Good Morning Azerbaijan Jun 10 '06    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line OMG VIDEOPHONES Sorry to disappoint, but this is a review. Its subject is the 3 telephone service. It had originally been plonked into the category relating to Planet 3, which as far as I am aware is the online store from which to purchase the 3 telephone service. However, it was hurriedly moved following a couple of "Off Topic" ratings by people who probably use online stores for *everything* and are possibly prone to such utterances as "hey Destinee-Faith? Angel-Blu? Britnee-Jo? One of y'all pass mommy another box of Krispy Kremes to help me decide between the pink phone and the one with the rhinestones". So, here it is again. Surely this must be a more appropriate place for it. Enjoy. 1. Preamble [or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the Pussycat Dolls ringtone] Five years ago, I swore that I would never own one of the eardrum-shattering, bricklike demonspawn known as mobile phones. I was convinced that they were a tool used by Satan to propagate idiotic gibbering in public and shrill, bastardised electronic versions of the national anthem. I would board a train every day praying that my commute would not be transformed into an extended, diabolical Superbowl halftime comprising one-finger Casio renditions of the back catalogues of Destiny’s Child and Blink-182. But here I am in Oh Six, the proud if frustrated mother of not one but two telephones. One is an electric-blue prepaid Nokia. If you call me on that number you will more than likely be ignored. The other is a silver LG U8180. If you call me on that number, you will be shouted at. The distant surrogate parents of this phone and its plan are 3, the subject of my review. 2. A Potted History Of… 3 are owned by Hutchison Telecoms, a London-based tyrannosaurus of telecommunications who made their name initially with the budget Orange network. Orange commenced operations in approximately 2001 and provided the most basic of services, the Julie Andrews to 3’s flashy, videophone-equipped Paris Hilton. Although undoubtedly successful, Orange is now obsolete, having been swallowed up like a hapless minnow by the 3 juggernaut in the name of higher prices, a semi-operational Internet service, the aforementioned video phoning and endless cricket scores [should you require them]. As far as I know, 3 is only available in the UK and Australia. However, the Hutchison piranhas may well circle the shores of other countries under different names. I don’t know. If you do happen to be situated in either of these locales, though, http://www.three.co.uk or http://www.three.com.au are good places to start. 3. Forking Out There are several different plans offered by 3, catering for everyone from the impoverished student to the businessperson whose company pays for all his/her mobile calls anyway so hey, who do I know in Azerbaijan? And if I don’t know anyone, maybe it’s time to make a new friend! [For the record, it costs 90p/$0.60AUD per minute to call Azerbaijan from a 3 phone.] If you are a UK customer, plans are worked out on a basis of X pounds equals Y minutes’ worth of calls [for example, £25 per month buys you 200 minutes of yakking and 100 test messages]. For Australian customers, X dollars equals Y dollars’ worth of calls [for example, for $199 per month you get $500 worth of calls]. On some plans, you get the five- or ten-minute rule: this means that calls up to 5 or 10 minutes in duration are free and you only start paying at 5:01/10:01. This is where one of my favourite 3 features comes into play – the Minute Minder. Just like it says on the label, the Minute Minder emits a little beep at the end of each minute to bring rambling callers to heel. The Minute Minder is easily awakened using the “call settings” menu on one’s telephone. There is also a prepaid/Pay As You Go option. These arrangements, while thrifty, can prove somewhat inconvenient as one always seems to run out of credit at the worst possible moments. However, it does have its perks: in the UK you receive credit for answering calls and sending text messages, and the handset range still includes the fab Motorola RAZRs in far-out shades of hot pink and Pumpkin. Which, as far as I am concerned, is sufficient reason to suffer the pitying smirk of the 3 salesperson* when purchasing a PAYG deal. 4. “GUESS WHO???!!” [or, so when do I get to start photographing my nether regions and sending the results to my work colleagues?] Well, you can start now. That is, if you have quite finished wading through the proliferation of handsets available. All of them feature cameras, video cameras, the Planet 3 browser and polyphonic ringtones, with others also providing homes for email, mp3 players and such. 3 offers all the major brands [Nokia, LG, Motorola, SonyEricsson, NEC], with the Pay Monthly users getting a far greater variety to choose from. That said, the Pay As You Go users are not neglected either [see previous comment re RAZRs. Also see the Nokia 6280 in Plum and the LG U8360 in green]. For the most part, the handsets can be purchased with any plan. As usual, rental charges increase with the complexity of the telephone. If one is a Pay As You Go user, one simply selects the telephone of one’s choice and pays for the thing upfront. See? Nothing too complicated. Which brings us to the bewildering multitude of services available on the 3 network. Chief among which is the much-vaunted internet service, dubbed Planet 3. Now, I have a comparatively simple handset, and I don’t know if the more advanced ones handle the browser better than mine, but mine freaks out even *thinking* of downloading a graphic. Which is not a great deal of use if you want to use anything but a mobile device-specific site. I use Yahoo! Mail, whose site I always thought was tragically low on graphic goodness. Apparently it’s not. But hey, if you want email, why not get 3mail? At least that’s what I think it’s called. Why would it be called anything else? I have not yet subscribed, but all that’s required is a phone call to their ever-chirpy call centre denizens [more about whom later] and you have instant phone-accessible mail. Hooray! When one opens the Planet 3 browser, one is directed to its eponymous MSN-like homepage. Here, you can view your star sign, watch highlights from the MTV awards, get sports scores or learn how to give your dog exactly the same diet as long-suffering Celeb Pooch Tinkerbell. Dive right in, if that’s your scene. When the cricket was on, you could also have entire matches beamed live onto your handset. I haven’t actually tried to make a video call, so I am unable to comment on how successful they are. Beware, though, as I have the feeling that video calls are not included in some or all of 3’s plans. Evidently the service is very popular, which probably means that the movement of the video camera is not restricted and it can be trained on things infinitely more interesting than the cavernous maw of the speaker. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean by that. Now, the coverage. It’s… decent. It is improving. You can use it in nations of whose existence you are probably not even aware. But if you happen to make a call to someone whose 3 is out of range, be prepared for an endless, teeth-grinding silence before you are finally directed to a message service. If all components of your telephone are still intact by this time and have not been pegged against the nearest vertical surface in frustration, I commend you. [Note: do not do this. Mobile phones, with the exception of those squat rubber-covered shockproof models which are clearly the handset species’ equivalent of the Blue Man Group, are delicate. And extremely difficult to re-assemble, especially the flip-up ones.] The network also has infrequent PMS-like episodes in which it stubbornly refuses to make calls from anywhere, beeping sulkily that “service not available”. Naturally, one cannot receive calls during these episodes either. Or messages. And no, once these hormonal onslaughts conclude the messages/missed calls do not automatically display themselves. If you are really lucky, once you are able to make a call lasting more than, say, 30 seconds, any messages received will become apparent by chirping during the call. This also works occasionally if one dials the voicemail service and lets the call last for a little while. The keyword here is “occasionally”. Don’t say you weren’t warned. And if any component of this cornucopia of communication ceases to co-operate? Well then, it’s time for… 5. Who you gonna call? Why, the ridiculously chipper masses populating 3’s Indian call centres, of course! Diurnal, nocturnal and crepuscular, there is a throng of 3 folk ready to attend to your every complaint at whatever time of day said complaint chooses to manifest itself. Whatever the problem, it can be solved by this army of the terminally upbeat whose mouths, judging by the demeanour of their owners, appear to have been held open Clockwork Orange-style in a permanent Cheshire Cat grin. Like the help centres on most networks, the number is programmed into the telephone when it is activated, so all you have to do is remember you Four Digit PIN Number [they never ask for just “your PIN number”, so the clue there is that it helps if any desperate guesses contain four digits], and you’re cooking with gas. How many guesses one can make until the mini-Apus lose patience and tell you to sod off and have a nice day, I don’t know. But you can always call back and speak to a different one. Generally, I have found them to be quite helpful. However, 3 maintains very much of a DIY ethic when it comes to rectifying problems. Which means that, rather than being able to fix the problem remotely, they will inevitably ask to call you back on a different phone and talk you through the fixing process. Which is fairly common, but does create some headaches if one does not have another telephone at hand. In conclusion, you could do a whole lot worse than pledge allegiance to 3. Their rates are reasonably competitive [and the 10-minute rule is a lovely bonus for those who can get it], and the coverage is forever improving. I hope. And if the radiation doesn’t kill you, the hoarse, chavtastic female voice which honks such welcome information as “the service you are currently calling is not accepting incoming calls” or “the service you are currently calling is switched off or in a no coverage area”, probably will. * Pitying smirk only applies to those who are not obviously a school student or one of the unemployed.

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