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Android Firmware Over The Air: The Cost
| Jan Vermeulen | July 20, 2010 | No comments |
Jan Vermeulen
Jan Vermeulen is a technology journalist and web developer at MyBroadband. After receiving a Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria he worked at...
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Firmware Over The Air is a great way of keeping devices up to date, but who pays for the bandwidth?
We recently received information from a source that the delay in the Android 2.1 (Eclair) update for the HTC Hero in South Africa has at least been partially delayed due to the fact that customers would be billed for the download.
Managing Director of Leaf International Communications, Quinton Leigh, told our source that he feels it’s unfair to the customer to have to foot the bill for a firmware download.
In the meantime Leaf have requested a version of the firmware they can put up on their website for Hero users to download. Customers that aren’t comfortable with updating the firmware themselves will be able to take their phone to a store to have it upgraded at no cost.
Internationally users would simply be presented with a warning before commencing with the update. HTC also requests that users download the update over Wi-Fi rather than using your precious mobile data bundle (or paying out-of-bundle mobile data rates).
Typically Android firmware updates weigh in at between 60MB and 120MB.
Leigh feels it’s not always as simple as a disclaimer. While not saying it in so many words it was pretty evident that he is concerned over those customers who would inadvertently approve the hefty download despite warnings and disclaimers.
One can’t help but feel that this issue could be easily resolved if carriers that provide the phone to their contract customers agreed to zero-rate firmware over the air (FOTA) downloads.
“MTN does not currently use any Firmware Over The Air architecture to deploy firmware updates to devices in the field. However, MTN is aiming to deploy FOTA in the medium term,” said Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer at MTN South Africa.
“The cause of the apparent update delays are most likely from other device issues not related to FOTA. It will require further investigation once the context and problem definition is presented. MTN is looking into the concerns on the device in question,” Taukobong added.
Leaf and Vodacom were unable to comment by the time of publication.
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