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Who did this research?

Did they just pick the worst deal and assume everyone is dumb enough to go with EE?

It might be news in the US, but Vodafone in the UK have done this for years. They have a "Smart" range - here's one of the cheapest at 49 pounds PAYG (and a 10 pounds top-up I believe).

Here's some data from Vodafone (source: http://www.vodafone.co.uk/cs/g...).

Prices while in the UK: calls = 30p/min, texts = 14p, data = 10p/MB

Prices while in most of Europe: calls = 4p/min, texts = 1p, data = 4p/MB

WTF?

Uh no, sadly.

For example, Vodafone's "Mobile Broadband" dongles have apparently failed to work with OS X Yosemite (ie the current version) for a similar length of time for me and many others (the software crashes immediately) and Vodafone's 3rd-line tech support admits there is no fix (the person I spoke to is a Mac user himself and was rather embarrassed), but apparently Vodafone is happy to go on charging for the service and deflecting efforts to get a resolution.

eg http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5...

So, although I have been a generally happy customer for most of Vodafone's existence I think, in this aspect they share all the aspects of incompetence that certain people assume to be the sole preserve of government.

I cancelled service and a refund is very very slowly happening. (Vodafone gives you a credit but somehow fails to apply it to the account, as a matter of routine, so goes on taking new money.)

Rgds

Damon

according to this press release they reacted. Last year. with an update.

even THC's wikipage claims that the project was enden mid-2010 because of "too much fun with other things". This hack is very interesting, but more for historical reasons and not because everyone is now vulnerable

It's not revolutionary really. You can get laptops already with a 3G dongle on a contract.

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/personal/mobile-internet/on-your-pc-or-mac/netbooks-and-laptops/index.htm

I believe at least in the UK every provider offers some sort of laptop / mobile deal and has done for some time. The difference being Google pretty much has to do it if it can't really do anything offline.

Clickable Link of the above URL

Find me a smart phone for under £100 on Pay-as-you-go, with a decent tariff and data rate.

http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobile-phone/vodafone-845-payg

Granted, it is a bit of a bottom-feeder as android phones are concerned (128mb ram, resistive touch, QVGA screen), and i dont know jack about vodafone UKs relative tariffs (dont live in the UK), but you get a fully functional (and rootable) android phone with 2.1 on it.

I bought one (they also sell it in holland) last year, and used it for a few months untill my subscription was up for renewall (had a 2 year plan with a shitty nokia) to try out android a bit, sim-unlocked it (god bless the chinese) and used it with my plan simcard. It is a far cry from my current HTC desire, but it gave me a good glimpse into the android experience, a decent amount of apps work on it (perhaps more today then back then, considering the htc wildfire has identical resolution etc.. boosting developer support for QVGA?) and allows for a much better internet experience then any non-smart phone i previously used (and every symbian s60 device i ever used)

Also, vodafone is supposed to introduce the 945 shortly in the uk, same price point, better specs!

T-mobile SIM card and T-mobile prepaid/pay as you go plans.

AT&T SIM card and AT&T prepaid/pay as you go plans.

Vodafone SIM card/pay as you go plan.

I have personally used T-mobile pay as you go when I was both living in Europe and America on an unlocked, quad-band phone, which is the same specification that John's Phone offers for wireless connectivity.

Practically any GSM provider with prepaid plans (ie. all of them) will work with it. Are you really trying to say that there is no such thing?

why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

Because I don't have the wherewithal to go through the account registration process, which is a valid reason. That still doesn't answer the question of why you sockpuppet. Do you really have that much free time to make all of those accounts and switch between them every ten minutes to make a bigger fool of yourself? I guess you have no friends or life.

you're completely pathetic.

In other words, I've systematically crushed all of your arguments into a fine powder and you have nothing else to bring to the discussion. You are incredibly predictable and you might want to get help with your little anger/drinking/drug problem. :)

Compare that with the hottest new Samsung Galaxy S which sometimes fails at receiving a basic phone call..

Did you read your own link? Every poster who followed-up said that the problem was resolved when they realized that they had to slide (rather than simply touch) the answer button in order to answer calls.

So the Symbian UI is 'dated' and 'old'. Well, guess what,pick up a Palm PDA from 1995, any Symbian handset and the American darlings, iOS/Android - and look at the way the UI is presented. What pray is so sexy or innovative about a gazillion icons presented in a scrolling view, as on the iPhone? Android does the same. So did Palm and so does Symbian/Nokia. Or is it the pretty transitions when you tilt the screen? Or the beveled edge buttons? GUIs have been about rows of icons to click on for ages. On a non touch mobile device, you use buttons to scroll/select while on a touchscreen you tap and slide your finger to scroll the display.
How many different ways is one to implement menus, checkboxes and radio buttons? Those are not going away any time soon. In 2006, Nokia introduced an optional new home screen that showed shortcuts to apps and alerts for new email/calendar appointments/nearby wifi networks. This is now far more customizable as in the upcoming Symbian^3, where you can have upto 3 homescreens with customizable widgets. Android also has something similar, but iOS as far as I've seen has no such native capability. That's not innovative?
Symbian has been designed from the ground up as an OS optimized for low CPU/memory usage, so it scales well from low to high end devices. It also has true preemptive multitasking since its 2002 debut- for example if there's too many apps open and there's an incoming call, the call takes priority over everything else and the OS will close a couple of background apps to free memory. Compare that with the hottest new Samsung Galaxy S which sometimes fails at receiving a basic phone call.. You can't control when the phone syncs data, or using what type of connection- you need an APNDroid hack to stop it syncing permanently in the background!! People rave about Snapdragon and gigahertz class CPUs for the newer Android devices, but the OS doesn't scale to lower specs at all. It practically requires a high powered CPU to power all that eyecandy.
Let's not even get started on the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco. Symbian has matured over 8 years and got the basics right - power management, multitasking, making calls,managing data connections over GPRS/3G/wifi/Bluetooth etc. It has also supported themes since its inception -there's hundreds of custom themes with different icons and colors available since then on various sites, so it's not like you're stuck with the look and feel that it ships with out of the box either. But well, superficial looks are all that matter in the end, apparently.

You are full of shit.

http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/sim-only-plans/all-sim-plans
http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/sim-only/
http://www.telenor.no/bedrift/produkter/mobil/tjenester/datakort/
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Cell-Phone-Detail.aspx?cell-phone=T-Mobile-SIM-Card
https://www.wireless.att.com/GoPhoneWeb/goPhoneLanding.do?method=activatePayGo
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/communications/mobile_access_in_beijing.html

If there's good competition between mobile networks then it's in their interest to stick up a mast near a remote university. Many people at that university will switch to that network, if it's the only option.

There's 2G coverage almost everywhere, but not necessarily on all networks.

If you do live in an area with no coverage you could get something like this, which claims to give you 2G and 3G signal in your home using your broadband connection. It's a shame that's only for Vodafone (UK), as everyone would benefit if the networks cooperated on this.

There are also temporary GSM towers at major (remote) events (music festivals, races etc).

Apple has (for all intents and purposes) one phone on one carrier.

Some of us live in Europe, you insensitive clod!

The price only seems high because you can't get it subsidized by a carrier (at least as far as I know in the US).

In the Uk it's available from Vodaphone for "free" ("On Pay monthly plans from £40").

Myself I bought it outright, like my last 3 phones. Just hate the idea of tying myself to a supplier.

If you are in the UK and you think you know different, I need a decent comms contract pre-paid

Try Vodafone's sim-only rolling 30-day contracts... (ensure that 'pay monthly' and '30 days' (only) are checked)

AFAIK (in the UK at least), with a contract, you're paying x per month, and you're tied in for a contract of usually about 18 months. That 18x comes out to more than the cost of the phone. For example, look at the HTC Magic from Vodafone Total: 720 GBP which is obviously more than the cost of the phone. Or am I missing something that's US-specific?

Pretty much, you're right.

I read some past threads on either Slashdot or elsewhere that had people reporting that they were able to successfully renegotiate their contract with customer service when the contract was up for this specific reason, but I'd never met anyone in person that's done that.

In the US you get tied to a contract, but you're typically paying the same price whether-or-not you subsidize the phone. So you're paying the same monthly fee whether you're using a new subsidized phone or an old phone or an unlocked phone you picked up from eBay.

On the other hand, if you get yourself a nice handset (perhaps a smart phone) for a good deal on a manufacturer's site and you force yourself to use it for a couple of years (such as 2 contract lengths) then you might win out since the subsidies don't cover the full cost of the nicer phones and I recall seeing sales/deals on SonyEriccson.com

AFAIK (in the UK at least), with a contract, you're paying x per month, and you're tied in for a contract of usually about 18 months. That 18x comes out to more than the cost of the phone. For example, look at the HTC Magic from Vodafone Total: 720 GBP which is obviously more than the cost of the phone. Or am I missing something that's US-specific?

RE: git-push, this is the same with all VCSs, until you commit to a remote repository your work is in danger. The difference between DVCS and traditional ones is that you *know* its not committed until you commit it, with a DVCS some people will think that its safe once committed, not realising its not safe until its pushed upstream.

Internet dongles... Vodafone sells one in the UK, £39 for the dongle, comes with 1GB transfer, operates over 3G or GPRS. The other carriers sell them, and give a lot more transfer capacity, but they expire after a month. You can get them on a plan as well, but given how little I use it away from a ethernet cable it's very cost effective (assuming you don't surf youtube using it). Surely they sell such a thing in the USA?

DVCS advantages are in merging (SVN branching is really good - its very easy, the problem is merging back). The real advantage is partly due to the source being local (but if you have a 12 Gig repo like I have, that's not such an advantage), and partly due to some SVN design issues - but the latter are being worked on, and even then DVCS merging is still not as good as Clearcase.

"Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free"

Eh? This has already happened in the UK, without any carrier-specific crapware installed.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "SIM-only cell phone plan"

One of these. It's a SIM-only contract.

Most UK operators provide PAYG SIMs either for free or below £1 online, probably in-store too although you'll most likely have to provide your address.

As I'm from Britain, I looked at Three, T-Mobile, O2, Orange, and Vodafone.

The ones you link to are CDMA modems, which only work in US, Canada and one or two other countries. The rest of the world uses GSM based networks, and the modems for them are USB.

Vodafone £15 a month (3GB download limit) Orange £15 a month (3GB download limit)

We've had problems with our broadband being capped down to dial up speeds from time to time (Virgin sux), and I purchased one of those USB Modem sticks.

Speed isn't super fast, about 750MBS, but it does the job.

We're Mac users and have one in each room. We put the USB modem on an iMac, configure it to share its internet connection via airport, and we're happy.

The 10 euros figure was a suggested 'roaming' charge, roaming between networks, typically this is an international travel issue only.

Vodaphone offer a standard package of 15-30GBP-ish per month.

Your in the UK? Pop into your local O2 store and look at this:

https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/specification/O2/Xda_O rbit_-_Sat_Nav

Its probably going to be much cheaper than the iPhone, its small it looks damm good (seriously the photo doesn't do it justice) The UI is WM5 which is 1 hand operable and while websites don't always render properly everything does render, for me the on screen keyboard is a pain (tis why I have a XDA Mini S (HTC Wizard)) but it does have GPS and comes with UK sat nav maps, WiFi, Windows Media Player 10 on it is very easy to use (the on screen buttons are big enough to be hit with your thumb and 90% can be done through the physical buttons) you can sync it a few ways although I prefer to use WMP11 for my own Wizard. At this point I think WMP11 is substanially better than Itunes But then again I've hated Itunes since Version 4. When you couple it with one of these:

http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=127830

Your phone can suddenly store 600 tracks (I currently have 593 with 84MB to spare with them encoded to 128Kbps) oh did I mention its 3G and has a radio built into it? Sure thats not the iPhones 4GB or 8GB but its still pretty good. If you hate that what about:

http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/index.cfm?go=paymonthly .productdetails&pid=445
https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Nokia/N95
Anouther extremely nice phone, while not that cheap its a great phone and worth looking into, if you really can't find anything better you haven't been looking, I mean if high memory is what your after Nokia had relased the N90 which was designed to be a music player with a 8GB memory the carriers dropped it because no one bought it but I'm sure its on ebay.

The attractive data roaming deals you're talking about only apply to Vodafone's data-only tariffs. Have a look at their roaming website. As an example, I selected Germany and an Anytime 1000-1200 tariff, and the data roaming charges were £10/MB. Compare with T-mobile, which charges £7.50/MB. They're on a relatively even footing.

The iPhone will not come with a data-only tariff. Apple may negotiate for lower data roaming charges instead of the Apple Tax which is included in the AT&T contract, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Wrong product actually. You should navigate their website before talking rubbish.

Uh, I did. Just to check my figures.

Look for the 3G broadband modem or the datacard.

Wrong product actually. Such contracts don't offer voice calls or text messaging, only data. Coming back to the iPhone, considering it's locked down to the extent that you can't use VoIP or IM unless Apple says so, these cards would be inappropriate.

- 90 quid for unlimited...

Is that unlimited as in unlimited, or unlimited as in fair use policy? Got to be careful with these meaningless marketing terms. T-mobile advertises its Web'n'Walk service as unlimited too, despite the fact that it blatantly isn't.

Unfortunately, their sales and customer service staff are a bunch of cretinous moronoids which do not even know that the tariffs exist.

Voda unfortunately has a host of known Data problems as well.

Agree and agree. When Vodafone introduced the tariff that I'm talking about (only a few weeks ago), they managed to break services for existing customers, including my company and our customers. Trying to persuade both the right hand and the left hand that there was a problem was an uphill task.

But goto any of the European carrier's websites. Vodafone sells a locked Nokia 8800 phone for 280GBP ($490US). T-mobile sells a locked PDA phone (the MDA III) for $350Euro ($420US).

It's not exactly the best open market, but goto the UK version of ebay and do a completed item search for "mobile unlocked" and then sort by descending price. You'll see unlocked high-end phones like the Sony Ericsson P910i, the Nokia 8800, and even something as mundane as the Motorola RAZR V3 selling with a reasonably high number of bids for over 350GBP (over $600US).

_That_ is why we don't get some of the high-end phones and other countries do. More than a small number are actually willing to pay significant money for them. You'll never find a US carrier waste their time with the marketing, training, and inventory on a complicated, difficult-to-service phone that few will buy. Your shock is Exhibit #1 for the jury.

And no, I wasn't suggesting that we should pay higher for gasoline. I'm saying that the parent poster's concerns about a "phone/console gap" (with apologies to Dwight Eisenhower) are about as relevant as concerns about a "gasoline gap" or an "SUV gap". We're totally different markets with different priorities. Just as we might consider a mobile phone over $500US as excessive or wasteful, a European might shake his head over a soccer mom buying a Hummer to transport her kids to school.

Here's the PDF press release that shows a different view of the headset and some pictures of the Samsung phone. It's in French but pretty easy to understand IMO.

As this is a PAL/NTSC input device, it'll probably work fine with other phones with video output like the Sharp 902 for viewing videos off its SD card or playing games.

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/simply

My employers sell a 3G data card. It's compatible with PC, Mac and, so I'm told, Linux.

It's a [franticly remembers details] a USB bridge device, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be compatible with anything.

Details here - manager's guide here

I've used it - it works very well. It seamlessly moves from 3G to 2.5G without a loss of connection and the server side compression really makes things fly. Works fine with VPNs etc.

T

My employers sell a 3G data card. It's compatible with PC, Mac and, so I'm told, Linux.

It's a [franticly remembers details] a USB bridge device, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be compatible with anything.

Details here - manager's guide here

I've used it - it works very well. It seamlessly moves from 3G to 2.5G without a loss of connection and the server side compression really makes things fly. Works fine with VPNs etc.

T

My employers sell a 3G data card. It's compatible with PC, Mac and, so I'm told, Linux.

It's a [franticly remembers details] a USB bridge device, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be compatible with anything.

Details here - manager's guide here

I've used it - it works very well. It seamlessly moves from 3G to 2.5G without a loss of connection and the server side compression really makes things fly. Works fine with VPNs etc.

T

This kind of thing has been in the UK for quite a while now. I've used both the VodaPhone 3G and the Orange 3G datacard for employees. I personally prefer the Orange one for the benefit of the superiour network, but the Vodaphone one has a real no-brainer user interface, so I spend less time with employees ringing me up with that one. The one I'm REALLY waiting for is a 3G datacard that incorporates an 802.11b tranciever with seemless switchover when our employees enter one of our WiFi zones.

This sounds very much like Vodaphone here in the UK. I received a GX30 as an upgrade, it was advertised to me as a bluetooth enabled phone. By Bluetooth enabled they meant headset only. I was unsuprisingly unhappy with this and changed it for the K700i. While bluetooth on this phone does work, it is still plastered with vodaphone branding and every second button links to vodaphone LIVE!

Makes me sick. The 'Works with compatible bluetooth devices' should read: 'Works with incompatible bluetooth devices'.

J

This sounds very much like Vodaphone here in the UK. I received a GX30 as an upgrade, it was advertised to me as a bluetooth enabled phone. By Bluetooth enabled they meant headset only. I was unsuprisingly unhappy with this and changed it for the K700i. While bluetooth on this phone does work, it is still plastered with vodaphone branding and every second button links to vodaphone LIVE!

Makes me sick. The 'Works with compatible bluetooth devices' should read: 'Works with incompatible bluetooth devices'.

J

3G card + Laptop + Hyde Park

My "office" of choice. Durng summer anyhoo.

a '3' phone is a 2.5G service
Hmm, that would explain why they are ignoring the people petitioning them for internet
service.

So 3G is not failing in the UK - IT IS NOT IN THE UK!
Actually vodafone launched their 3G service a few days ago. Up to 384kbps down 64kbps up
depending on how far you are from the cell and how many other people are using it. The coverage is just London and a couple of other citys.

How much was the UKCAA paid for their report by the FAA FCC Airline XYZ Phone Co ABC???

Well, the UK CAA appears to be approximately equal to the US FAA but of course its jurisdiction is the UK. As for how this was paid for, well, the first sentence in teh Executive Summary gives a clue:

This report covers activities that respond to CAA Safety Intervention Task 01/10:Sponsor
research to identify the susceptibility to interference from commonly used transmitting
devices of vulnerable avionic equipment.

So essentially some of the CAA budget is to fund research like this. The research can't have received much funding, however, judging from the laboratory setup in the pictures at the end of the pdf report. These people did not even use a real plane cockpit or anything. All of the instruments they used were bare and placed on a wooden bench. As for wiring harness, well, get a load of the tangle of wires on the floor!

Not only did they not use cell phones or planes for their experiment, but they also did not have the proper equipment to truly simulate cell phones. One of their stated limitations was: "Due to non-availability of a Tetra modulator,the tests at 412MHz were made using
GSM modulation,this being considered as reasonably equivalent." Tetra being a type of cell phone network common in Europe, of course.

What is most inexcusable about this is if they had simply used real cell phones for their tests they would have a Tetra modulator (and all the other types they needed. They have no excuse in their apparent lack of real funding, as honestly they would have the authority to ground a 747 for any number of reasons while they did their tests, and cell phones are ubiquitous (they probably had some). Even if they wanted to go wider than that, they could have always partnered with cell phone companies to get what they needed. Besides, one fo the participants in this study was Vodafone who could easily have scared up a good sample of different cellular phones commonly in use in the UK. They needn't have worried about anything not in use in the UK since that is their scope in any case.

It is clear to me this study has numerous fundamental flaws, and its results are vastly overstated in the initial report and even moreso in the press releases and articles.

At a MEF forum event at E3 last month, it was pretty apparent that Vodaphone Live! is one of the most happening players when it comes to cutting in developers with a chunk of change in return for their IP.

Yeah, right. I`d be careful to check the track record of people making claims for the future in IT.

It's certainly on of the main things the mobile operators are going to be selling over the next year or so.

In the UK, both Orange and One2One are GSM 1800 only networks. Of the networks that are GSM 900 (BT Cellnet and Vodafone), they sometimes have GSM 1800 cells in high-density areas (like London), but they always have GSM 900 too.

if there is coverage of a certain area by one provider, you can use another provider's phone.

That's just the point, with GSM you DON'T have to use another provider's phone, not even another number.
It's called ROAMING.
Last summer I went to Italy, all I had to do to make a phonecall was just turning the phone on and dial the number and 6 seconds later I was telling my mother the trip went ok and I was already unpacking my bags. It was the same phone I used at home, it was the same SIM card I used at home; the only different thing was I was using Telecom Italia instead of my local Iceland Telecom.

Did I mention my mother didn't have to pay a penny for receiving that phonecall? (I still find it hard to believe you actually PAY for INCOMING calls, it's almost like the postal service billing you for delivering you mail; it's just stupid)

Same thing happened when I went to Scotland a year ago, I just had to turn the phone off during the flight. I turned it back on when we landed, that same evening a friend of mine gave me a call, asked me where I was, to which I replied "oh, I'm in Edinburgh". He had no way of knowing that, after all he just called my regular number :). I used the same phone, same SIM card, even the same number. Only I used Vodafone instead of Iceland Telecom, (well I had a choice between BT Cellnet and Vodafone when I landed so I just picked Vodafone out of habit).

But that's enough ranting for now...

if there is coverage of a certain area by one provider, you can use another provider's phone.

That's just the point, with GSM you DON'T have to use another provider's phone, not even another number.
It's called ROAMING.
Last summer I went to Italy, all I had to do to make a phonecall was just turning the phone on and dial the number and 6 seconds later I was telling my mother the trip went ok and I was already unpacking my bags. It was the same phone I used at home, it was the same SIM card I used at home; the only different thing was I was using Telecom Italia instead of my local Iceland Telecom.

Did I mention my mother didn't have to pay a penny for receiving that phonecall? (I still find it hard to believe you actually PAY for INCOMING calls, it's almost like the postal service billing you for delivering you mail; it's just stupid)

Same thing happened when I went to Scotland a year ago, I just had to turn the phone off during the flight. I turned it back on when we landed, that same evening a friend of mine gave me a call, asked me where I was, to which I replied "oh, I'm in Edinburgh". He had no way of knowing that, after all he just called my regular number :). I used the same phone, same SIM card, even the same number. Only I used Vodafone instead of Iceland Telecom, (well I had a choice between BT Cellnet and Vodafone when I landed so I just picked Vodafone out of habit).

But that's enough ranting for now...