C500 GPRS really slow on O2

[Guest v0rtex]

How fast is GPRS for you on O2 Pay As You Go?

I can send MMS fine, but browsing the web is hopeless. I can get to http://mobile.o2.co.uk and it loads the top bar (O2 Active title and the drop-down box), then it freezes.

Actual websites just time out, as do Java applications with network ability.

I'm using the HTTP proxy at 193.113.200.195:8080 and the payandgo.o2.co.uk access point. The actual connection does seem to be there, just it's too slow to retrieve any data. Changing the proxy port to 9201 and attempting to access WAP pages has the same result - although I did manage to load http://wap.google.com after about 8 minutes of waiting (!)

I'm in a major metropolitan area (Central Manchester) so coverage shouldn't be a problem. I could use CSD/dialup WAP fine, beginning to wish I hadn't changed my tarriff over to GPRS.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?

Edited March 2, 2005 by v0rtex