Jamster Crazy Frog

June 29, 2005

I love the English and my grandparents used to live in the UK when I grew up, allowing me to spend summers at Hyde and Regent’s Park. Fun times I tell you. But when you think of Independence Day and America’s departure from our English roots, you start to wonder what we are missing since we have become a standalone country.

We all know fish and chips, some of us might even know Harrods and of course everyone knows Big Ben (webcam). But wait, the biggest thing in England right now isn’t any of the above but instead the Crazy Frog ring tone that has caught the country by surprise to become the biggest hit in recent memory.

Who would of thought that we would ever see a headline such as Crazy Frog keeps U2 from top of charts? But there is now a controversy of this ring tone – well more specifically over Jamster the company that sells it.

It seems that people who are downloading this ring tone are getting recurring charges of $5 on their cell phone bills. When you sign up for the ring tone, you may be inadvertently signing up for a premium text messaging service.

According to the BBC The UK equivalent of the FCC is investigating the matter but it seems there are a number of English companies making money by getting people to sign up for this recurring SMS based service without their knowledge. Apparently small text runs along the bottom of the “tele” and if you don’t Tivo it (do they have Tivo over there) you may miss it.

Sure we have our problems in the US but hey, at least we don’t have to worry about the #1 song in the country being called Crazy Frog and we don’t have to worry about monthly recurring charges on our cell phone bills we didn’t authorize or understand (well, perhaps you can scratch that last one).

Jamster Crazy Frog

Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

Jamster Crazy Frog