On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:54:54 +0200, Phil Layton wrote in


Totally fascinating stuff. My daughter has an original web payg 02 sim,
which she says gave her free access through GPRS, but when she
downloaded games it debited her credit!. I didnt take too much notice of
GPRS
as I thought it was just a phone access and didnt realise that you could use
it on a laptop. I must say it seems too good to be true. It just happens
that I have brought a Carphone Warehouse mag out here and on the network
pages there is no mention of GPRS! I think 3G must have overtaken it as a
form of connectivity.

Hi Phil - yes GPRS has been overtaken in some ways by 3G, but it still
works fine. As far as I know GPRS is used purely for data transfer and
that can be just to the phone itself (my Nokia can check email as well as
browse the web in a tiny screen) or to a laptop.

The rate of data transfer is interesting. If you simply make the old type
GSM dial up connection by the phone actually dialing a number, it is
restricted to 9.6 kb/sec (unless on Orange when it can be 14.4 kb/sec.
Using GPRS this rises to about the same, or slightly faster, than the old
56k dial up modem we use on PCs. That would be about 50-60 kb/sec. 3G is
much faster, but I don't yet know how this works via O2 SIMs. Only the
most recent phones could use 3G anyway.

I'll investigate when I get home, but to have a free mobile internet access
abroad seems like a loophole that 02 will close!
I do get a small bonus at home though with this monthly 02 phone in that the
75 inclusive mins I get can be used on a data connection with an ISP (in my
case my mobile ISP is Plus Net, my home NTL do not offer a mobile portal)
for free.
Can any 02 PAYG Sim work?

I have no idea about older SIMs, but certainly the new ones seem to allow
it. I obtained mine last summer when O2 had one of their free SIM offers,
where you enter your name/address on their web page and they send between 4
and 6 SIM cards. They do this every few weeks for a couple of days, the
last being about a week ago.

You mentioned Bluetooth as well. My experience wasn't good, but that was
purely because my Nokia kept crashing and rebooting after about a minute of
use. I know a firmware upgrade would cure it, but I'm happy just using the
data connection.

--
Mike 55.13°N 6.69°W Coleraine posted to uk.sci.weather 15/07/2005 06:38:44 UTC