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REMFwhoopitydo is offline REMFwhoopitydo
2009-08-27 , 15:02
Posts: 341 | Thanked: 64 times | Joined on May 2009
#11
Originally Posted by pixelseventy2 View Post
REMFwhoopitydo, you top up as a regular PAYG phone, then use their mobile web site to active the 30 day internet add-on.

They also offer a "mobile broadband" add-on for £10 for 30 days/1GB, but I've never found anything that the "mobile internet" doesn't do that I've needed broadband for. Probably VPN etc...
what is this about 30 days, i thought you payed for a block of data that had no time restrictions?
 
lardman is offline lardman
2009-08-27 , 15:14
Posts: 2,102 | Thanked: 1,309 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#12
On Vodafone, unless you pay the full £20/month (in addition to your monthly line rental, which is £10/month at the cheapest atm iirc) you have to pay extra for VoIP and P2P stuff (and their docs say IM too, though the person I spoke to said that wasn't true). Thies does give you an uncapped connection though, while the £5/month add on is capped at something like 500Mb.

Are there any restrictions on the 3 deal, etc.?
 

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REMFwhoopitydo is offline REMFwhoopitydo
2009-08-27 , 15:20
Posts: 341 | Thanked: 64 times | Joined on May 2009
#13
sounds like you are talking about a contract, which i am trying to avoid.
 
lardman is offline lardman
2009-08-27 , 15:31
Posts: 2,102 | Thanked: 1,309 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#14
Yeah, but only a 30-day contract so nearly as good as PaYG
 

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scaler is offline scaler
2009-08-27 , 17:23
Posts: 154 | Thanked: 73 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Toronto
#15
Originally Posted by REMFwhoopitydo View Post

so, presuming i got hold of a vodafone PayG phone with 3G

.............. The intention is to remain unregistered
Why would you buy a phone? It's only the SIM that you want. Most UK operators (including Vodafone) will send you two free SIMs. Obviously they will need to know your address. If that is too "registered" a condition, you might indeed have to get hold of a phone. However, it doesn't have to be an expensive 3G phone. It doesn't even have to work, so long as the SIM is still valid.

An even better deal can be had on eBay, where you can buy a SIM with more prepaid credit than the price you pay for it. It sounds fishy but is perfectly legit. Phones are shipped to the shops in a package including a SIM with pre-installed credit. When an existing customer buys a new phone, he or she usually transfers the old SIM into the new phone and the shop is left with the new SIM. These spare SIMs are sold in bulk to dealers who then sell them on eBay. Market price is usually less than the amount of pre-installed credit, sometimes a lot less.

Trouble is, you have to be registered on eBay and probably on PayPal as well. Is that too hard?

You may be an internet addict, but how much squinting at a tiny screen do you really want to do in a day? Remember that you can get most of your N900 usage via WLAN at home, work, cafe, on the train or sometimes even on the bus, and so you might not use your mobile phone account for much data transfer at all. Without buying any special data package, you can get up to 25MB of data in a day from Vodafone UK for 50 pence or less, deducted from your PAYG balance. Some other operators have similar pricing.
 

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pixelseventy2 is offline pixelseventy2
2009-08-27 , 17:33
Posts: 357 | Thanked: 115 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Sunny England :)
#16
Originally Posted by REMFwhoopitydo View Post
what is this about 30 days, i thought you payed for a block of data that had no time restrictions?
their payg addons are all for 30 days. but £5 for 30 days ain't so bad.
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luca is offline luca
2009-08-27 , 18:52
Posts: 1,137 | Thanked: 402 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Catalunya
#17
Originally Posted by REMFwhoopitydo View Post
The intention is to remain unregistered as i am now
Big brother doesn't like that, so they made an EU directive mandating compulsory registration even for PAYG sims.
I don't know when it will be implemented in the UK, here it is already.
 

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REMFwhoopitydo is offline REMFwhoopitydo
2009-08-28 , 08:50
Posts: 341 | Thanked: 64 times | Joined on May 2009
#18
Originally Posted by scaler View Post
1. Why would you buy a phone? It's only the SIM that you want. Most UK operators (including Vodafone) will send you two free SIMs. Obviously they will need to know your address. If that is too "registered" a condition, you might indeed have to get hold of a phone. However, it doesn't have to be an expensive 3G phone. It doesn't even have to work, so long as the SIM is still valid.

2. An even better deal can be had on eBay, where you can buy a SIM with more prepaid credit than the price you pay for it. It sounds fishy but is perfectly legit. Phones are shipped to the shops in a package including a SIM with pre-installed credit. When an existing customer buys a new phone, he or she usually transfers the old SIM into the new phone and the shop is left with the new SIM. These spare SIMs are sold in bulk to dealers who then sell them on eBay. Market price is usually less than the amount of pre-installed credit, sometimes a lot less.
Trouble is, you have to be registered on eBay and probably on PayPal as well. Is that too hard?

3. You may be an internet addict, but how much squinting at a tiny screen do you really want to do in a day? Remember that you can get most of your N900 usage via WLAN at home, work, cafe, on the train or sometimes even on the bus, and so you might not use your mobile phone account for much data transfer at all. Without buying any special data package, you can get up to 25MB of data in a day from Vodafone UK for 50 pence or less, deducted from your PAYG balance. Some other operators have similar pricing.
cheers for the info.
1. and 2. are less appealing.

3. however is interesting, it would be enough for me to know i could use my talk credit for web access if i wanted.

does the 'type' of sim matter these days? i thought i'd have to get a cheap 3G phone to ensure i'd have a sim that would enable 3G data when used in an n900.............?

the reason i ask this is because i currently have a £15 PayG orange phone, which came with a super cheap nokia handset. i later replaced the handset with a nicer ericson model with a camera, and yet i cannot send picture messages because i believe the sim has restricted functionality. so i wanted to ensure that if i buy another cheap PayG phone that i don't get one that has no data access by default.

back on the topic of Vodafone PayG phones, i very much like the idea of the top-up vouchers allowing data access, do i understand correctly:
1) i buy a cheap Vodophone PayG phone and stick the sim in my shiny new n900
2) someone from Vodaphone rings up and i give the 'usual' details
3) i walk into newsagents and pay cash for a topup voucher
4) having rang 450 (or whatever) and added the credit to my phone i can now use my n900 to access the web

if its that easy then i have a winner..............

if i have to ring up vodofone and arrange for data ability then that gets messy, unregistered phones work best when fewest questions are asked.
Last edited by REMFwhoopitydo; 2009-08-28 at 08:55.
 
scaler is offline scaler
2009-08-28 , 17:55
Posts: 154 | Thanked: 73 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Toronto
#19
Originally Posted by REMFwhoopitydo View Post
does the 'type' of sim matter these days? i thought i'd have to get a cheap 3G phone to ensure i'd have a sim that would enable 3G data when used in an n900.............?

the reason i ask this is because i currently have a £15 PayG orange phone, which came with a super cheap nokia handset. i later replaced the handset with a nicer ericson model with a camera, and yet i cannot send picture messages because i believe the sim has restricted functionality.
Data access is standard on Vodafone. To the best of my knowledge, the type of connection (GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA) depends on the handset and your configuration thereof, not on the SIM. I have to qualify that by admitting that I personally have not progressed beyond EDGE (the fastest type of 2.5G).

Handsets have to be configured with settings specific to the provider, for MMS, WAP and internet access. Your Sony Ericsson phone has probably not been configured for MMS with Orange. The easiest way to configure it is to receive the settings via SMS. Most customers get them from their mobile provider (Orange, in your case). For Nokia phones, there is an alternative, by following a link on the Nokia website. Sony Ericsson might have a similar facility: as an internet addict, you should be able to find out about that.

I would expect the N900 to follow earlier NITs in having a Mobile Operator Setup Wizard which will do the configuration without any input beyond your manual selection of the operator (Vodafone UK). It should be simpler for the N900 than for the earlier Tablets, which accessed mobile data via bluetooth connection to a phone. The N900 has the phone built in.

I got my Vodafone SIM on a visit to Britain in 2004. I went into a Vodafone shop and bought it. At that time, I was not interested in mobile data. Nevertheless, the SIM has given me data access in successive technologies short of 3G. Nothing on the website indicates that 3G would be different, but you had really better ask someone who uses 3G with Vodafone. So far as I remember, nobody from Vodafone has ever rung me up.

Perhaps I had to show my passport in the shop. I don't remember. Maybe that was in Italy. It's no big deal. By using this forum, you have already registered and published more personal detail than the mobile provider will ever want to know.

NOTE: The price of 50p for 25 MB does not include the use of VOIP or messaging services. They cost 1 Pound per MB, charged separately on your PAYG balance. There could be other exclusions.
Last edited by scaler; 2009-08-30 at 15:48. Reason: Reworded personal opinion
 

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pixelseventy2 is offline pixelseventy2
2009-08-28 , 18:07
Posts: 357 | Thanked: 115 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Sunny England :)
#20
Originally Posted by REMFwhoopitydo View Post
1) i buy a cheap Vodophone PayG phone and stick the sim in my shiny new n900
2) someone from Vodaphone rings up and i give the 'usual' details
3) i walk into newsagents and pay cash for a topup voucher
4) having rang 450 (or whatever) and added the credit to my phone i can now use my n900 to access the web
Or just walk into a three store, say "hello Mr Sales Person, here is a £10 note, please can I have a shiny new SIM Card, complete with £10 topup". Worked for me. As anonymous as you are going to get without using those pay-phone things. Remember them?
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