Newbie question: Charges - WAP vs GPRS for web and email?

[Guest ProfH]

Hi,

Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but here goes: :roll:

Am I right: GPRS is charged according to amount of data downloaded, but WAP access is charged by call time?

The reason I ask is that I am about to receive my mpx200 :lol: from Orange UK but haven't ordered a GPRS bundle. Just wondering if I can use WAP most of the time for basic web browsing and email, and only shift to GPRS when I need to.

[Guest ratcom]

Go for GPRS mate it works out cheaper in most uses. Remember with GPRS you ONLY pay for the amount data you download and not the time you are online as with DIAL UP e.g. you can take your time viewing a web page ect.

[Guest ProfH]

Thanks. So you're saying that WAP is the equivalent of dial-up and is charged by the second/minute?

[Guest keyvan]

I thought that WAP is a software protocal layer that works on top of GPRS in the same way that Ethernet is Layer 1 and TCP or IP is Layer 2. The phone companies use WAP and GPRS terminology as a marketing tool to charge at different rates. This is how I know it to be true but I could be totally wrong. I say this because the technical data on GPRS focuses on wireless data delivery and WAP specifications usually focus on sofware interfacing. For example Microsoft has WAP API's which has nothing to do with the physical transmission of data over the air such as transmission speed and packet error correction where as GPRS does.

[Guest scott2eyes]

A GPRS bundle is worth getting, simply because it charges you for the information- so if you're reading something you've donloaded, you won't be paying for the connection. Plus it's a fair bit faster than the "dial up" connection, and it also leaves your phone line free.

As keyvan said, WAP is a software protocol rather than the method of delivering information. It was designed (I presume) because "true" HTML was way beyond the capabilities of mobile phones etc. when a wireless version of the internet was becoming desirable. Now that you can (sort of...) get full HTML internet on your Smartphone it's still worth using though, as it's very space-efficient, meaning faster download times (especially over GPRS.)

So saying that you want web access with WAP is kind of like saying you want to watch a DVD on VHS tape.

[Guest ProfH]

Thanks. I suppose what I was thinking is that I have a deal that gives me free minutes, and if I haven't used all of these on talk by the end of the month, why not use them for email and web?

My phone's here now and having messed around with it I can see the virtues of GPRS - much quicker and more stable. But I do worry about the costs, especially surfing through full size html pages, some of which load wonderfully, others are ridiculous to scroll around. :shock: But the idea of having the open Internet (as opposed to just what Orange/Vodafone/O2/3 etc want you to access) available on your phone is superb. :lol: However, I really don't want to end up spending a fortune on GPRS!

The only drawback for me so far is that I have two email accounts in Outlook - one on an exchange server and one on an IMAP server. In Outlook these are two separate Inboxes and the sync software only picks up the Exchange one. :D Any Outlook gurus out there?

[Guest scott2eyes]

I don't think there's any way to get Smartphone 2002 to recognise more than one inbox unfortunately- this is one of the things that will apparently be included on the highly anticipated (and some might say overdue...) 2003 upgrade.

As for the mounting GPRS costs, there's a neat application called iMeter which keeps a count of your GPRS usage, keeps a log of every data call and it's volume, keeps a similar counter of normal calls (including the time and duration, which I find quite useful), and (my favourite) presents it all to you in a graph- well worth rooting out.