Checking your mobile data usage online is not easy: a Telecom New Zealand tale
Yesterday I posted about Telecom New Zealand's lack of a "meter" for their mobile data. Here is something that I thought would illustrate the issue well...Let's say you rent a car on a monthly basis, for work. You agree to pay $49.95 a month if you drive up to 1,000 km per billing cycle, and $1 per km after this.
You decided on 1,000 km because you thought this could cover your average daily usage multiplied by the number of days in the month.
You get the car and notice there is no meter in it, but the rental agency tells you it's ok, they are monitoring it within their system, remotely.
You drive away. During 30 days you have no exact idea of how many kms you've done. You have to keep calling the company to find out how many kms you have driven so far, and calculate to see if you are still within the expected average.
Then you receive the monthly bill. You look through five pages for something that says "kms driven this month", but instead you find "times you started the car this month". And a charge for the rental.
Does it make sense?
No. Neither does Telecom New Zealand's "data sessions" line in the bill. They don't tell us how many megabytes or gigabytes we used during the month, only how many times we used it during the period.
Telecom, are you going to fix your systems?
Other related posts:
New Zealand cell site location maps
Broadband in New Zealand according to OECD
Did Twitter really take in consideration these DMCA notices?
Comment by Mattnzl, on 23-Jul-2008 19:51
In our company we have six data cards that staff can use when out of the office. We have to keep them on the 1GB plans as we have no idea from the Telecom bill how much data is actually being used - quite possibly the 200mb plan would be fine, but who knows??
I hope you keep on at them Mauricio and get a result that will benefit everyone. Cheers!
Comment by Dobby, on 23-Jul-2008 20:07
3G is worse ...
You decide to upgrade your car, and choose the 1,000 kms per billing cycle at $59.95 because you know that you never drove any further than that in your last car, and you're not driving to any new places.
This car comes with a meter that counts how far you've driven, and how many times you start your car. The rental company tells you that you can't use the meter, because it doesn't match their billing cycle, and that it's just to look at. You look anyway, thinking that the distance travelled will at least be an indicator. Seeing that your distance travelled is well below your limit, you breathe easy.
Then you receive your monthly bill. It's not for $59.95 like you were expecting, but for $450. You ring the rental company, who send you an itemised report on when you started your car. You compare this report to the meter in the car and find there is little resemblance between the two.
It appears that your car has been started when you were asleep in bed, or on days that you took the bus to work. You car wasn't started at all on days when you knew you were behind the wheel driving, and it would seem that someone had a drill connected to your speedo cable, winding the numbers up at high speed.
You double check that you've locked your car doors so that nobody else can get in. You leave the car at home some days and take the bus. You walk to the dairy. You travel even less than you did the previous month, and considerably less than you did when you had your last car. Your next monthly bill arrives, and you're certain that this cycle you have stayed within your distance limits. But on opening the bill you find it's not for $59.95 like you were expecting but for $900.
You wonder if it's time to buy a bicycle.
Comment by James Sleeman, on 23-Jul-2008 21:29
So... what's the difference between a Text Parking fee and a Text Parking charge?
Comment by arminius, on 24-Jul-2008 08:39
There is a way that you can get notified of your overall usage - see http://www.telecom.co.nz/mbbalerts
You set up your account and nominate at which usage level (percentage of plan or MB usage) that you get notified via SMS or email. You can set up 3 levels/trigger points and send the notification to up to 5 people. Best of all, this is a free service.
So to get back to your car analogy, you have a system that notifies you when you are going to incur cost. In your analogy your rental car doesn't do this because once you take the car back and pay the costs are alwasy double what you thought they would be due to the extras and levies and tax on turning left etc.
Comment by crazynz101, on 24-Jul-2008 09:08
All Mobile Broadband and nationwide mobile data network use is charged in 10Kb packets.
Comment by Foo, on 24-Jul-2008 13:03
Hey crazynz101 - is being charged in 10KB packets the same for Vodafone as well as Telecom?
Comment by crazynz101, on 24-Jul-2008 14:49
Sorry I’m not to sure about Vodafone.
Comment by Lance Andrewes, on 20-Oct-2008 20:20
I signed up for a 200MB plan almost a month ago. The Telecom homepage said I could sign up for alerts, but I needed an account number. When I called Telecom a few days ago they told me the MBs I'd used, gave me my account number and set up the alerts. They also gave me a number to call to get my usage. I've just spent 25 minutes calling that number. The lady was very helpful and said they were unusually busy and the best time to call is 10-11pm. There is no voice-recognition system I can call. While my usage was obviously displayed on the view they have of my account, it looks like it is only updated daily. No idea what I used 4 hours ago.
The alerts won't be much help since they are hours behind my usage (at EVDO speeds I could use up my quota pretty smartly). So, as a returning Telecom customer I am not impressed. Looks like I have to monitor myself - which is a pain when mobile and not always using the same device.
I can't even think why they bother showing me my call times on "Your Telecom". They have the usage info, so surely they can add that even if it's not up to date. Telecom's promotional info says that the "EVDO network delivers customers well over three million megabytes of mobile data every week". Because they had no idea they'd used that much until it was too late?
Comment by Beatbop, on 19-Jan-2009 17:14
Note: this link looks the same as the above comments but isn't.
http://www.telecom.co.nz/mbbmeter
The above link is the best option I've found. It shows a graphical display of the percentage of your data allowance that you've used and this updates every hour according to the page. It was what I spent a while looking for when I found this blog.
Aside from the fact that I've found what I've been looking for I am disappointed with Telecom in general, while retrieving my customer number on the phone I specifically asked if I would be able to check my data usage just by signing in to "My Telecom" and the man I was talking to assured me it was on there. But as you probably know if you're reading this it isn't.
It's f**cking annoying that they don't have a link to this data usage monitor from the "Your Telecom Page" and it doesn't show up in any of their searches, I would hope that they are not trying to trick us into paying for more than we want to by having us unable to keep tabs on our browsing.
Sorry for the spiel and hope the link was what you were looking for. 
Comment by Beatbop, on 19-Jan-2009 17:16
http://www.telecom.co.nz/mbbmeter
forgot to make it a link 
Comment by henareho, on 9-Feb-2010 07:53
I've had a problem with this meter since Telecom upgraded to the XT network.
With the old meter all you had to do was put your account number in.
The new meter sends a password to the data card which is a pain when managing multiple cards.
Secondly, it does not seem to accept the password for cards old the old CMDA network.
Anyone else having similar problems?
Add a comment
Please note: comments that are inappropriate or promotional in nature will be deleted.
E-mail addresses are not displayed, but you must enter a valid e-mail address to confirm your comments.
Comment by grant_k, on 23-Jul-2008 18:36
Great analogy about the Rental Car. That's exactly how it is, and clearly, something needs to be done to improve Telecom's Mobile Broadband Usage Monitoring.
I take it that Telecom are now charging you for your data usage?