Mobile Phone data tariffs (slightly OT)

[Skippy]

I have a T-Mobile MDA Compact II (HTC Charmer) phone which I use for web browsing as much as talking or texting. I'm on T-Mobile Web'n'Walk which gives me ~40 Meg of GPRS per month, though I probably don't use much more than 10 Meg a month of this.

I'm wanting to upgrade to a HTC P3600 and I'm wondering if anyone knows of a provider which offers this phone with a reasonable data tariff. I've gone cross-eyed trying to navigate through the minefield of confusion marketing practiced by the mobile phone companies....
_________________
Gone fishing!

[mikealder]

Which Web-n-Walk package are you paying for as I thought the minimum was £7.50 for 1GB of data PCM (which equates to nearly unlimitted), most other providers charge heavily for GPRS access in the UK and this was/ is the best deal I could find (bear in mind I hammer the GPRS on the phone).

The whole issue of GPRS tariff is a minefield, watch the small print as they can clobber you for minimum charge per usage/ day and all sorts of other underhand methods to extract cash.

O2 is out as their charges are about the most ludicrous on the planet, if you find anything decent I am sure a few of us would be most interested though - Mike

[Skippy]

Ahh, these tariffs change all the time. I'm on web'n'walk (100) £30/month, 100 minutes, 40 Meg GPRS. I find it rather bizzare that it includes so much data but NO text messages in the bundle.

I am weighing up the option of a SIM Free phone vs contract so I donned my blast proof vest and staggered through the minefield that is mobile phone tariffs:

Orange SIM Only: Some attractive SIM Only deals if you already have the phone you want but when you try to add data, the price goes crazy. 25MB costs £16, Unlimited costs £75. That doesn't work for me.

On a contract from Orange you pay an extra £8 for Orange World 30MB - which is half the price they charge for the SIM only connections. There is no option to get other Orange World data bundles on contract, only the 30 Meg one as far as I can see.

T-Mobile SIM Only deals look interesting but the sting is that web browsing costs 0.73p per KB, a maximum charge of £1 per day and I don't think you can add web'n'walk to the SIM only.

T-Mobile Web'n'Walk pay monthly looks good. An extra £7.50 for "unlimited" (1 Gig/month) web access. I might just buy a SIM free phone and see what deal they will give me to switch tariffs.

O2 do a data bolt on for £7.50 for "unlimited" (200 Meg/Month) or you get 1 Meg of data thrown in for free on their online tariffs which may be worth looking at if someone was looking for a light user package.

Vodafone Data Packs cost (wait for it) £7.50 and you get a pretty miserly 120 Meg of data allowance for the month (at least they don't have the front to call it "unlimited"). Alternatively, you can get up to 15 Meg per day for £1.


So "Unlimited" doesn't actually mean that there is no limit, depending on the provider/tariff it may be anything from 200 Meg to 1 Gig. Nor does it mean that you can run any service you like over your internet connection. They don't seem too happy about people running Skype or Instant Messenger for some reason. I'm not convinced that they could successfully block these services though.

The offers like £1 per day for xx Meg of internet access sound like a good deal but if you are a frequent user of the web then it could quickly end up costing a whole lot of money even if you don't actually download much. Might be attractive for infrequent but heavy users though.

I hope someone finds this useful - no doubt it will be out of date in 5 minutes time, but hey - I tried!
_________________
Gone fishing!

[mikealder]

We see you’re using an ad-blocker. We’re fine with that and won’t stop you visiting the site.
Have you considered making a donation towards website running costs?.
Or you could disable your ad-blocker for this site. We think you’ll find our adverts are not overbearing!