Addressing network congestion as the result of iPhone users utilising data services exactly as you’d expect them to, O2’s CEO Ronan Dunne told the FT (via AllThingsD):

Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologise to customers for that fact,

Now, remember AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s qualified admission about the general crappiness of the company’s network in some major cities:

[It's] performing at levels below our standards.

So far, so familiar. Dunne takes the next step in what appears to be a step-by-step guide for carrier mea culpas, and claims that it’s really not a huge deal:

But it would be wrong to say O2 has failed its customers en masse

Which, again, sounds extremely familiar. AT&T?

We have 98.68 percent nationwide voice retainability, which means that the difference between AT&T and the industry leader is less than 2/10 of a percentage point on this important metric.

Finally, users get a ray of hope. Vague hope, but hope nonetheless:

[Dunne] said “any short-term blip” in O2 ’s “network reputation” would be “more than addressed” by three solutions to the difficulties.

Which corresponds rather neatly to:

This is going to get fixed,” Mr. de la Vega said. “In both of those markets, I am very confident that you’re going to see significant progress.

But it’s not just the PR damage control that runs parallel here, it’s the entire situation. O2, like AT&T, was the first carrier in its country to offer the iPhone, and the only one for quite a long time. iPhone users’ increased data use was unprecedented in both markets, and brought the companies infrastructures – which were previously thought to be robust – to their knees. The next analogue is how they somehow failed to predict this: they’ve known how data-hungry iPhone users are from the start, and they’ve been watching sales climb at a steady rate. So why weren’t these carriers, two of the largest iPhone providers in the world, able to keep up?

That comes down to the last, most important parallel: they’re both cheap. Like pretty much every carrier!

To be fair, it is the iPhone that caused their problems, with a potent combination of broad appeal and transparent, heavy data use. It’s just the carriers’ fault that they couldn’t foresee that, or rather, didn’t care. [FT via AllThingsD, WSJ]

The new name is not as tech-heavy of geektastic as Droid, but we can see the point. From here on out, things are going to be different (hopes Verizon/Motorola).

The image comes from the O2 web site, where the Droid is masquerading about as the Milestone for a presumably contract-free price of about $US595. Launch day is November 9, a mere three days after we Yanks get the coveted handset here in the States. No word on whether or not O2 scored an exclusive here or what, as there’s no mention of the phone popping up on other carriers’ web sites. [Slashgear]

The Pre will first be available in the UK, Ireland and Germany where it will be carried exclusively by O2. Then in Spain, the awesomely-named Movistar will pick up the handset by this holiday season.

Of course, this means that you’ll probably be able to import a Pre to run on AT&T. But chances are, if you’re suffering through AT&T’s lousy service already, it’s only because you sold your soul for an iPhone.

AU: Of course, this is much more interesting for us Australians, because it means that the first hurdle to an Australian release has been jumped. Now we just need the carriers and Palm to start sleeping with eachother.

[Palm via Engadget]

It’ll play every file you throw at it: on the audio front, we’ve got (take a deep breath) MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3, FLAC, OGG, Monkey Audio, and a bunch of others I’ve barely heard of. For video, which is the real draw of the O2, we’ve got AVI, WMV, MP4, MKV, H.264, DivX and XviD, and again, way more. It’ll play videos up to 1,280×720 resolution at 30 FPS. What does that dictionary of acronyms mean? No more converting videos. Ever.

The GUI looks a little dated, awfully similar to my aging D2, but very functional all the same. The O2 has Cowon’s vaunted stellar sound quality, but battery life isn’t all that hot: 8 hours of video, which is great, but only 18 hours of audio, which is below average these days. Still, this looks to be right at the top of the heap of portable video players, if only because it’ll actually play your videos without making you transcode first. The Cowon O2 goes on sale tomorrow (the 25th) in black or white, direct from the manufacturer. [CNET]

After being herded like cattle (a common metaphor, yes, but never so true) to your gate’s waiting area which has no seating, bare overhead fluorescent bulbs and a stench not amenable to life, and then after fighting for an unassigned seat and buying your hair-of-the-dog Bloody Mary for $US9 US, you can call home and tell everyone how much fun you’re having. All for $US4 per minute on service provided by Euro carriers O2 and 3. What a wonderful world. [The Register via Gadget Lab, Image: jon gos]

The only real problem with today’s portable electronics is battery life. The gear gets more powerful but sadly battery technology really hasn’t kept up, that’s why we write about things like solar power. But there are also nifty things called dynamos, devices you pump or crank to juice up your batteries. O2, a large mobile carrier in the UK, will be installing bicycle-powered dynamos around a festival it’s sponsoring this coming weekend to charge up music fans’ mobiles. Sure, they could have run power cables and created power stations, but where’s the fun in that? And as anyone who’s been to a large outdoor festival in the last few years knows, you’re going to want to power up at least once a day or else you’re cut off. And if you’ve got our luck, it’d be right before Winehouse takes the stage, so you’d have no bawdy SMS session to distract you. [Pocket Picks]

The total cost for the O2 18-month plan is US$1,591, which every month gets you:

• 1,200 minutes of voice calls.
• 500 text messages.
• Unlimited data transfer in both 3G and Wi-Fi networks (at The Cloud and BT OpenZone Wi-Fi spots.)
• Reduced roaming rates.

Sure, having 24 months will get your total price to $2,121. But the fact is that, after 18 months, you are free to get elsewhere, and you are getting almost three times the voice call minutes, and 2.5 times the amount of text messages.

Compare that to the US$1,975 iPhone 3G plan in AT&T:

• 450 minutes.
• 200 messages.
• Unlimited data transfer in 3G networks.

[O2 and Telefonica press release]