email on three network.

mkennedy

Hi.
I'm on 'three' bill-pay with a windows mobile handset.

Up to this i had 'proper' pop3 email on my device with voda no problem.

However since moving to three my pocket outlook pop3 email accounts (EIRCOM, GMAIL and YAHOO) no longer work.

I have therefore looked at webmail alternatives but none seem very satisfactory:

1) The gmail java app for windows mobile: It's ok but it can't send attachments.

2) Likewise web gmail accessed with either opera mobile or pocketIE can't send attachments.

3) Yahoo webmail via pocketIE is useless.

4) Yahoo webmail via opera mobile kinda works but it's a lot of hassle- a lot of html to wade thru' and you seem to have to rename any attachments received to be able to open them. Not great.

5) Yahoo webmail accessed via Netfront can't send attachments either.

6) Eircom webmail accessed via pocketIE has never worked properly.

7) I thought mail2web might be the solution but that apparently shows only recently downloaded mail- so basically useless.

8) The only webmail solution that i thought might work was gmail via the Netfront browser which supports sending attachments.
But still a bit of work.

So overall the whole webmail thing on a handheld seems like a nightmare compared with nice clean pop3 mail on a client like pocket outlook.

So is there anyone here at the moment using proper fully-functional email on the three network- preferably pop3 based.
If there is i'd love to hear what you are using.

Else i may be going back to voda.. oh dear god no. :P

Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.

tallus

When I open web based Gmail in Opera Mini any attachments are downloaded using the 3 web browser. Can't get eircom to work on the native pop3 client on the phone, dont know why, I put the correct settings in and it has never worked, and 3 don't want to know about it. They are only concerned with their own crappy phone based email.
I suppose if you could pop forward other accounts to gmail, then there might be a workaround.
I'm on 3pay btw.

mkennedy

tallus wrote:

When I open web based Gmail in Opera Mini any attachments are downloaded using the 3 web browser. Can't get eircom to work on the native pop3 client on the phone, dont know why, I put the correct settings in and it has never worked, and 3 don't want to know about it. They are only concerned with their own crappy phone based email.
I suppose if you could pop forward other accounts to gmail, then there might be a workaround.
I'm on 3pay btw.

Yeah sorry what i meant is SEND attachments not just receive them.

As far as i can see most of the webmail i've looked at can't SEND attachments.

As i said the exceptions seem to be 1) gmail accessed via the Netfront browser and
2) yahoo webmail accessed via opera mobile

Still a lot of work imo.

I just really would like some kind of proper pop/client based email with three.

mkennedy

Of note my eircom, pop3 yahoo and pop3 gmail all work fine over a wifi connection on my device.

Just checked them there again to be sure about the settings.
Absolutely no problem.
So it's definitely a three problem.

(incidentally i've never gotten one of the newer pop3 yahoo accounts to work over any network on my device but that's another story).

scary

having the same issue with pop gmail the last couple of days. had been working fine up till sunday. Also works no probs over wifi.

corm

mkennedy

scary wrote:

having the same issue with pop gmail the last couple of days. had been working fine up till sunday. Also works no probs over wifi.

corm

What are you using instead may i ask?

BTW you're using the htc p3600 aren't you.
How is it treating you?

Tomtom works beautifully on it i must say.
I just wish the mini-sdhc/wm6 issue was sorted.

scary

dont have an alternative at the moment. Just connect through wifi when i can. i have igo navigator which i find very good. overall well impressed with the HTC, have a slingshot connected to it but with all of 3's issues cant get it going over there network yet, but over wifi it works a dream.

GekkePrutser

Did you try using IMAP instead of POP? I'm using that here on 3pay and I have no problems except the intermittent connection due to the congestion on 3's network.

Edit: Sorry you said you're having problems sending attachments which in both cases would use the SMTP protocol so mysuggestion was no good, sorry.

mkennedy

GekkePrutser wrote:

Did you try using IMAP instead of POP? I'm using that here on 3pay and I have no problems except the intermittent connection due to the congestion on 3's network.

Edit: Sorry you said you're having problems sending attachments which in both cases would use the SMTP protocol so mysuggestion was no good, sorry.

Gekkeprutser what IMAP email are you using do you mind me asking?
Also in the '3pay-what works' thread you mentioned smtp email worked for you is that correct. What were you using for this.

postie

I'm using an HTC Hermes/Tytn on 3 with WM5 outlook Pop3 mail and I am having no email problems...having problems with most other applications (Fring,Opera...) but not pop3. Seems to be different from account to account. Does anyone know how customer service react to non 3 handsets if you need to solve a problem?
mkennedy, I'd be happy to post my settings if you think it will help.

GekkePrutser

I'm using a hosting package as my email provider, they provide POP3/IMAP for receiving and SMTP for sending email. I have it on my own domain, the email came as a package with the web hosting.

By the way, I have to say that today and yesterday I've had extreme difficulty connecting to my mailbox. During the day I had several times where I couldn't get a connection at all. So I think I'm getting the same issue as you have, I get very frequent timeouts and this would be much more noticeable when sending a large file such as an attachment.

It seems like 3's network is just severely congested and getting worse due to the sale of their broadband modems. I even tried roaming to Vodafone (forced it by disabling UMTS on my phone) and I had the same problem then on GPRS. I was already surprised that it worked because though I could always roam to Vodafone I was never able to use GPRS. But it didn't improve things anyway. I'd say the congestion must be at 3's central uplink to the internet then (which is good because it's probably easy to fix).

Anyway, this way it's pretty unusable, I keep having to manually reconnect my email client on my phone (if it works at all). Not very handy when all I want it for is to see new email when it comes in.

talkingclock

for email issues read also the last 10 pages of

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055115306

mkennedy

Ok thanks lads.

@ postie:
That would be brilliant if you could send me those settings.
If you want to pm me with them instead that's fine.

My set up is nearly identical to yours so they should help.
I appreciate it.

GekkePrutser

I think three have just changed their port settings in Galway now too.

Since last night I haven't been able to access IMAP or POP3 servers any longer, even though the network was fast enough to allow other kinds of access (web pages) pretty snappily. Strange enough even fring still works.

But IMAP and POP3 seem blocked as I get a "Server Error" straight away when I connect. Next thing (when I'll get a chance) is to set up a port forward somewhere on port 443 (https) to my mail server, I think that will still work as 443 is definitely not blocked.

tallus

Does anyone know what ports can be used for pop mail apart from 25 and 110 ?

postie

mkennedy wrote:

Ok thanks lads.

@ postie:
That would be brilliant if you could send me those settings.
If you want to pm me with them instead that's fine.

My set up is nearly identical to yours so they should help.
I appreciate it.

I'm not sure if they'll help but here's my settings on the tytn:

In the settings/connections/My ISP menu I have selected:
Cellular Line(gprs,3g)
Access point name: 3ireland.ie
no username/password/domain
In Advanced, TCP/IP: use user-assigned IP address
In Advanced, Servers:use user-assigned IP addresses

In outlook email set-up:
Whatever your account details are
Account type:POP3
Incoming mail and outgoing mail are set to my email accounts server settings (mail.xxx.yyy)
In the same menu under options "connection" is set to "The Internet"
Press next and I have selected "outgoing mail requires authentication" and I unticked use separate settings. This is because my company SMTP requires that.

The problem I've just discovered after I wrote all this is that when I set up a new eircom pop3 account on the phone to test that, I'm having the same problem as you-it does not work. It must be a port issue..or someone blocking someone. Tried gmail too same problem...The work pop3 smtp is still ok though

mkennedy

Thanks anyway.
Yeah i've pretty much tried those settings with eircom and gmail and i've had problems connecting.

Bluefrog

A lot of ports seem to be crippled within the past week. I can only hope for Three's sake that this is a temporary issue and not a new policy to increase bandwidth for the usb modem users cause they have a contract with me for 'unlimited' broadband and that is what I will get.

mkennedy

Is this pop3 mail issue due to port-blocking?

In the 'three' usb modem broadband thread they say absence of an smtp server is the reason for any email problems with the usb modem.

However apparently there is an smtp server for mobiles. Is this correct anyone know?

And if port-blocking IS the cause what's the rationale for port-blocking.

postie

mkennedy wrote:

Is this pop3 mail issue due to port-blocking?

In the 'three' usb modem broadband thread they say absence of an smtp server is the reason for any email problems with the usb modem.

However apparently there is an smtp server for mobiles. Is this correct anyone know?

And if port-blocking IS the cause what's the rationale for port-blocking.

Their own smtp is not running yet and my understanding of it is because all 3 customers are all on one ip address other smtp's spam software see this as an attack and automatically ban the ip address. That explains why my companies pop3 is working fine-we've not got that level of protection!

GekkePrutser

Bluefrog wrote:

A lot of ports seem to be crippled within the past week. I can only hope for Three's sake that this is a temporary issue and not a new policy to increase bandwidth for the usb modem users cause they have a contract with me for 'unlimited' broadband and that is what I will get.

Yes it seems they are blocking on a host/port combination. My own hoster's email server has been inaccessible the last few days while other servers are still accessible. Maybe it's because I've been connected to it 24x7 during the last month. Didn't use a lot of bandwidth for that connection though (maybe 10 MB/day max and that's on the unlimited package)

Also, they definitely are using some kind of (transparent) proxy now on port 80. I set up a special 'weather forecast' page on my own website for viewing on my phone which tells me the weather in the places I'd like to know. The actual page is down at the moment because of changes in network configuration at my hoster and it times out, however if I view it on 3, it loads an old version still showing the forecast for last thursday.

Definitely something fishy going on there. I think they are doing all this because of the extremely poort bandwidth available on their network lately and they're trying everything they can to squeeze the most out of it.