Gordon Murray

Recently, I almost switched to 3 or Meteor for their offerings for internet access on a mobile phone. It was only by chance that I found Vodafone have a similar offering with their ‘Vodafone Live‘ option.

I am currently with Vodafone, using “Pay as you go”. I check my email and sometimes use Twitter and Google Reader on my Nokia e61 when I’m out and about.

A few times while browsing on my phone when a wireless signal isn’t available I use ‘Vodafone Live’ to connect. More than once I have wasted a lot of credit when downloading and answering emails.

At some point, Vodafone introduced a flat rate for browsing on a mobile. Using Vodafone Live you can now browse for only 99 cent per day up to 50mb. Its 2c per Kb if you go over the limits. Meteor have the exact same cost, 3 isn’t clear.

I’ve run some tests on my phone. I connected mutiple times to download my email, browse a few pages in Google Reader, download some apps and use Twitter. My credit didn’t drop by the full 99 cent, it dropped in smaller increments. I have tested it with a friends phone which dropped by 99 cent on the first connection with no more decreases in credit for further connections.

To check the amount you have downloaded in a day text ’surf’ to 50233. Good luck finding out this information on the Vodafone website! Its easier using Google. Texting this number can be hit or miss, many times I received a text back letting me know the service was unavailable at the moment. Trying again would usually work. Luckily these texts are free.

As I tested my phone with emails and more, I was hard pushed to get anywhere near downloading 50MB. I’ll be sticking with Vodafone for now, and probably using my mobile a bit more on the web knowing what I know now.  I think Vodafone could do themselves a favour by publicing this more.

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business by Gordon Murray