On Twitter, Stu Dredge just said: “Remember how O2 wouldn’t let iPhone 3G buyers upgrade to a 3GS until their contracts were up – which was fair, but caused lots of anger? Well, those contracts are all going to be up exactly when T-Mo / Voda start selling the 3GS too – i wonder if O2 has shot itself in foot.”

Some of those contracts will be a bit too long for that, extending past the time when the newcomers enter the fray, but it’s pretty certain O2 will lose plenty of potential customers and existing ones will look to jump networks during an ‘upgrade’. And due to policy elsewhere, O2 may also lose Pay & Go customers. Back in August, I noted how O2 effectively refused to enable me to move my remaining ‘free’ (as in marketed as free but clearly part of the device cost) data to a new device. O2 could have just added three months of data to a Pay & Go 3GS, or given my wife three months extra upon taking over the old phone. This would have been intelligent customer care. Instead, I was told the data would be ‘lost’ and O2 actually recommended I wait until my bolt-on ran out before buying a new device.

At the time, I said: “I’ve got three months left on my bolt-on. I’m now hoping the rumours are true and the announcement of the end of O2’s iPhone monopoly comes around that point, because its Pay & Go attitude strikes me as unbelievably dumb and has really rubbed me up the wrong way.”

Two months to go on that bolt-on—and with Vodaphone today throwing its hat into the ring alongside Orange, ‘two’ is also the number of competing carriers I’ll be fully checking out prior to going anywhere near O2 for my next iPhone.

One of the things that’s angered a lot of potential iPhone customers is the network lock-in. In the US, you have to suffer AT&T; in the UK, you deal with O2, with its penchant for regular network death—it’s always fun when you’re trying to call someone and there’s no network at all, because it’s fallen over like an old drunk with far too much whiskey inside him.

Today’s announcement from Orange (Orange to sell iPhone in UK) doesn’t exactly fill me with joy, though. It’s a bit like being at a packed cinema and someone sitting next to you with shit on their shoe. They get up to leave, and you’re happy about this, but then someone sits next to you with shit on their other shoe. Orange is not a great network, and its packages have gone batshit crazy in recent years (“Let’s use animals to brand them—people like animals! What’s that? We should provide value, flexibility or both? Are you MAD? WE WANT ANIMALS! YOU’RE FIRED!”)

Hope the first: this drives competition, pushing O2 to improve its services and drop its entry price to £25/month with half-decent minutes/texts/data allowances, rather than both companies essentially offering what O2 provides now—and for the same price.

Hope the second: Vodaphone throws its hat into the ring.

Charlie Brooker’s latest column talks about the stunningly awful Microsoft Windows 7 party video (note: watch the clock in the background, to see Microsoft TIME TRAVEL; also, watch Cabel Sasser’s brilliant take on the ad). He comes to the conclusion that he’d rather regularly punch a table, due to laptop frustration, than give in to self-satisfied smug gits that constantly try and convert him to Machood.

Fair enough, but I wonder why it’s Mac users that come up against this issue so much. Switch out a Mac for a great but expensive product in some other product line and you don’t get the same level of vitriol, even when the crusaders are just as mental.

So, Lily Allen killed her blog, and the revisionism has begun. Almost everyone (including, worryingly, mainstream publications) is hailing her as some kind of hero, saying she suffered terrible ‘abuse’ and that’s why the blog died. Funny that no-one’s reporting that fact that she got busted for illegally sharing copyrighted music herself, which is what the vast majority of negative responses were down to. And the fact many of the comments were constructive shows how uninterested Allen was in a discussion (or, perhaps, that she was simply unable to have the discussion), given that she deleted everything.

So, to recap:

• Stealing music is wrong
• Stealing music isn’t wrong if you do it on the way to becoming famous and become famous.
• Stealing music is wrong if you do it on the way to becoming famous but don’t actually become famous.

Glad we cleared that up.

I’ve flown BA a few times over the past few years, and, almost universally, the service has been mediocre. BA’s problem is that it thinks it’s a luxury carrier, when it’s in fact a middle-of-the-road airline. Staff are regularly rude and unhelpful and the planes reasonably tidy but ultimately a little weatherbeaten (or, rather, ‘passengerbeaten’).

Today’s news that BA’s going to charge for seating preferences (BBC: British Airways sets seat charges) suggests it’s going to be easyJet before you know it. From October 7, you’ll pay £10 to choose your seats on a short-haul economy flight, £20 for a long-haul flight, and £60 in business class. Want to book those slightly roomier emergency exit row seats? That’ll be £50, please.

Astonishingly, however, what this charge won’t enable you to do is book when you place your order. BA now states you’ll be able to book between 10 and four days before take-off. Therefore, what they’ve done is shift the rush for seat booking from 24 hours prior to departure to 10 days before departure, adding a financial transaction in the middle (which, no doubt, will cause people to lose seating preferences when BA’s system does its regular overload hissy fit).

What I don’t understand is why BA can’t simply enable you to book your seat when you buy your ticket. Surely, with the air travel industry being in trouble, it would make sense to fully book planes as early as possible. If your ‘reward’ on BA for booking a year in advance was the chance of a better seat—even if you had to pay extra—that would make perfect sense. As it is, BA’s current decision has all the hallmarks of the earlier dumb decision to adopt “ethnic liveries”, cunningly massively diluting the brand in the process.