The new VodafoneLive! Internet Flat service in Germany is 10 Euro per month (24 month contract) for flat-rate mobile Internet. At last we have a decent flat rate tariff. Wooot! Wooot!…….What? Port 80 only? Opera Mini only? Holy crap! Here we go again. People are calling HTTP ‘The Internet’ and flogging it like its the answer to your mobile Internet prayers. It’s certainly not the FIE, that’s for sure but I have to say, after giving it a thorough work through it’s actually worth it and the Opera Mini requirement appears to be just a promotional effort just because most feature phone browsers aren’t up to the job of displaying even basic Internet content.
Luckily, the need for FTP, SSH, SMTP and other Internet ports is reducing and on a mobile phone, most services are designed so that data is transported over port 80. In general, new users to the mobile Internet won’t notice the restrictions and even in my own online world, I generally use web-based applications and there is always a way to get round problems like this. Running this contract on an E90 is going to give you serious value for money too. A decent browser experience and fast 1.5mpbs (in my test on 3.7mbps HSDPA) download speeds is going to squeeze much more out of this contract than most standard feature or smartphones. Lovely! The only wall I came up against was the email client which I left on after testing but in general I don’t use offline email tools so even this isn’t a problem. I believe I can even add a 200MB true Internet contract on top for 20 Euros and switch APNs if I need to access anything other than port 80 or 443.
One restriction in the terms and conditions is that you can not use the connection from a PC. Its the first time I’ve seen this clause in a Vodafone contract and its a bit strange because the E90 can hit the net pretty hard if it needs too. Its almost a PC! I’m pretty sure they can’t track the end device though. Unless they’re monitoring browser types embedded in the HTTP data, there’s no way to tell. And besides, I’m a two-SIM man now. My 200MB SIM with the ‘real’ Internet contract sits in my Q1b UMPC and this combo voice and data card is sitting quite nicely in the E90. The only issue is that if I want to take a small phone out I have to pop the SIM out and drop it into my 6280. There must be a way around that with a dual-SIM option or some form of forwarding on a second SIM card. I just need to set it up.
So if you’ve just picked up a 3G phone with a QVGA screen or bigger and you’re thinking of taking the first steps into the mobile Internet world, go ahead and sign up with Vodafone! 10 Euros per month isn’t much and the advantages are fun and fruitful. If I find any strange features over the next few weeks (I’m on a month trial) I’ll certainly update this post.
VodafoneLive! Internet Flat 24 months contract. 10 Euros. (Germany)
- High speed (1.5mbps in my tests)
- HTTPS working ok
- No email client (you will need to use Google Mail or another web-based service.)
- IM problems likely (although it may be possible through some specialised client configurations and proxys)
- Shazu working OK
- No streaming audio (unless its working over port 80)
