3rd Party Apps on 3

Kristok

google maps and opear are working fine on my n73 pretty much just msn. It cant be some kind of port blocking cause my 6280 works fine with the same sim. It does seem very random what does and dosnt work.

WezzyB

I've rang Three Customer Support a few times but it is pointless complaining to them.

I guess that people should write to ComReg complaining about the crippled 'mobile broadband' product.

Alternatively we could send a Registered Letter of complaint to the Company Secretary.

Also complaints could be copied to the papers.

Its a pity that there are no insiders in Three would are willing to divulge any details on what is going on with there network, are they doing this on purpose or is it as a side affect of some other change.

Another idea would be to logon to Three's X-Series blog and complain about the service here, I know its kinda off topic but it might raise our plight!

h57xiucj2z946q

the fact we are all sharing a handful of ip's is having a knock on affect.

Try connecting to irc.rizon.net with an irc client from 3 mobile/usb modem. you get disconnected saying "compromised host". obviously someone on 3 has their pc infected with spyware and their ip got banned of the network, now its affecting me.

WezzyB

Looks like bluefrog already posted on the X-Series blog, everyone else should too!
http://xseries.typepad.com/xseries/2007/07/x-series-and-ir.html

tdkeaveny

as someone said it all seems very random. i have an e61 on billpay with 250mb data, with me gmail and opera work fine but fring, skype, msn (new one) and gizmo do not. i joined 3 just for te data plan and now half of the programs dont work. does it say anywere in the t&c that this will happed? if nor im switching today

Bluefrog

Yes I posted to the X-Series blog and I am far from done. As a web developer I know a little more than most about how to highlight issues on the web and I am now undertaking an online war of attrition on Three in the hopes that they will finally get the message.

I will not tolerate my service from Three being dealt out in such a haphazard and shoddy fashion and nor will I pay for it.

The following email has just gone to Three customer support at support@3ireland.ie and their head of communications (hah!) there <snip> at [email]<snip>[/email] on the back of a bill I received from them this morning.

RE: A/C No.xxx & Bill No. xxx

Hi,

I am nothing short of furious to see that I am to be charged for my forced switch between unlimited broadband and X-Series during the month of August though given a credit on my unlimited broadband addon. This is truly the last straw.

Neither the unlimited broadband addon or the X-Series addon worked as advertised for the majority of the month or indeed are working now. I had sporadic and very short lived access to any service that did not run on port 80, and on several occasions of which I received no notice, I had no service whatsoever on any port. I spent innumerable hours chasing down people in technical support for answers and was told a plethora of what basically amounted to lies about the state of the service ranging from 'you are the only one having difficulties' when a visit to boards.ie made it quite apparent that I wasn't, to 'these issues will be resolved in 24 hours' when there was no basis to give me such information. I was sent out a replacement SIM to solve the issues when it was obvious that they were network based and there was on problem with the original SIM card. To add insult to injury, the original SIM card was disabled before the new one arrived leaving me with no mobile phone service for over a day!

I only requested the switch to X-Series as a last resort having gotten nowhere with customer service or support over a period of 2 weeks and at least 6 separate half hour long phone calls since the so called 'upgrade' of August 9th.

In my opinion, at this point Three should be paying me as it seems my custom is being used for network testing purposes while your technical team who seem nothing short of incompetent wrestle with their configurations.

Now let me make it clear. Should this charge of €19.00 not be refunded to me in my next bill I will take legal action. Furthermore, should I be charged for the X-Series addon next month with continuing access problems to services running on ports other than 80 I will take legal action.

It is my intention to take Three Ireland to the small claims court where I will be seeking the maximum award for lack of service and time lost, and I am also hereby committing to lodge official complaints with COMREG and the advertising standards authority. The purpose of these actions is not to escape from my contract. The purpose is to force Three to provide the services I enjoyed before August 9th and I intend to settle for nothing less.

While I know that COMREG does not regulate broadband directly which may have been an out for Three in relation to it's USB broadband customers, they do regulate mobile phone services. It will be my contention that Three obtained my custom for their phone service under false pretences - i.e. undertaking that they would provide an 'unlimited' data addon which obviously they have totally failed to do in the past month. I believe it is a matter COMREG must pursue and it is my firm intention to compel them to do so.

For documentation purposes I am publishing this letter publicly on boards.ie. It is also my intention to forward a copy to the NCA.

Finally, I expect all future correspondence between Three Ireland and myself on this matter to be in writing. No phone calls from India will be entertained.


Kind regards etc.

This will also appear on the X-Series blog shortly.

WezzyB

Well put Bluefrog! Exactly my sentiments.

I signed up to: next.three.com (also accessible on my phone, via three! shock horror)
I was thinking of suggesting fring, opera and live messenger and then saying how great they were before the recent network change......

Terrontress

I am going to write a message to the addresses you have specified detailing my problems.

I've noticed since I changed from unlimited broadband to x-series gold that I can't get access to tinytube.net. It's firewalled and there is no offensive material on there at all. No reason to firewall it other than people may use bandwidth to download videos.

Getting deeply suspicious

The_Hustler

Thanks for that site! I haven't been able to stream for age but I can still download those videos fine.

Bluefrog

No site should be firewalled, blocked etc. I'm an adult and I expect uncensored access to any site I choose to visit. I also expect that all ports will be open to me to use as I please as long as I don't contravene the fair usage policy - whatever that is.

My streaming has returned today but it continues to cut out after 3 to 5 minutes on X-Series Gold. No Fring on MSN or various java app network access.

Awaiting Three's response to my letter.

Terrontress

I was showing the phone to a friend and we decided to look up page3.com. Joke if you will. Anyway it seemed to block it out. Fair enough a block on adult sites. Now page3 may not be in my top ten sites but it's hardly corrupting. But then it turns out 3UK have a soft porn service through Planet3. i know Ireland is a country of prudes but let the individual make their own choice!

And now I get the same message for tinyTube.

Sam Vimes

Terrontress wrote:

I was showing the phone to a friend and we decided to look up page3.com. Joke if you will. Anyway it seemed to block it out. Fair enough a block on adult sites. Now page3 may not be in my top ten sites but it's hardly corrupting. But then it turns out 3UK have a soft porn service through Planet3. i know Ireland is a country of prudes but let the individual make their own choice!

And now I get the same message for tinyTube.

i got onto page3.com fine just there. Tinytube.com loaded but nothing came up in any of the search results. Is that what happened to you?

ciaran76

Page3.com worked for me but tinytube said it was a forbidden url !!!!

I don't get it !

Idleater

Terrontress wrote:

But then it turns out 3UK have a soft porn service through Planet3.

There was some "advert" link thing on my 3 home page when I connected last night to some dancing girls video.

"Heatworld" is my guess.

Terrontress

nereid wrote:

There was some "advert" link thing on my 3 home page when I connected last night to some dancing girls video.

"Heatworld" is my guess.

Look at these

http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/planetthreedetail.omp?cid=1139512467587

and

http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/planetthreedetail.omp?cid=1139512467563

It all seems fairly porny to me.

I have no great desire to go looking at dirty pictures but as Bluefrog says, we should not have any firewalls put up. We can each take personal responsibility for our actions without 3's censorship.

Bluefrog

Actually, I don't want the adult content to become a bit of a red herring here - all I meant was that 'unlimited' should mean just that. Notwithstanding bandwidth caps, I should be able to use any site, any port, access any service I choose as long as I don't contravene fair usage policies and by fair usage I mean fair to other users -not hogging bandwidth.

When I do take my legal action against Three, which it now looks increasingly like I will have to to get the service they contracted to supply me with, this will be my main contention.

Unlimited means unlimited.

Are the rest of your guys finding other 3rd party apps blocked on your phones now. Does your streaming in Real still get interupted?

tdkeaveny

could anyone make a rough time-line when things changed? like when certain apps worked and then stopped working (fring msn gizmo etc) I'm new to this so id like some info to argue my case when i go to complain. ill owe you big time

Terrontress

Bluefrog wrote:

Actually, I don't want the adult content to become a bit of a red herring here - all I meant was that 'unlimited' should mean just that. Notwithstanding bandwidth caps, I should be able to use any site, any port, access any service I choose as long as I don't contravene fair usage policies and by fair usage I mean fair to other users -not hogging bandwidth.

When I do take my legal action against Three, which it now looks increasingly like I will have to to get the service they contracted to supply me with, this will be my main contention.

Unlimited means unlimited.

Are the rest of your guys finding other 3rd party apps blocked on your phones now. Does your streaming in Real still get interupted?

Is your legal action going to be for the return of all fees you have paid to them?

I suspect they may not even defend that.

The_Hustler

Commander Vimes wrote:

i got onto page3.com fine just there. Tinytube.com loaded but nothing came up in any of the search results. Is that what happened to you?

I get search results just fine. The only problem I've had is that streaming doesn't work.

postie

It seems that all useful 3rd party apps especially Fring are still blocked. Its possibly a coincidence that it coincides with the launch of x-series...which is only available on non HSDPA phones. Useless. I think Bluefrogs approach to 3 may be the best one...

Bluefrog

Terrontress wrote:

Is your legal action going to be for the return of all fees you have paid to them?

I suspect they may not even defend that.

I'm not looking to squirm out of the contract - as far as Im concerned Three have already well broken it by restricting sites and blocking ports - I'm simply going to dispute payment until the ports are reopened and will bring them to the small claims court if they continue to charge me to recoup it. If they want to pay to defend it then that's their choice but each month I don't get unlimited access I have no intention of paying for it.

I am refusing to deal with Three except in writing - an approach they are trying to squirm out of as you can see from the correspondence thread but basically I want it documented and will be publishing it here under the correspondence with Three thread T started.

I am cc'ing <snip>, their head of communications on all mails. I think if everyone who has complained on these boards did the same Three might do something just from the annoyance factor alone.

In any case I can't help but suspect given the way Three have behaved that the port blocking is a cynical attempt to improve the bandwidth available for their USB broadband customers at the expense of their mobile broadband addon customers - robbing Peter to pay Paul and that's not on. I saw a tv ad last night advertising the modem when they are well aware that service is already over-subscribed.

As for when this all started to go south, it was around the 9th of August after the infamous change of ISP upgrade but only in the last couple of weeks has the port blocking kicked in.

As for X-Series, I have the gold package at the moment - you can't even sign up to Orb presently because a UK phone number is required during the registration process. The Skype client only supports voice, no text and the the MSN application is a very basic client in comparison to the official Microsoft Symbian client which up until a couple of weeks ago was working fine. Both clients only work in areas with 3G coverage whereas Fring and the official Microsoft clients work happily on gprs.

These issues may be temporary teething issues - I don't know and frankly I am beginning not to care. I'm simply not prepared to pay to be a Three test monkey.

WezzyB

Fairplay Bluefrog,
I will complain by letter but at the moment I am actually too busy with work and home renovation stuff to get around to writing a letter.

One thing that I feel will affect my argument is that I use an unlocked Nokia E61, instead of the moto v3xx that they supplied me with, so that when I say I can't use X, Y, Z on my phone they will say my phone isn't supported anyway!

I see that the Nokia E61 is actually supplied as a business phone with Three UK but this won't really help my case with Three Ireland.

I will try and send a letter in the next few weeks, along the same lines as Bluefrogs.

tdkeaveny

WezzyB wrote:

Fairplay Bluefrog,
I will complain by letter but at the moment I am actually too busy with work and home renovation stuff to get around to writing a letter.

One thing that I feel will affect my argument is that I use an unlocked Nokia E61, instead of the moto v3xx that they supplied me with, so that when I say I can't use X, Y, Z on my phone they will say my phone isn't supported anyway!

I see that the Nokia E61 is actually supplied as a business phone with Three UK but this won't really help my case with Three Ireland.

I will try and send a letter in the next few weeks, along the same lines as Bluefrogs.

very good point. how many of us are using 3 with an official x-sires phone? i know i does not matter but as you said they can just turn around and say "sorry that phone is not supported". i'm using an unbranded e61 so im not sure what i can say. we should get a list of that and as Bluefrog as said earlier send it to the proper governing body here in Ireland

Bluefrog

Regardless of whether I use my 3 branded phone or my unlocked one these restrictions still apply. I don't believe that Three can discriminate between the two. If they could why not just shut down all services on the unlocked phone.

My intention with Three still remains to pressurise them in whatever way possilbe to reverse this move. I have added the Current State of Unlimited Broadband and X-Series and Three to www.digg.com and already I'm seeing it appear around the web The more people that comment on blogs with their expreiences, digg the threads here and complain the Three directly the more chance we have of getting them to turn on this. It's that simple.

culabula

Bluefrog wrote:

Conclusive proof that Three don't know what they are doing. I'm now on X-Series Gold -as I write, none of the services on it work. I got a promo SMS from them yesterday saying:

3 Update. Go to Planet 3. Choose Internet & Surf the Web on your mobile for just 49c per MB.

And the bit that really made me laugh:

To opt of of Internet access call 333.

They forgot to add 'or buy a 3 USB modem or broadband phone addon'

Ha! I just found these too....buried on my USB Modem SIM which isn't supposed to able to receive SMS.

Bluefrog

Shame they wouldn't use that SMS facility with the datamodem to post about updates and service status when they majorly mess up - about once every 3-4 weeks it seems...

culabula

Bluefrog wrote:

Shame they wouldn't use that SMS facility with the datamodem to post about updates and service status when they majorly mess up - about once every 3-4 weeks it seems...

Except that there isn't much point when the SIM is stuck in the datamodem and a lot of users would be excluded from knowing that there was SMS there to be read.

Bluefrog

I thought I recalled from the days when I was trialling the modem that there was a window in the software for looking at SMS's that had arrived to the SIM

culabula

Bluefrog wrote:

I thought I recalled from the days when I was trialling the modem that there was a window in the software for looking at SMS's that had arrived to the SIM

That's correct -for Windows users. That's what I meant when I said a lot of users would be excluded -Mac ones. Officially too, both MO and MT SMS do not work with the 10GB SIM so most users would not be looking to check if there are any received (MT-SMS actually does work, another fine mess from 3 Ireland).

Bluefrog

I do run a Fedora (Linux) box here as a file server and for messing round with Linux apps. Does that redeem me a little?