Vodafone: can anybody make sense of this pricing?

[email protected] wrote:
> I am trying to find out their roaming charges on PAYG *data*.
>
> >Mobile Browsing Price
> >Mobile internet browsing including Vodafone Live! 2
> >
> >Pay monthly customers
> >must use the WAP APN ?5 per day for up to 15MB1
> >Data used when downloading music, games, video clips and ringtones from Vodafone Live! is free
> >Using the phone as a modem or web access using the Internet APN ?4.99 per MB
> >Blackberry 1 ?4.99 per MB
>
> What the hell does the above mean?? Nobody at Voda seems to know, and
> I HAVE been on the phone to them, for ages, and written to them, and
> emailed them (maybe 20-30 emails, all replied to by morons).
>
> 1. What is "Mobile internet browsing"?

Browsing on your phone, as opposed to on your laptop.

> 2. What is "Vodafone Live"?

Vodafone's own mobile site - news, football scores, etc etc done badly that
nobody uses. But it's also the way to browse the rest of the net by phone.

> 3. What is "Using the phone as a modem or web access using the
> Internet APN"?

On my phone I have three access points set up, with different names (APNs).
I didn't put them there, so Voda must have set them up by sending texts:

Vodafone live!: APN=wap.vodafone.co.uk
Vodafone Internet: APN=Internet
Vodafone MMS: APN=wap.vodafone.co.uk

What they're saying is that if you use wap.vodafone.co.uk you'll be charged
a fiver a day. If you use Internet it's a fiver a megabyte. On the WAP APN
they may do some filtering, like firewall off most ports, force you to go
through their proxy or mangle your HTTP headers to discourage laptop use.
They can't stop you using it with a laptop, but they could inspect your
packets and decide to bill you in arrears if they spotted you using (say) a
desktop web browser.

> Also there is no "internet APN". On contract there is "internet" but
> the above text refers to PAYG. On PAYG there is "pp.internet" (which I
> am on) or "pp.vodafone.co.uk" but Voda do not publish the pricing for
> these two PAYG APNs, and repeated emails have drawn a blank (moronic
> replies).

Ah, that could be why the above APNs don't work for me (I'm on PAYG but have
never got Voda to work for data - not that I've tried too hard)

> I wonder if anybody here knows. The problem is that they are charging
> me ?10/MB... my guess is that they are running a ripoff tariff on the
> old "pp.internet" APN, but in any case one should be able to use the
> phone as a bluetooth modem and get the ?5/day pricing because one
> could be doing "web access" only!!

If you're actually in Greece for more than a few days and have an unlocked
phone, forget Vodafone. Buy a WIND SIM for EUR5 [1], and then text 'PLUS'
to 349. Result: a month's internet on your phone for EUR3.49. Some of the
filtering can be worked around if you want to use it on a laptop. Or if you
want unfettered internet on your laptop, it's EUR8 for 120MB. Details here:
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/gree...ers-t2835.html

[1] These might only come with EUR1 of credit, in which case you'd have to
buy a EUR10 topup at the same time, or a SIM+credit pack for EUR20.

Theo

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› See More: Vodafone: can anybody make sense of this pricing?

In article <[email protected]>, occassionally-
[email protected] says...
> >Pay monthly customers
> >must use the WAP APN £5 per day for up to 15MB1

APN stands for "access point name". There are several different APNs in
use on each mobile network. The ones that ordinary customers should be
concerned with are the WAP APN, full internet APN and the MMS (photo
messaging APN.

The WAP APN will typicaly permit the user only to browse the operators
portal site, in your case the portal site is called "Vodafone Live!".
Any attempt to navigate away from this onto the full internet is
firewalled off.

> >Data used when downloading music, games, video clips and ringtones from Vodafone Live! is free

Self-explanatory.

> >Using the phone as a modem or web access using the Internet APN £4.99 per MB

This is hooking your phone up to your laptop and using the phone as a
dial-up modem. This will make use of the full internet APN.

> >Blackberry 1 £4.99 per MB

Blackberry owners will have a 4th APN which is exculsively for
blackberry devices as these devices chuck all of their data down a
single APN, this is part of the blackberry service and is a form of
server-side compression of web-pages which non-blackberry devices don't
get.

> It all sounds like bollox written by somebody who knows nothing about
> the system.

I think you mean "knows lots about the systems but nothing about how to
communicate with the man on the Clapham Omnibus."

> I reckon that 1. is the same as 3. How could they tell the difference?

Easily. Deep packet inspection for one. Plus you will be connected to a
different APN on their network.

> Yet they are pricing 1. at £5/day for up to 15MB (quite cheap) but are
> pricing 3. at £4.99/MB (v. pricey).

Yes, this is deliberate.

> 2. looks like browsing the vodafone web portal only.

Not web, WAP - i.e. mobile internet on your phone.
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Regards
Jon