land of the cork-hatted cobber, I’ve discovered it didn’t really have to be all that hard. Walking around in the beautifully sun-lined malls, with young men and women smiling and chatting noisily in their Aussie accents, I happened to casually glance with an innocent smile towards the big Vodafone shop, oh-so-eloquently marked with a speech bubble to try and be our fake Paris Vodafone BFF. But then I saw the sign. Wait: Did I just read 300 minutes to any network of my choice, for only $30? Yes, sad-eyed Kiwi, yes you did.

Many of the Australians I had met had flash phones. I cast my mind back to the times when they had casually called friends for minutes on end; when checking a Facebook status on the bus, train, or workplace seemed the most natural thing in the world.  To my recollection most were not in wonderful jobs; I just thought they were inclined to be materialistic. Innocent  Kiwi eyes dreamed of the day.


I remembered with melancholy the times when I would go to dial a number, my friend anxiously inquiring: “Do you have free minutes?”, as if there were no other option; the friend was simply looking out for my financial health. The times spent in the payphone to check your account balance, because you knew that ringing on the mobile would waste your last precious PrePay minute. The fear allayed when after a long cellphone call, all would be explained: “He’s on a plan”. And finally, the extra-sad moment when an impoverished student had met another on Telecom: upon hearing the first digits, 027, he knew this was a friendship that could not last.

The fear, anxiety, and haplessness caused by the extreme tension upon seeing a Vodafone account bill is not for the faint-hearted. If I were a ridiculous American, I could sue for the added stress caused. We are pushed between a rock and a hard place with our networks. Unless we want to change to 2 degrees (whom I would like to personally thank for introducing some diversity and cost-effectiveness into our phone environment; someone’s gotta start the trend), who no one can afford to text, we are stuck between loses-coverage-at-the-best-moments Telecom and heart-attack Vodafone. The only choice is a plan, or a hippy, phoneless existence. But if you choose a plan, what if you go over the minutes allocated? The sneaky bastards are always trying to shift in some clause in the contract that you’re sure wasn’t there in the signing phase. Alas, what to do?

The first tactic in the old action plan is to see what it is that makes Australia’s, and probably most of the world’s, phone services cheaper. The answer is competition. It is the same as everything, and it extends to much more than phones. Our clothes, our technology, our food, even our booze sometimes is not as well priced (although I’m not such a fan of their bars; too many pokies). Australia, because it is a bigger economy, has safeguarded itself a little better than us against the old corporate thieves. With six major networks and a variety of phone retailers, prices had to come down.

It is not just the price of phonecalls and texts that have come down, either. Struggling to communicate coherently through the barrage of nasal-pitched  Australian accents, I had to find myself a phone – and fast. The cheapest available, that did not look heinous, was a little $40 beauty. A quick stroll to JB Hi Fi Auckland, however, will try and sell you this rather primitive specimen for $190. Post-pavlova, a little country enmity does seem to sink in at this stage. The fast breeding of IPhones among my Australian acquaintances was duly founded.

So what is a wage-weary student to do? Switch, maybe. Boycott? Who knows. It’s just not fair. As those of you will know that have tried this little number, no you cannot bring a beautiful phone back to our shores to inject a new Sim card into (which Aussies don’t even pay for) for free: you must pay around the $150 mark. The companies know. It’s all a conspiracy. Text all your friends. We are in the midst of a new form of terrorism. Osama bin Laden’s replacement lies just an invoice away.