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greenalien

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After seeing this on 'Martin's Money Tips', I thought I'd give it a go - basically, after signing up, you agree to watch short adverts to earn data credit.

http://www.sambamobile.com

You have to pay £5 for a Sim card, which fits in any '3' Mobile dongle, (and, presumably, any other unlocked wireless dongle) and then access their website to watch the ads. Most are only a minute or two, and you can always start them running in one tab and then switch to something else and leave them running - you still get the credit, each ad is worth 5 - 15 MB. You also have the option of paying for a top-up if you prefer.

I used to have a monthly mobile data plan with '3' but didn't renew it as I rarely used it - however, it was very handy for checking email and getting weather forecasts on my on-board netbook. Now I have replaced the sim card in the dongle with the Samba one, and it works fine, so it will suit my needs perfectly, and may well be useful to others as well.
 
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I have just put a Simba SIM in my iPad and it works fine.

However - you have to remember that when you are watching the ads, you are using data, so you should be aware of your supplier when watching. I dont think you can use the Simba Sim to watch the ads without using more data than you earn.

I have topped mine up with some from my home Sky unlimited system, and some from my 3 Mifi contract, as I usually have a bit left at te end of the month.

I don't think Simba is much use for big users but, if you use wifi at home, and only need a few Mb per month of mobile data, it might be just the job.
 
Richard10002 said:
I have just put a Simba SIM in my iPad and it works fine.

However - you have to remember that when you are watching the ads, you are using data, so you should be aware of your supplier when watching. I dont think you can use the Simba Sim to watch the ads without using more data than you earn.

I have topped mine up with some from my home Sky unlimited system, and some from my 3 Mifi contract, as I usually have a bit left at te end of the month.
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Can you explain further please? ... It's a SIM card on THEIR (virtual) network surely? How can it either encroach on your 'usual supplier' account, or be topped up from some other account?
 
VicMallows said:
Can you explain further please? ... It's a SIM card on THEIR (virtual) network surely? How can it either encroach on your 'usual supplier' account, or be topped up from some other account?
Click to expand...

If you go to sambamobile.com you can register and buy a SIM, which you put in your mobile device.

Then, on the website, from any machine, via any browser, you can click on ads, watch them, and earn data credit for your SIM.

Even before I received my SIM, I had watched enough ads to earn about 60Mb of data for my SIM.

Not sure if that helps - the web site should be clearer.
 
VicMallows said:
Ah! ... Now I understand ... you can earn the credits on a DIFFERENT connection! .... interesting.
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That's it! You can also earn credits on the same connection, but it would be self defeating.

The credit is earned for watching the ads - and that is how Samba get paid.

So far, when buying loo rolls, Velvet will get some attention from me, but it will need to be priced competitively. Can't remember when I last bought a Kit Kat, but I might do next time I'm peckish :)
 
Actually, Samba claim that you can earn enough credit using just their connection - it's just that quite a few people have found they are actually using more data whilst watching the ads than they are earning because they have things running in the background that are using the credit faster than they are earning it...

Things like windows update/antivirus update/dropbox/gmail synch etc,etc all start using data in the background as soon as you log on. There's also an issue in that you earn credit immediately, but the data you use isn't deducted from your account until some time later - so you can easily end up in debit but won't know until later.

I wanted to try some of the adverts to see if I could stand it, but the 'test drive' option doesn't work until you're logged in, so a bit pointless really.

Seems like it has promise but a few issues to be sorted first...

.
 
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I watched one ad, only to be told that I would have earned credit if I'd been logged in.... So you can definitely watch ads without being registered or logging in.
 
For £12 roughly, you can buy a 3 sim from Amazon which gives you 3GB valid for 3 months, so £4 a month. I'm a penny pincher, but not sure I'd want to eat into my bandwidth from other sources, unless unlimited bandwidth, to have to watch ads, to get what I can pay very little for.
 
Is nobody else having problems getting the ads to play? Some times they don't play but I receive a bit of credit anyway.

Win xp and fire fox with msoft security essentials here.
 
BrendanS said:
For £12 roughly, you can buy a 3 sim from Amazon which gives you 3GB valid for 3 months, so £4 a month. I'm a penny pincher, but not sure I'd want to eat into my bandwidth from other sources, unless unlimited bandwidth, to have to watch ads, to get what I can pay very little for.
Click to expand...

I have an iPad that I use on either home or work wifi, or boat Mifi, so rarely have a need for mobile broadband. £12 for something with a 3 month life would probably be a waste for me.. The 100Mb I've "earned", and which shouldn't expire, might last me for a year or so, if not forever :)

The Samba offering suits me, whereas the 3 offering doesn't.

I'd like to be able to tether to my iPhone, but Giffgaff can't be tethered on iPhones, ( it isn't that it is merely not allowed, it just isn't possible as iPhones arent set up to allow it on the Giffgaff network - Giffgaff now allow tethering on their £10 goodybag, with a 1Gb per month limit).
 
I've now tested this a bit more. Downloading the BBC weather forecast and the Met Office inshore forecast only took around 10MB. Checking email via Google mail took another 10MB. For some reason, attempting to load Facebook on my Dell netbook didn't work, could be the version of Firefox on my current version of Ubuntu isn't Facebook-friendly? Anyhow, no great loss!
Watching ads to reload my 'Samba Battery' to make up for the data used only took a couple of minutes.
I think this is going to be very useful!
 
I have accumulated >300MB since Thursday night by running ads in a minimised window while doing other things. My £5 sim didn't arrive in today's post.

To give people an idea of data usage, I currently have a PAYG deal which gives 1G month. I, (virtually), only ever use it once per week on my boat. No video streaming but as much e-mailing and browsing as I want and that generally uses about 200MB per Friday night / Sat morning.

Providing the 3 network coverage is good at my boat, (and their map suggest it will be), I think I'll be using Samba and just adding a £5 top up if required. Thanks OP for the tip!
 
So let me get this right, I can go to the library, log on to Samba and get mobile credit, just for having ads runnibg in the background.

Sounds like a way of reducing my bills even further :D
 
Yes, unless the library is running the wrong sort of ad-blocker.

I think I already know where this is going to go wrong for us penny pinchers though. One ot two of the ads are 'interactive' - i.e. they ask for input as the ad plays. So that prevents the running of ads in minimised windows and I'm sure other advertisers will soon catch on to that idea. It's good for the moment though.
 
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