T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet

Posted by: DWallach

T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 12:43

Somebody else with T-Mobile please confirm this, but I've recently noticed that I no longer get free WAP and free Internet connectivity with my T-Mobile GSM phone. If I try to visit a WAP site, I get a friendly message saying I can "click here" to get T-Zones for $4.95 extra per month. I assume that this means that T-Mobile has finally fixed the "bug" that allowed us all to get service for free.

*sigh*
Posted by: tonyc

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 12:44

Ah, bummer. There goes my plan to switch to T-Mob at the end of my contract.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 14:54

Interesting, I think we're about to swtich *to* TMobile from Verizon simply because of coverage. In the areas we live and travel, both companies have spotty dropouts everywhere, but the Verizon dropouts are in more inconvenient places (like our house). We've got a week and a half to decide before we need to bring the Tmobile phones back.

Problem is, we'd have to pay $175 per phone to drop the Verizon contract which still has more than a year left on it. Ouch. Haven't seen any loopholes in that one. One loophole I heard about is if they changed their terms of service, I can opt out when they do that, but I don't know if they've done that recently or not.
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 15:33

Well, it was nice while it lasted. For a while you could change the wap gateway on the phone and it would work, but the lock down seems to be very regional. Apperently GPRS is still compleetly unlimited if you pay for the $5 tzones option, which of course isn't an option on the prepaid sim I had just for free GPRS.

The best place to go for more information is howard forums, but the S/N ratio could be improved over there.

Matthew
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 15:38

Have you tried AT&T's GSM service? It's usually a bit more expensive than T-Mobile, but they use GSM850 which has much better coverage (especially if you have coverage problems when you go indoors), and in CA they've got free roaming onto cingular which is the same network as T-Mobile so you've got the best of both worlds.

With Cingular's AT&T buyout, Cingular is keeping the AT&T network in CA and selling their own network to T-Mobile. So eventually the roaming won't be quite as nice as it is now, but at the moment it's great.

Matthew
Posted by: robricc

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 16:36

WAP is blocked on the phone. GPRS access to non-wap sites works as of 3 weeks ago when I first noticed WAP was blocked.

This could have changed though of course.
Posted by: DWallach

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 17:15

Quote:
GPRS access to non-wap sites works as of 3 weeks ago when I first noticed WAP was blocked.


I could do nslookups and get the right answers, but basic port 80 web communication, even to www.t-mobile.com, simply didn't work. Could you check if it's broken for you or whether it works for you?
Posted by: tman

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 17:28

I wonder if they've put a transparent proxy in? Tried to connect to something non web?
Posted by: DWallach

Re: T-Mobile no longer has free WAP / Internet - 20/08/2004 17:48

I didn't try anything else, although if I get a chance I'll investigate. They've always had some sort of proxy or firewall in the mix. They never allowed SSH traffic, but they did allow encrypted IMAP.