UK Mobile Internet Use for an Australian Visitor for 2, 3 or 4 weeks

[Guest]

[roger]

Seem no one wants our business.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=517663

I want this for 4 weeks August/Setember with my OQO 02.

Mobile WiFi internet is technically feasible but not available at a reasonable price.
Outlook 2007/Outlook Express etc use seems restricted due to "security concerns". Hot spots seem few and far between especially around Braemar, Scotland where my wife and I will spend 2 weeks to visit relatives and attend the gathering. The day when one can look at local events' schedules and determine opening hours while on holiday is as remote as ever, OQO or no OQO, except for those who can afford luxury accommodation.

[stuartguthrie]

Hey Rog,

Does your mobile phone provider offer any short-term data plans that you could subscribe to for a month or so? If yes, and if your handset is compatible, you could use it as a modem. I know Three offer the X-Series for $20 p/month (no commitment). Of course you would need to enable global roaming. I know when I traveled to New Caledonia I was able to use global roaming and wasn't charged any extra for it. I was also able to use it in Brisbane last year
when I recorded my album and had no difficulties. I was up in the hills and still got perfect reception. If you do consider this, check the coverage first.

Just a suggestion.
Stu 

Update: It won't make any difference but I was using a MacBook Pro then.

[roger]

...Does your mobile phone provider offer any short-term data plans that you could subscribe to for a month or so?...

Not last time I looked.

[miffed]

If you have (unlocked) 3G mobile that can be used as a modem

   You could buy a T-mobile PAYG sim (readily available , my small town has at least 2 shops selling them at £5 each )  , Data is capped at £1 per day -

       Depending on how much you want to spend though , This would be the "neatest" solution -
   
   http://threestore.three.co.uk/payg/?modem=1&id=1201

        The USB modem costs you £69  - (walk into a 3 store and buy one - no contract  )
             
    The pay £10 for 1GB , £15 for 3GB or £25 for 7GB per month    (or I can tell you a sneaky little trick that will give you 1GB for £5 per month     )
        I am sure you'd be ebay the modem and get some of your money back after it has served its purpose

   

[roger]

@miffed - Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.
What I had in mind was a single contract for WLAN, WiFi and connection through a fixed modem for say 3GB of data over a 35 day period always connected to any available ISP. A reasonable maximum price would be £50 but £20 would be my more likely desired spend. 

.If you have (unlocked) 3G mobile that can be used as a modem  ...   You could buy a T-mobile PAYG sim (readily available ,  ... Data is capped at £1 per day - ...

True but too little data/time.

... Depending on how much you want to spend though , This would be the "neatest" solution -   
   http://threestore.three.co.uk/payg/?modem=1&id=1201 ...
...        The USB modem costs you £69 ...

Not what I had in mind and appeared to require a long term contract with a single ISP.

The quest continues - nothing promising found yet.

[charlieboy]

Roger

I think you must be misreading something here. The PAYG t-mobile sim costs about £1, the daily charge is also £1 . So your total for 35 days is £36 . there is no daily download limit here. The only restriction is 1MB speed from the bluetooth connection to your 3g mobile phone. What are you actually expecting? All you can eat no commitment and no contract for £1 per day as a foreign visitor is a bargain, i would like to know where in the world you get better than this on  a non committed deal.

Charlie

[roger]

@charlieboy. Thanks for taking the trouble to reply.

What are you actually expecting?

Advice from someone who has been there and done that.

The PAYG t-mobile sim costs about £1, the daily charge is also £1 . So your total for 35 days is £36 ...

Roaming charges apply. Charges of 0.73p per KB apply until £1 per day (midnight to midnight) is spent. From http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-as-you-go/ Legal stuff.

no contract for £1 per day as a foreign visitor is a bargain ...

My wife and I are both EU citizens. We married in the UK. I can trace my father's lneage back to Tewkesbury in the sixteenth century.

i would like to know where in the world you get better than this on  a non committed deal.

So would I.

Does t-mobile charge for incoming calls on their PAYG sim as Vodafone did last year when my wife and I were in the UK ?

[charlieboy]

Roger

I think you are still missing something here. You need to buy a T-mobile PAYG sim when you get to the UK, it will cost £1 to buy it. Put this SIM in to your mobile phone and get your friends to call you on the UK number (T-mobile PAYG) while you are in the UK there will be no roaming as the calls will be to your uk number. NEVER I REPAET NEVER use your Australian SIM in any other country either for data or voice. Unless of course you are very wealthy, in which case you would not have started this thread, failure to observe this may result in bills of AUD$1,000's on your return.

The costs for data are set to a maximum of £1 per day, but if you take the T-mopbile sim to say France for a day trip or Germany etc, then roaming charges will aply. But there will not be any roaming charges if you just use this sim in the UK.

I used this T-Mobile plan myself for a long time as I was only using mobile data about 1 or 2 days per week and it was the cheapest way to go online. All i did was remove my normal sim from my phone put in the T-mobile PAYG sim and then use via the internet via Bluetooth on my OQO. But after my useage got to daily i bought a HSDPA USB adapter from Vodafone on a £15 monthly tariff. So i can tell you this is a good service.

Just in case you are planning to stay in the middle of nowhere ie Scotish Highlands or in the middle of Dartmoor check the T-mobile coverage map for where you are planning to stay. They have better than 98% coverage but you never know.

No ofence on the "foreign visitor" remark all I meant is someone who is not living permanantly in this country and is visiting from foreign parts. I wish i could have got a deal like this when i was a "foreign visitor" in Sydney over the years.

Your flag fall rates and mobile data charges are a real law unto themselves. I am not a big fan of Aus telcos, I got screwed real bad by Telstra i was running 700,000 minutes of voice traffic per day to the mobile networks over there for a while and then Telstra sabotaged my circuit. Then we had a legal battle with AAPT and Optus.

The ACCC is a bit weak, how the hell Telstra got so political in the last elections with incentives and encouragement to vote being sent to Telstras customers I will never know. Then the firing of the regulator by the government as a reward to Telstra for it's help in winning the election. I used to think that sort of thing only happened in Africa with guys like Mugabe.

Anyway enough of politics, I hope this clears up the T-mobile issue.

If you like i have a bag of about brand new 300 T-mobile PAYG sims and can give you one as a present. I can send you the mobile number of this so you can pass to your friends andfamilly as a contact number for your trip. I can then post it you so you have before your trip. All you will then need to do is buy a top up voucher at the airport when you land and that is it.


Charlie

[roger]

@ charlieboy Thanks for such a great reply from someone who has clearly used the service.

Yes I am going to the Scottish highlands (Braemar) and realise the limitations of mobile phone services there only too well. In 1995 I had to stand in just one place in our rented cottage to get any GSM coverage at all. We start there for 2 weeks from the end of August 2008 with the gathering weekend in the middle of our cottage rental.
Then touring to Weston-super-Mare and Portsmouth to visit my wife's brother and relatives and then London (Victory Services Club, Marble Arch) for a few days before return.
Previous travelling with a VAIO picture-book to non-computer elderly relatives (I'm elderly too - see my profile) proved a waste of time trying to get own-computer internet access. I feel completely at home in the UK having lived there for several years in my youth and often wince when I hear other Australians sounding off.

Now I have a wifi capable OQO, with which I am familiar, I hope to find things a bit easier. I know there are no technical limitations to what I am trying - as a retired Professional Engineer I am trying to do for £25 what any [bleep] fool can do for £1000 (to quote one of my University lecturers of long ago.)

As for your comments on Telstra - I could not agree more. I think privatising Telstra was one of the most stupid moves imaginable. We now have  a bloated plutocracy headed by a citizen of the USA paid $A11 million plus and allowed to do things to our telecommunications infrastructure that previous Australian Governments would never permit an Australian citizen to do. We lost a world-class telecommunications research facility at Blackburn in Victoria and a local telecommunications industry which produced goods suitable for the telcommunications needs of a low population density over vast flat distances. The new Labor government just cancelled a WiMAX contract based on existing standards for a possible future fibre to the node system with standards yet to be established. I could go on but give me a bloated bureaucracy over a bloated plutocracy any day. (Did Australia really fire the ACCC regulator ?   I thought he stood his ground and was supported by the then Liberal government. )

I will take up your generous offer of a free T mobile sim. If OK by you, I will email you my brother-in-law's address, you can send him a sim card by Second Class delivery (should that still exist) and he will post it on with his next letter. Just give me some assurances of your heritage. I don't care to end up linked with the likes of Mohammed Haneef. See http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/19/news/london.php (I was at a Scottish wedding at Mar Lodge, Braemar when this happened and word came through.)

Mind you I still have to buy a 3G phone. N82 Nokia is presently favoured. I have operated for years on discarded GSM phones from my adult children and $10 monthly plans with one free number for calls.

I'd like some assurance that T-mobile PAYG plans don't charge for incoming calls. (Vodafone UK PAYG plans did last year to my dismay in accepting incoming Skype calls from Australia. The receiving rate was many times the Skype out rate !) Also do top-up vouchers start immediately or when activated ?

[charlieboy]

Roger

I had thought the only terrorists to use OQO were the fictional ones on Jerrico, but if you are worried about this then ask your brother in law to apply for some free PAYG sims using this link http://www.t-mobilesimgiveaway.co.uk/?WT.mc_id=ON_QM_S_Google&WT.srch=1 that way they are fresh from T-mobile. No idea why voda charged you to recieve calls on a UK sim card when you are in the UK. They should not do this and i suggest you call their customer services and ask for a refund as this is not allowed under the UK Telecoms act.

Pre pay vouchers start when you aply them to the phone, not when they are purchased but all of this is explained in the astarter pack that comes with the free sims. You can get 2 from that link. Just make sure the phone you buy is not locked to a network.

Also you might want to ask your brother in law to get you a www.voipdiscount.com account.  This will give you a free inccomming UK number, for your OQO, it is only 10 euro to set up. You can only do it on a UK credit card and not an Aussie one. But then you can call via the OQO back home. I think you get 200 free minutes per week to fixed lines in Aus and you can buy extra ones for 1c. Best to use a USB handset or the internal Mic and speaker. Using the Bluetooth headset when you are using BT toi connect to the 3g and encoding VOIP is too much for the OQO and it breaks up. Also you will then have a UK number on your PC when you get back home for your UK friends to call you on. Most people in the UK have free calls to other fixed lines numbers.


Charlie

[roger]

If any 3 or Vodafone Staff read this post please email me an answer.

Your UK sites wont let me send a purchase enquiry from Australia and I would like to sort this out now. I have also asked your Australian namesake sites to forward this request.

'Visiting UK 30 Aug 2008 to 12 Oct 2008.
Would like to purchase mobile broadband at max 7GB access rate during this time. Have OQO 02 UMPC and iCON 225 HSDPA modem. Just need a SIM sent to me in Australia and access details emailed. Can prepay direct from my UK account.  I am a retired electrical engineer and will be on holiday with my wife. I would expect total usage to be of the order of 4GB. Please advise cost and payment method.'

Its hard to believe that its so difficult to become a customer of an overseas ISP in this day and age of instant communications..

[charlieboy]

Roger

You are unlikely to get any reply from 3. You need to try an ebay search on www.ebay.co.uk and then buy from there a reseller will help you. you can look up the tariff on the 3 sitre as a pre pay. If it will not show this from aus then use a UK Proxy service. As for 7Mbps forget it 3 is 2.8 in the UK.

Charlie

[roger]

Roger

You are unlikely to get any reply from 3. You need to try an ebay search on www.ebay.co.uk and then buy from there a reseller will help you. you can look up the tariff on the 3 site as a pre pay. If it will not show this from aus then use a UK Proxy service. As for 7Mbps forget it 3 is 2.8 in the UK.

Charlie

Thanks. Will try. Pity you can't offer the service. 7GB alluded to a Vodafone tariff not a speed. Seems ISPs world wide clearly able to pick and chose customers with interest in their services clearly there. Clear understanding of proxies still eludes me. Computer revolution clearly passed me by while growing peaches in retirement. This site's help truly remarkable.

While I was growing up out here in the antipodes in the 1940s and 50s, my dad always said we were 25 years behind the rest of the world. He ran a soft-drink factory and bought all his plant from US and UK catalogs in the days when only the really rich travelled and Australia was a months journey away from the rest of the world. It seems we have caught up a little. I guess the gap has narrowed to 5 years in my lifetime but the tyranny of distance still pervades a lot of activities.

[roger]

Roger

You are unlikely to get any reply from 3. You need to try an ebay search on www.ebay.co.uk and then buy from there a reseller will help you. you can look up the tariff on the 3 sitre as a pre pay. If it will not show this from aus then use a UK Proxy service. As for 7Mbps forget it 3 is 2.8 in the UK.

Charlie

Charlie

You are right in that I got no answer from 3 UK.

I have taken your advice and bought but not received a 3 USIM card on eBay from http://stores.ebay.co.uk/GOSIMCARDS.
for £11.99 posted.  (The same item is offered at various higher prices and the site actually sells only about 50 items by the looks of it.)

Even with a '3' UK USIM, I have no confidence I can arrange a '3' 7GB £25 per month pre-pay service from Australia for use during September and October next for my 'OQO 02 UMPC' and my 'Option iCON 225 HSDPA USB Stick for Wireless Broadband'. This is because I was unable to organise a similar Australian service with '3' from one of their Sydney stores. They lent me a '3' USIM and I demonstrated with my hardware that the associated 'GlobeTrotter Connect version 2.3.0.630' software found and reported 'Registered to 3 UMTS' but when 'Connect' was selected I got a report box 'Error' with the details 'The connection has failed. [0x84000011]'. They were unable to provide me with any of the details required by the 'GlobeTrotter Connect version 2.3.0.630' software namely 'User Name', 'Password' and 'APN'. They said all connection details were provided by their proprietary software and they were unable to sell me a '3' pay by month no fixed term contract. They referred me to their help desk which I understand is in India. I rang them later from home in rural New South Wales but gave up after being passed on several times because their help desk 'consultants' didn't know the answer and even had I received one there is no local '3' store as their networks are confined to the Australia capital cities with expensive roaming on the much slower 'Telstra EDGE' network which is all that is available in rural areas of Australia. (My 'GlobeTrotter Connect version 2.3.0.630' software and my 'Option iCON 225 HSDPA USB Stick for Wireless Broadband' hardware with my (purchased with PCMCIA modem) Telstra USIM inserted reports intermittently 'Registered to Telstra EDGE' with a low or good signal strength. I do not have or want an $84 per month, 3GB, 36 month contract for such a service locally and the occasional UMTS service when I visit a capital city.)

I find the '3' UK site to be typical for ISPs, all spin and no real substance particularly for those who are trying to arrange an affordable service.

[charlieboy]

ROger

I do not think it is a real expectation to get the sim set up before you arrive. I travel all over the world and have a box of international prepay voice and data sims. I always buy the top ups on arrival. But if i visit frequently always make a few calls to the sim evey few months to stop it getting chopped off. But you just need to go to a 3 shop on arrival and they will fix it in 5 minutes. They are all over the place. Just get the address of your hotel and find google maps from the shop to hotel and sort it on arrival.

CS