Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.08.2007, Blaðsíða 9

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Though a single telephone call costs just a few
crowns, most people I know here in Iceland
have monthly phone and Internet bills of five
to ten thousand ISK. Even this may not seem
like much, but multiplied by twelve, it be-
comes like buying a luxury washing machine
or refrigerator every year. Indeed, a new report
reveals that Icelandic households spend more
on phone and Internet service than in any
other OECD country.
With so much money at stake, take a few
minutes to rethink whether you’re getting the
best deal. In this second of two articles about
consumer phone costs in Iceland, I focus on
high-speed Internet service and on landline
calls abroad.
Internet Service
Four companies now offer broadband Internet
access (called ADSL) in Iceland: Síminn, Voda-
fone, Hive and Sko.
Service plans vary depending on the speed
of the connection (in Mbps), the amount of
permitted foreign downloading per month (in
GB), and the extras that are included, such as
e-mail accounts and fixed IP addresses. The
foreign download amount is probably the
most crucial figure, particularly if you need to
transfer large files.
Most companies’ cheapest Internet plan
is in the 4000-ISK-per-month range. At this
level, Síminn offers 1 GB per month at 4 Mbps.
Vodafone offers 2 GB per month at 6 Mbps.
Hive offers 4 GB per month at 8 Mbps. Sko
offers unlimited downloading at 4 Mbps.
The only company to offer a lower-priced
package is Sko: unlimited data transfer at ½
Mbps for 2490 ISK/month. This is a very basic
package, without various extras. But many
people don’t need those extras. (It’s unwise to
have an e-mail address through your Internet
provider, as it locks you into that provider. A
fixed IP address is of use to advanced web
users only.)
Don’t get overly focused on connection
speeds. They are only theoretical maximums,
and you probably don’t need all those mega-
bytes per second. My Hive connection, ad-
vertised at 8 Mbps, tested out at roughly
860–1300 Kbps on download and 90–400
Kbps on upload to Icelandic and American
servers (1 Mbps = 1000 Kbps). This is more
than fast enough for me. Spend your money
on extra foreign downloading instead – but
not more than you need. I’m online a lot, but
rarely go over 1 GB a month and never over
two.
Make sure to ask if the advertised price
includes all necessary services. For example,
Hive adds a billing fee of 199–245 ISK per
month. Sko has no billing fee if you pay by
credit card, but charges 250 ISK if you want to
pay through your bank. Also, you usually get
a discount if you have more than one service
(phone, Internet, or GSM) through the same
company.
Cheaper Calls Abroad
One thing has not changed since I last reported
on Icelandic phone service in 2005: Síminn
and Vodafone are still charging ridiculously
high, and disappointingly similar, rates for calls
abroad from your landline. Through either
company, a call to a British landline costs 19,9
ISK per minute, and to the Czech Republic 39
ISK per minute – plus a connection fee of either
4,75 or 4,9 ISK per call.
My parents, who live in the United States,
pay roughly 3,5 ISK and 7 ISK per minute to call
the same two countries. I see no justification
for the degree to which Icelandic rates exceed
the American ones. Both Síminn and Vodafone
do offer a calling plan which discounts these
rates a little, but you have to sign up for it
specially, you must dial a special code before
every call, and the discount is nothing to write
home about.
More and more people have switched to
making international calls over the Internet.
Skype, a so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol
or VOIP program, is the simplest solution. You
download Skype for free from www.skype.
com, install it on your computer, and plug in
a headset or USB phone. Calls to other Skype
users are free (just get your friends and family
to download the program too).
Calls to landlines worldwide are very cheap
through Skype – currently about 1,5 ISK per
minute to Britain or the Czech Republic, plus
3,5 ISK per call. You pay with “SkypeOut”
credit that you purchase in advance. In effect,
with Skype you are leveraging the money that
you pay for your Internet connection to get
phone calls either for free, or at a tiny extra
cost if they have to be routed over a legacy
phone network. Unlike movies, VOIP calls take
up very little bandwidth, so there’s little worry
about going over your Internet traffic limit.
Amazingly, even domestic calls within Ice-
land, of 3 minutes or less, are cheaper through
Skype (which charges 2,25 ISK per minute plus
3,5 ISK per call) than through Síminn (which
charges 1,85 ISK per minute plus 4,95 ISK per
call).
There’s no doubt that the quality of Skype
calls is worse than that of old-style land-line
calls through operators like Síminn. But Síminn
calls are not sufficiently clearer than Skype to
justify Síminn’s high rates. In my experience,
Skype calls that are free – those to another
Skype user – are those with the best quality.
Faxes don’t work well over VOIP, but that
doesn’t matter much now that people scan
documents to PDF and e-mail them. There are
also other VOIP options besides Skype.
Alternatives to Skype
Those who don’t like the idea of talking
through the computer can still save on inter-
national calls by transferring their home tele-
phone service to Hive, particularly the flavour
that Hive calls Heimasími Max. On this plan,
a call to Britain costs 4,9 ISK per minute and
to the Czech Republic 14,9 ISK per minute.
These rates are acceptable, though they are
still way higher than Skype. But the good thing
about this plan is that it includes free calls to all
Icelandic land lines. Heimasími Max costs 1390
ISK a month, or 990 ISK if you already have
Hive internet service. This is less than Síminn’s
basic subscription, which costs 1445 ISK per
month, comes with high international rates,
and doesn’t include any free calls.
Now for the down side to Heimasími Max.
I was all ready to sign up. But Hive’s computer
system can’t (yet) deal with the fact that we
have two telephone numbers which both ring
on the same line. Also, I suspect that Hive’s
sound quality is inferior to Síminn’s, though
superior to Skype’s. Like Síminn and Vodafone,
Hive’s per-minute charges are an example of
“vanity pricing” (all the numbers end in 4,9),
which suggests that they could trim their mar-
gins and still make money.
For those without a fast Internet con-
nection, the old strategy of “callback” calls
– which route all your international phone calls
through the USA at American prices – is still
worth considering. Callbackworld.com is one
callback company with low rates for Icelandic
customers. Prepaid telephone cards, like At-
lassími (now owned by Hive) and Heimsfrelsi,
also come with lower rates than Síminn or
Vodafone.
What Keeps Land-line Rates so High?
How do Síminn and Vodafone get custom-
ers to pay such inflated prices? Here’s one
theory. Although there is, technically speaking,
competition in the Icelandic home telephone
market, a stable group of users are unable
to take advantage of it in practice. If you are
elderly, or not technically savvy, it is really hard
to compare complicated telephone service
plans. Síminn and Vodafone know that these
customers will probably never switch, and that
many of them still think of calls abroad as a
luxury. So they let them continue paying high
“regular” rates.
Síminn and Vodafone do have an incen-
tive to offer special “discounts” (which are
not really special) to attract or keep slightly
more sceptical customers. But as a recent Eu-
ropean Commission press release put it, these
lower-priced offers “tend to target certain
groups only while general consumers remain
unaware.” And even if those “general con-
sumers” only make one overpriced phone
call a year – well, it’s a little like if every one
of China’s billion residents would eat just one
frozen Icelandic shrimp.
Another factor is the large number of cor-
porate and institutional contracts that Síminn
and Vodafone sign. Many Icelandic companies
cover their employees’ mobile phone charges,
which means that the end-customers aren’t
paying, and thus lack an incentive to demand
value for money. My sense is that many Icelan-
dic firms and government offices would do well
to re-evaluate their telephone purchasing.
I know of one Icelandic state institution
where desk phones are blocked from call-
ing overseas, including such exotic countries
as Norway and Canada. Even the staff who
regularly deal with international matters have
to order calls through the “bella símamær” at
the switchboard. How 1950s! Ironically, these
same employees can make unlimited calls to
Icelandic mobile numbers, whose termination
cost is perhaps five times higher than that of
a call to a Canadian land line. Institutions like
this should look into opening a Skype business
account.
But here’s my advice for your home phone
plan. Be sceptical. Read the small print. Choose
providers with low, simple pricing. Look at
your usage on-line. Don’t buy what you don’t
need. And every year, spend at least as much
time re-evaluating your phone and Internet
service as you’d spend looking for your next
refrigerator.
The Telephone Consumer’s
Guerrilla Handbook
Text by Ian Watson Photo by Leó Stefánsson
Icelandic households
spend more on phone and
Internet service than in
any other OECD coun-
try. Jack Kerouac was a fat drunk when he died. He lived
with his mother and his wife, Stella. In his bank account
was 91 dollars.
“All writers lose contact,” explained William S.
Burroughs, after his friend’s death. “I wouldn’t say he
was particularly miserable. He had an alcohol problem.
It killed him.” A half-century later, Kerouac’s estate
is worth over 20 million dollars. And in our collec-
tive memory he is anything but fat. He is 35 and gor-
geous.
September 5 is the fiftieth anniversary of Kerouac’s
On The Road. In honour, Penguin Books is releasing an
uncensored version. All of the naughty bits – including
gay sex and drug-use – have been restored. It’s been
years since I’ve read the book. To be honest, I don’t re-
member a lot of it. It’s an old story. I remember that.
“There are only two stories,” my English teacher once
said, quoting Tolstoy. “A man goes on a journey. Or, a
stranger comes to town.” Like Romeo & Juliet, though,
or the Harry Potter franchise, one doesn’t have to re-
member or even read On The Road to know what it’s
about. Or, for that matter, to be affected by it.
I recently returned from a trip across the U.S. I
went with a friend. Over ten thousand miles in two
months. From the southern plains of Alberta, Canada
to the lush Salinas valley to the subways of New York
City. And back again. We were drunk the entire time.
“Here,” a bartender, in Durant, Mississippi, demanded,
“try this.”
It was late night. We were in a juke house on the
edge of town. Outside the opened door, in the shadows
of the dirt parking lot, a few men huddled, talking. I
looked at the maraschino cherry in the bartender’s huge,
dark hand, then at my friend, Garth.
“What’s in it?” I asked, looking again at the man.
“If I tell you,” he replied, smiling, “I’ll have to kill
you.”
He had a nice smile. I ate the cherry.
Less enamoured by Kerouac’s story than by its style,
and legend, I found myself often thinking about his pae-
an to the road as I was – well, on the road. “Somewhere
along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, every-
thing,” he wrote. “Somewhere along the line the pearl
would be handed to me.”
Indeed.
Kerouac, obviously, was not the first artist to create
such a story. Nor will he be the last. Wandering, and
wondering, is a common theme. From Satyricon to
Huckleberry Finn to Thelma and Louise, popular culture
has always adored the rebels, the ramblers. If only in
theory, anyway.
“When are you finally going to settle down?” I’ve
often been asked. “You’re not getting any younger,
you know?”
“Yes,” I always reply. “I know.”
But no one is getting any younger. We are, each of us,
getting older, old. I think.
“Travel while you can,” my mother often says.
Everyone travels nowadays. Or, at least, goes on vaca-
tion. In a culture defined by consumption, tourism has
become the ultimate form of consumerism. Everyone
can do it. Even if it means walking.
There’s a problem, though. Everyone wants to go
where no one has gone before. Everyone wants to be
special. Too many tourists, we complain. But where is
there left to go? We’ve all been there. Or, at least, seen
the pictures. Perhaps that’s it. The reason for On The
Road’s enduring popularity, despite a general consensus
that it’s literary merits are tenuous, at best, is because
it defines, celebrates, what no longer exists. The road
is closed. Go home.
Unable, then, as most of us are, to live the life of
its hero, Dean, or narrator, Sal, we settle instead for
the vicarious thrill offered therein. Our imaginations
soar and, once again, we are privy to something fresh,
something new. Or, rather, something old.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk
again,” Kerouac wrote. “We had longer ways to
go. But no matter, the road is life.”
Battered suitcases? How quaint. Often, too, we are
given a warning. As with other such stock characters
as the wanton woman, or errant child, there is a price
to be paid for freedom. Bad boys get spanked.
In Jasper, Texas, on my trip, I interviewed a local
judge. A big man, fat and white and friendly, a former
police officer, and he was the stereotype of a Southern,
small town judge. I asked him about James Byrd. Byrd
is the black man who, in 1998, was dragged to death
behind a pickup truck in Jasper by three white men.
“Well, you know,” the judge replied, smiling, “the
trial of those three boys brought this whole town, black
and white, closer together.”
I didn’t believe him.
“It’s good that you’re travelling the back roads,” he
soon said, trying to lighten the moment. “There’s noth-
ing to see on the Interstate.” Leaving town, Garth and I
passed an old, black man walking along the tall, green
grass at the side of the road. Like Byrd, he limped.
“I wrote the book,” Kerouac remarked, in a 1959
interview with Steve Allen, “because we’re all gonna
die.” Unlike many stories with a similar theme, Kerouac’s
narrator remains alive, unscathed, by book’s end. He is
not punished for opening one door and closing another.
Not entirely. If weary, perhaps, from what he has learned,
he nonetheless endures.
“...and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to
happen to anybody” he writes, in the book’s final lines,
“besides the forlorn rags of growing old.” Propheti-
cally, perhaps, Kerouac’s final years were just that. The
forlorn rags of growing old. Made ugly, unhealthy, from
years of drinking, and smoking, he became just another
conservative, middle-aged drunk.
Conflicted also, apparently, by homosexual feelings
and waning creativity, Kerouac turned, in the end, into
a sort of sad, bloated Alice in Wonderland; the looking
glass he had fashioned over a decade prior was, finally,
broken.
“I don’t have anyone to call,” he said, in his final
interview, when asked why he didn’t have a phone,
“and nobody ever calls me.”
Dead at the age of 47, the result of complications
from alcoholism, his death on October 21, 1969, it
seems, disavowed not only his life but also the very
spirit of what he wrote. Or did it?
“...the only people for me are the mad ones,” he
wrote, in one of the book’s most celebrated passages,
“the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to
be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the
ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but
burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle
you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes
‘Awww!’”
An old story, indeed. But we love it.
We’re All Gonna Die
Text by Mustafa Mutubarak
Wandering, and wondering,
is a common theme. From Sa-
tyricon to Huckleberry Finn to
Thelma and Louise, popular
culture has always adored the
rebels, the ramblers.
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