Meteor Unlimited Data Add-on 10GB

jimmycrackcorm

A beacon methinks to get over 3's intransigence.
But where is this data add on apart from T&C's.... http://www.meteor.ie/billpay_data_tcs.html

At least Edge might allow me to get a better service than from 3.

Just noticed that my N95 shows an edge connection when I go to da web, maybe there is a tunnel with light.

AlmightyCushion

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

A beacon methinks to get over 3's intransigence.
But where is this data add on apart from T&C's.... http://www.meteor.ie/billpay_data_tcs.html

At least Edge might allow me to get a better service than from 3.

Just noticed that my N95 shows an edge connection when I go to da web, maybe there is a tunnel with light.

If it's 10GB it's hardly unlimited. Is it just me or should this be construed as false advertising.

thehomeofDob

Ah!! The phone I'm about to get doesn't support EDGE! Would meteor get off their rear ends and sort out this 3G network of theirs.

jimmycrackcorm

AlmightyCushion wrote:

If it's 10GB it's hardly unlimited. Is it just me or should this be construed as false advertising.

3's unlimited BB is only 2GB.

Anyway I rang them up and signed up for it - it's €30 per month and it'll do for me until someone better comes along. At least my Gmail client and N95 navigation will work.

They don't allow VOIP but I don't see how they can prevent it if you have voip working on non-standard ports.

Solair

Well it's good to see the start of a mobile data price war. The early data offerings were insanely expensive.

I'm hoping that when my '3' contract finally ends, or at least becomes relatively painless to pay off and get out of, that there will be interesting data services on Vodafone, O2 and indeed Meteor.

Does anyone know if eircom/meteor have begun to rollout their 3G services yet? I know they've only recently got the licence, but I would have thought that they'd be keen to roll out fast.

EDGE would be quite acceptable for checking email etc though. I have broadband at home, it's only really for Gmail/bit of minor browsing if stuck somewhere. But, proper 3G would be excellent.

3 Just get annoying - endless terms and conditions and general bureucratic nonsense. I just find they roll out what seems to be a great product then kill it with usage restrictions, odd t&cs etc etc.
Why can't you just have open, fast, normal ISP-style internet access over HSPDA. I can understand there may be prepay issues (i.e. needing a proxy to control billing etc) but it's unacceptable that it should have ports blocked etc etc..

Mobile companies have to stop being such a pain in the --- if they really want to attract people to mobile broadband.

jimmycrackcorm

Solair wrote:

Well it's good to see the start of a mobile data price war. The early data offerings were insanely expensive.

I'm hoping that when my '3' contract finally ends, or at least becomes relatively painless to pay off and get out of, that there will be interesting data services on Vodafone, O2 and indeed Meteor.

Does anyone know if eircom/meteor have begun to rollout their 3G services yet? I know they've only recently got the licence, but I would have thought that they'd be keen to roll out fast.

EDGE would be quite acceptable for checking email etc though. I have broadband at home, it's only really for Gmail/bit of minor browsing if stuck somewhere. But, proper 3G would be excellent.

3 Just get annoying - endless terms and conditions and general bureucratic nonsense. I just find they roll out what seems to be a great product then kill it with usage restrictions, odd t&cs etc etc.
Why can't you just have open, fast, normal ISP-style internet access over HSPDA. I can understand there may be prepay issues (i.e. needing a proxy to control billing etc) but it's unacceptable that it should have ports blocked etc etc..

Mobile companies have to stop being such a pain in the --- if they really want to attract people to mobile broadband.

An insider told me that Meteor are bringing out their 3G service at the end of October. While Edge might be technically slower it is probably faster for surfing than 3 due to the 3 proxy taking so long to return pages.

thehomeofDob

Do meteor have EDGE signal everywhere?

niallb

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

....Anyway I rang them up and signed up for it - it's €30 per month and it'll do for me until someone better comes along. At least my Gmail client and N95 navigation will work.....

Hi, could you confirm whether it was Three or Meteor you signed up with?

I rang Meteor and three people over the last few days told me that
the only data add on was 50MB for €20 and then €1.54 per MB after that.
That prices 10G at about €15,000 which is well competitive!

I've just had a call back from their business support who told me the same thing,
and even when I showed him the webpage on meteor.ie, swore there
was no such product and wouldn't be until maybe Q4 of this year.
He went on to stress the importance of secrecy in product launches
to prevent competitors getting an edge on them, so maybe that's the main problem here :-)
Like no-one else has a data plan!

Urban Weigl

The 10G add-on is only available if you're a Talk 400 customer or higher.

Tom Dunne

niallb wrote:

I rang Meteor and three people over the last few days told me that
the only data add on was 50MB for €20 and then €1.54 per MB after that.

For a brief moment, I got all excited and though I might just be switching to Meteor. Are people actually stupid enough to pay for a data plan by the megabyte? You would love to think in this day and age that the above is a typo and they really mean Gb.

niallb wrote:

He went on to stress the importance of secrecy in product launches
to prevent competitors getting an edge on them, so maybe that's the main problem here :-)
Like no-one else has a data plan!

Yeah, while everyone is rolling out 3G, Meteor are beavering away with their 2.75G network. Of course the competitors will be worried. :rolleyes:

The 10G add-on is only available if you're a Talk 400 customer or higher.

Any links to that? I can't for the life of me find anything on the Meteor site.

alantc

tom dunne wrote:

Any links to that? I can't for the life of me find anything on the Meteor site.

It's in the first post.

Tom Dunne

erm, the link to the T&C's are in the first post, not the link to the €30 add-on bundle.

chrislad

tom, he's correct. The Unlimted Bundle is only on the business packages and Talk 400 and above.

Plus regarding your 2.75 statement, Meteor must have 10% 3G coverage by the end of the year otherwise they lose the licence. You'll probably see a major roll out come next summer, I would guess.

jimmycrackcorm

Yeah, while everyone is rolling out 3G, Meteor are beavering away with their 2.75G network. Of course the competitors will be worried.

Consider this... Through 3's network technically might be faster, it can take minutes to do a page load through widerweb. Today I sat on the bus from the quays to the Palmerstown M50 junction waiting for a web page to load. At lunchtime it kept asking me to do age verification again even though I already am. My existing meteor ordinary GPRS is actually quicker than 3pay 3g because it actually brings back pages when selected - I just didn't use it much as there were no data tariffs.

As I was on talk400, I simply rang up and asked for the unlimited package, was asked if I wanted one month only or recurring and told it would be 30 euro. The only bummer is that it starts on the monthly bill date, although that is in a few days.

3 mobile broadband is the equivalent of driving a formula one car on the M50 at rush hour.

niallb

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

As I was on talk400, I simply rang up and asked for the unlimited package, was asked if I wanted one month only or recurring and told it would be 30 euro. The only bummer is that it starts on the monthly bill date, although that is in a few days.

But... the question! - did you get an unlimited addon from Meteor or Three - they both have a a tariff called talk 400!

I'm on talk400 on Meteor, and my bill starts again tomorrow which is why I've been trying to get the addon for the last few days. Nothing simple about it.
On Saturday, when I rang I was told they could only talk about data products during business hours Monday to Friday, and just to ask to be put through to business support.
I rang today and got someone else who assured me there was only the 50M product, and then I asked to be transferred to business support.
Here I was fed the line I mentioned earlier about a "possible Q4 launch" despite leading the support guy by the hand to the document stating it had been available since late April.

Could you confirm whether you rang Meteor on 1905 and got a €30 addon for unlimited broadband?

chrislad

The fact that you're calling it broadband may be confusing them!!

It's definitely available. Just ask for a supervisor if the rep doesn't know.

niallb

chrislad wrote:

The fact that you're calling it broadband may be confusing them!!

It's definitely available. Just ask for a supervisor if the rep doesn't know.

If you're going to nitpick, could you at least answer the question :-)
I asked for an unlimited data addon ffs.
Do you have an unlimited data addon with Meteor.
No rumours or beliefs, just the simple fact!

If jimmycrackcorm does, could he confirm it one way or another.
Please use the word Meteor in your reply
I'm almost sure that's what you're saying, but not going to
get back into another argument with Meteor until I'm certain.

Pleease..

7.Ronaldo

Yes, Meteor have unlimited recurring data add on's for €30 a month.

They are available for Business Customers or Post Pay Customers on Talk 400 and above.

They have only come in recently and the reps havent really been made aware of this but it is possible to subscribe to them. If the rep doesnt know what your talking about ask them to check with a supervisor, the technical support department or to look up promotions on your account and select 'Data Add On' - All the information needed will be in there.

Urban Weigl

chrislad knows what he is talking about. The unlimited data add-on is definitely available on Meteor.

JTMan

Meteor Henry street today told me that they are launching a consumer 3G datacard in "september".

With Meteor likely to be 3rd to market after Voda and 3 and with Digiwebs "4G" offering coming soon ... the wireless broadband market is really starting to go places in Ireland.

jimmycrackcorm

I have to say that I am much happier now with the meteor data add-on. finally Gmail works and the browsing is much much faster than 3pay. Meteor seem to have edge on every cell as the conneciton was there as I travelled up and down the country at the weekend. I also managed to get a speed test and it showed 210kbps indoors.

However there are some caveats. some websites don't work: www.sbpost.ie, test.orb.com and www.nav4all.com. These work on my N95 using the wifi but not using meteor. The Nav4All application does itself work well as it downloads direction updates using the edge service.

Fring doesn't seem to work either as it won't connect over the meteor connection but works well on wifi.

I need to try those sites on my old Meteor SE as Meteor just said that they don't support the N95 so i need to check if the problem is related to the handset. I suspect not though.

One significant difference is that the data connection is only available when there are no calls so any calls will interrupt background applicaitons.

niallb

Signed up for it myself over the weekend, and thanks in particular
to chrislad for making me persevere and convince Meteor sales that it really existed!
Pity it won't kick in until my next billing date which is nearly three weeks away.
I'd have gladly paid 30 this month for the remainder of the existing month.

I upgraded my K750i to a K550i to give myself the EDGE - lovely phone.
I'm a big fan of RSS, and the reader is sweet.
Only niggle is the K550 needs an M2 card so my 2GB Pro Duo can't come along for the ride,
and there is NO M2 card included with the K550.
If you buy the W610i instead, you get a 512M one, but it's €49 euro instead of €29
and I preferred the K550 anyway.

Are any of the smaller data addons available as an immediate addon,
or would I have to wait until next billing day anyway?

jimmycrackcorm

It's a bummer having to wait until the billing date.

I had a bad day with the add-on today having difficulty getting a connection.
Rang meteor and Customer support juggled it about and in particular enabled the isp access.

now everything works properly, the sites including meteor's own work perfectly and I've even gotten Orb working so I'm delighted with it. This has made a huge difference to using my N95. My incoming Gmail gets notified to my phone via SMS (looks like it's free also) and that means I can immediately check it via the client. Browsing unlike 3pay is instantaneous and doesn't mess up. Even Voip and skype over Fring works fine. Speedtest.net shows 200-230kbps and 8-90 kbps up.

The other point i'd make is there is a remarkable difference between Meteor support and Three support. Meteor support are willing to do what they can to help fix the problem whereas Three just don't care about the customer at all.

Now to flash my three 610 and sell it off to pay for my 3 experiment.

alantc

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

now everything works properly, the sites including meteor's own work perfectly and I've even gotten Orb working so I'm delighted with it.

For niallb, this could be an alternative to buying an expensive memory card. Just buy what you need for storing photos and then use orb to stream your music from home.

Orb is the application I'll be going for whenever I can justify spending another €40/month (€10 to get up to Talk 400) on my mobile bill. What is the orb interface on the phone like? Is there seamless play? Does it skip at all?

chrislad

Glad to be of help, niall.

Unfortunately, all add ons have to wait until your next billing date, be they the data or text add ons.

jimmycrackcorm

orb has an interface geared to mobile devices and that works well. To reduce buffering but still manage some sort of quality i've restricted the speed to 100kbps. Travelling on the bus it did disconnect once which would be fine except it wouldn't resume at the same place. It might be ao orb setting though. Stationary it was find though.
When ringing support i discovered that over the weekend i had used up 22mb just from browsing itself and no streaming video or such like. It just goes to show that the basic packages of up to 25mb are of no use.

niallb

Thanks again about the billing dates.
The full descriptions of the products are all up now, and it's clear there.
I'll just have to try to keep it to a minimum, but not too hard.
I'll just imagine I'd paid the €30 and try to stay under that.
1.65¢+VAT per kilobyte...
G*d, that's nearly 2MB! Forget that - I'll come up with an alternative.

I can get a 2G M2 card for about €40, so not too worried about that either.
Even if there had been one, I'd have replaced it with something bigger.
Orb's a good suggestion, but it's not an answer for me because:

• I don't use windows
• I don't have broadband at home (hence the data addons)
• I record audio/video and take a lot of photographs
  with the phone rather than play a large MP3 collection.
  I'd keep maybe a half dozen albums and a couple of podcasts on it.

My only downer on the EDGE is realising I can't take calls on it while using the data connection. Fring or similar would have been a help here, but VOIP is banned by the terms and conditions of the service.

Wouldn't a data top-up be a popular service?
Throw a tenner at your phone for lets say 10MB transfer,
effective straightaway and deactivated after 10MB ?
If they can cut you off in the middle of a call for going
over your credit, I don't believe there's any problem
doing the same with data.

jrey1981

Fungus wrote:

Meteor Henry street today told me that they are launching a consumer 3G datacard in "september".

With Meteor likely to be 3rd to market after Voda and 3 and with Digiwebs "4G" offering coming soon ... the wireless broadband market is really starting to go places in Ireland.

Sounds promising. The Meteor coverage recently improved where I'm living, so fingers crossed someone will have a 3G signal here!

alantc

niallb wrote:

My only downer on the EDGE is realising I can't take calls on it while using the data connection. Fring or similar would have been a help here, but VOIP is banned by the terms and conditions of the service.

Does the phone even ring when you're using EDGE? Maybe there's a setting to use n-1 channels instead off the max.

I'm surprised they've bothered to ban VOIP considering anyone with the unlimited data plan will already have 400+ minutes. I don't understand how they can prove VOIP usage if the clients use SSL or to hide the packet contents. This possible?

Urban Weigl

You should be able to still receive calls while online with EDGE, the only difference is that your data connection will be put "on hold" while you're talking, but will automatically resume as soon as you hang up.

I suspect there is a problem with your call forwarding settings, e.g. it's set up so that calls go to voicemail if you are connected to the internet.

niallb

There's no problem with my settings, and I presume it will go on hold.
Just not much good to me when I need to talk to a client while looking at their network!
I'm going to need to carry another phone to divert to in this case,
which is what I was trying to avoid by adding the data to my main phone.

No settings change will allow me to use the phone for voice and data
simultaneously as you can with 3G.

Thanks alantc for the suggestion. I'll look into seeing if I can reserve a channel for voice.
It would be worth it during business hours.
I doubt if there's a menu setting, but I might be lucky with an init string.

Likewise with the VOIP.
I'd have no problem hiding the traffic if I wanted to,
but I'd rather change the Terms and Conditions.
I think that considering my bill is now going to be
upwards of €100 every month (as well as an ISDN bill,
and a vodafone datacard bill!) they could take it easy
on specific data use restrictions.

The T&C allow Meteor to terminate the service if they
suspect use outside those terms - no proof required.