When are we gonna stop getting screwed with WAP charges?

Fighting Irish

I'm on meteor and today i downloaded an RSS feed from bbc.co.uk, it took about 30 seconds to a minute to complete and i was charged €4+ :rolleyes:

Morbid.Angel

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Random

Fighting Irish wrote: »

I'm on meteor and today i downloaded an RSS feed from bbc.co.uk, it took about 30 seconds to a minute to complete and i was charged €4+ :rolleyes:

Everyone agrees with you yada yada yada ...

rc28

I agree, ireland completely SUCKS for all kinds of internet (broadband, mobile internet etc). Look at the following data packages for the iphone in the US;
http://www.apple.com/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html
For $59 which is 40 euro, you get unlimited data, unlimited mobile to mobile calls and a ton of other things like 200 texts and 450 weekday call minutes and 5000 (!) weekend minutes. It's the same for the UK o2 iphone plans too. So if the iphone comes to ireland o2 will have to have the same packages (apple force them to) and how will they explain that to their other customers who don't have iphones? I really hope things change soon, it's absolutely pathetic everyone still accepts these charges.

lawhec

They've been getting unlimited free WAP in the UK for years now, why can't they do it here?!

Source? The only ones I can think off were the old BT Cellnet Genie sims and they clamped down on unlimited pretty quickly.

I agree, ireland completely SUCKS for all kinds of internet (broadband, mobile internet etc). Look at the following data packages for the iphone in the US;
http://www.apple.com/iphone/easysetup/rateplans.html
For $59 which is 40 euro, you get unlimited data, unlimited mobile to mobile calls and a ton of other things like 200 texts and 450 weekday call minutes and 5000 (!) weekend minutes. It's the same for the UK o2 iphone plans too. So if the iphone comes to ireland o2 will have to have the same packages (apple force them to) and how will they explain that to their other customers who don't have iphones? I really hope things change soon, it's absolutely pathetic everyone still accepts these charges.

The iPhone tariff on O2 UK is IMHO a complete rip-off, the cheapest is for £35 (~€50) a month for 200 mins, 200 texts + "unlimited" data via EDGE/GPRS and via Cloud Wi-Fi which is of little use in Northern Ireland as The Cloud have no hotspots here and O2 haven't bothered enabling one base station with EDGE, even in Belfast.

rc28

lawhec wrote: »

The iPhone tariff on O2 UK is IMHO a complete rip-off, the cheapest is for £35 (~€50) a month for 200 mins, 200 texts + "unlimited" data via EDGE/GPRS and via Cloud Wi-Fi which is of little use in Northern Ireland as The Cloud have no hotspots here and O2 haven't bothered enabling one base station with EDGE, even in Belfast.

Ok, name one irish operator that gives unlimited data(not 3 as their "unlimited" limit is actually 2GB) and o2 do have edge, i put an o2 sim into my iphone and the edge icon came up and the speeds were way better than gprs.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/iphone-international-apple-schedules-iphone-workshop-in-canada/

1huge1

Morbid.Angel wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Ya I remember when I was with vodafone way back when with my nokia 3510i I always got free wap, too bad there was total crap on it at the time.

Id say I could of easily worked up over €1000 worth.

lawhec

rc28 wrote: »

Ok, name one irish operator that gives unlimited data(not 3 as their "unlimited" limit is actually 2GB) and o2 do have edge, i put an o2 sim into my iphone and the edge icon came up and the speeds were way better than gprs.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/iphone-international-apple-schedules-iphone-workshop-in-canada/

1. I didn't claim that any Irish mobile operator gives true unlimited mobile data. Indeed the word "unlimited" w.r.t. data which actually has limits should be outlawed.

2. Please read my post first, I am referring to the O2 UK network, not the O2 Ireland network, I'm well aware the latter has rolled out EDGE recently across most if not all of its 2G network, but as far as I'm aware there's not one O2 base station in Northern Ireland that is EDGE enabled, and I was only in Belfast a couple of days ago where if they were to have any enabled, it would be there.

Bluefrog

The answer: No time soon.

There is absolutely no incentive for Irish operators to act in this area. While Three may have some impact, with a market share hovering round 3% presently it's debatable how seriously the other operators take them.

Personally, I think that intervention from the state in this area is long overdue. It should fall under the remit of COMREG but they and all other state agencies which one would think would be taking an interest in this area seem to have washed their hands of the Irish mobile data consumer. To all intents and purposes in Ireland the provision of mobile data is unregulated in any meaningful way and highway robbery is the order of the day.

Just as it took ministerial intervention to force Eircom to reduce fixed line broadband prices I think it now falls on the present minister to do the same with mobile broadband data services. I would also like to see legislation to prevent operators from restricting access to their networks to their own set of approved devices and applications as such restrictions cripple innoation.

1huge1

They should take 3 seriously, im sure vodafone and O2 are both very aware how meteor crept up on both of them.

failsafe

What about the new vodafone "mobile internet" charges? It's not fantastic, but it's definitely a step in the right direction and far from being screwed.

For the type of usage the OP was talking about he could have got hundreds of feeds for 99c. I have it on bill pay and i'm pretty happy with my €9.99 a month for general wap usage.

rc28

failsafe wrote: »

What about the new vodafone "mobile internet" charges? It's not fantastic, but it's definitely a step in the right direction and far from being screwed.

For the type of usage the OP was talking about he could have got hundreds of feeds for 99c. I have it on bill pay and i'm pretty happy with my €9.99 a month for general wap usage.

Exactly, on BILLPAY (the 500 mb package doesn't exist for prepay) and it's only through the live.com portal which is totally crippled internet and won't work on an unlocked non-vodafone branded phone.

Bluefrog

Vodafone's response looks like a token gesture to me. Internet access should be complete access, juas as you have on your PC. Anything else is shafting the consumer.

failsafe

rc28 wrote: »

Exactly, on BILLPAY (the 500 mb package doesn't exist for prepay) and it's only through the live.com portal which is totally crippled internet and won't work on an unlocked non-vodafone branded phone.

Well for prepay it's 99c if you use it for a day, so like i said, not amazing but at least it's not "getting screwed". And what do you define as crippled internet? My experience has just been that it's adapted for mobile. AFAIK, Internet on a pc isn't possible on any regular handset (on any Irish operator), it's only the top end handsets that can do full html (which even then isn't as good as a PC)

I also thought 3 had a semi-decent prepay offering too?

thebman

Opera Mini does it well, at least on my phone which Meteor have started offering billpay (saw it on an ad on tv today).