mobile terms

Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a means of connecting your mobile device to another mobile device or computer wirelessly. You can use it to connect you mobile any other Bluetooth capable device like a hands-free car kit or another mobile handset over a short distance ranging from 1-10 meters. As it doesn't support fast data transfer, it is good for low bandwidth use like transmitting voice, sharing address book contacts, playing simple games and even connecting to the Internet if you can live with a really slow connection.

Cap Plans

Mobile Caps are a style of plans unique to Australia. For a fixed monthly fee, you get a bucket of value that is much higher than the monthly fee itself. For example, a $29 Cap might come with $200 in value. This value can be used for voice calls, text messages, data and other types of calls as defined by the plan.
Sounds great, but how does it work? The catch is that call rates are usually inflated to compensate for the high included value. Where you might pay 10c per minute for a call on a normal plan, you could be charged anywhere between 40c to a dollar per minute for the same call on a Cap plan. This isn’t a problem if your usage remains within the included value; in fact, you have the security of knowing exactly how much your monthly bill will be.
You run into trouble when your usage exceeds the included value before the end of month. After this point, all your additional usage continues to be charged at inflated rates for which you have to pay real dollars, and at the end of the month you there is unexpectedly huge bill! This is appropriately known as ‘busting your Cap’.
The other problem with Caps is that they make it impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison between different plans.
For example, Plan A comes with $300 in value for $39 while plan B comes with $3000 in value for the same $39. But Plan A charges $1 per minute for a call, and Plan B charges $23.42 per minute for the same call. Which one is better value?*
In a nutshell, Cap plans are great if you are not an erratic user and can stay within your limits. But keep that calculator handy and your wits about you.

Mobile Number Portability (or Keeping your mobile number)

If you wanted to change your mobile service provider prior to Sep 25, 2001, you’d be looking at a brand new number. And with it the painful task of informing all your contacts of your new details. Mobile number portability, MNP for short, changed all that and now you can keep your number as you hop from one service provider to another.
You can move your number from your current provider to your new provider at the time of signing up with the new provider. It is possible to move from pre-paid to pre-paid, post-paid to post-paid and even between pre-paid and post-paid without losing your number, so long as your name is on both the accounts. Moving from a pre-paid service requires just your name and date of birth, while moving from a post-paid account will need your account number as well.
In case the number is not in your name, before you port the number you need to do a ‘transfer of ownership’ so that both losing and gaining accounts are in the same name.
Porting can take from a few hours to a few days as the process involves getting a few different systems to exchange information, and any one of them might be on the blink at any given time. Sometimes delays might be because of incorrect account information. So be prepared to lose reception for a little while when the number actually switches over from one service provider to another.
Check out the ACMA site for more information on porting - http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_1787#20

Tethering

Most handsets available in the market today can be used to access the Internet. Moreover, they can be used to provide Internet connectivity to another computer that doesn’t have its own access. That is tethering. It can be quite expensive depending on which data plan your handset is on. If you are likely to use you mobile to provide connectivity regularly, then select a plan with plenty of included data. Or just get yourself a Mobile Broadband card which provides a dedicated Internet connection on the move.