GPRS Pay as your go/use?

[cgw]

There are frequent references in this forum and the boating mags to internet access via GSM/GPRS abroad using PAYG SIMs, but does anyone know of an equivalent offering here in the UK?

Most, if not all, of the attractively-priced PAYG voice offerings (e.g. O2, Tesco, etc) do not seem to support full internet access via GPRS, even though some networks do offer picture messaging, wap, or walled-garden internet.

Since sailing laptop use tends to be concentrated on the summer months and WiFi seems set to be expensive and confined to marinas, it would be great if one could just purchase a few tenners worth of data MB in the spring for proper internet access and to top up as necessary. Since UK coastal regions will not be in prime 3G coverage for quite a few years, GPRS would seem to be the optimum bearer if only one of the networks had a suitable product.

Thanks in advance...

<hr width=100% size=1>Chris

 

[Steve Clayton]

Chris,

we're back in the UK for a a couple of weeks and needed cheap (sic) UK mobile access for this period. Vodafone (I don't believe it!!!) has a reasonable offer on what they call "Vodafone 30 day pack" in Pay as you talk. One of the options includes WAP/GPRS (on the smartplus option).

We have used laptop bluetooth to GPRS/bluetooth mobile which was quite successful.

Assuming laptop with PCMCIA slot then it might be worthwhile looking for a GPRS card on Ebay.

Hope this helps

Steve

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[Talbot]

I have a mobile with lots of free minutes for normal land line calls in the evening/weekend. I just connect (via bluetooth) to the landline for my normal ISP and get a slow but stable data flow. This is good enough for email and a reasonable amount of surfing - but you need to disable pictures - especially on this site. Biggest embuggerance is a virus check upgrade as that tends to take for ever, so I would do that on a different connection if possible.

Best thing about this is that the phone calls are free for more than an hour per week!

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[cgw]

Thanks for the ideas. My understanding of Voda's 30 day pack is that it only allows you access to WAP and MMS via GPRS, and not to the internet access point, but I may be wrong as I haven't actually tried it. It really is terrible how little the sales staff in the shops really know, and won't give any guarantee that it will do what you want.

Regarding simple dial-up, yes, I think that is a sound way forward although maybe a little slow. And with any connection where you're paying per MB, it's essential to kill all those background processes that update windows, viruses, and such like.

Having been in the cellular/mobile business before I retired, I can fully understand why the networks are reluctant to offer good value internet access that might compete with their mainstream business-oriented offerings or their picture messaging. However - unless I've missed something - I feel somehow they're missing a sizable market and driving people to WiFi.



<hr width=100% size=1>Chris

 

[Talbot]

The advantage of a simple dial up is that it is treated as a standard phone call, so no charge per MB, and if you have free minutes, this is a reasonable way to go. It is very slow but as I said cancel out all those high datarate activities, ad it has considerable advantages. You do need to ensure that the spammers dont have your address, and use a cybercafee to get virus updates.

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[Mariner]

If you have a PCMCIA adapter then you can use the Vodafone Pay As You Go Mobile Connect Datacard.
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.marinercomputers.co.uk/acatalog/vmcd.html>http://www.marinercomputers.co.uk/acatalog/vmcd.html</A>


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