GPRS Cost of Instant Messenger

[Guest Bazz]

Thought you boys and girls might be interested in the following.

I've had my phone connected to IM overnight and haven't used the GPRS connection for anything else (actually haven't used the phone for anything else except receiving a couple of texts).

For 12 hours it used:

Received: 446.27Kb

Sent: 204.27Kb

Total: 650.54Kb

or approximently 54.21Kb per hour. As this was overnight I'm guessing most of my mates weren't signed on. I didn't actually receive and IM alerts as far as I can tell, so these figures are just for being connected (I presume it sends a "I'm still connected" heartbeat every so often).

That means (if my calcs are correct) in approx 8 days you'll use 10Mb if you stay connected ALL the time (unlikely, but still). Thought you might like to know. Guess that's another excuse for the moaners to winge and send the phone back.

Barry

[Guest Lojt]

damn, thats pretty much :D

[Guest dj simonz]

OH MY GOD!

U know, that means in a month that wud be around 40mb say and thats just based on night time usage, what about all the bandwidth you will use during the bulk of the day? my gosh....

According to orange's GPRS tariff:

http://www.orange.co.uk/talkplans/gprs/costs.html

When our 3 month unlimited GPRS usage plan is over.....and saywe get put onto the lowest GPRS tariff of £4 a month which includes a measly 0.5mb of inclusive traffic. then every extra 1mb you use costs £8.00.

Say you used 40mb as the theoretical rate for the example given by barry_pollard in the above msg.

then:

40mb x £8 = £300 (and if VAT is to be added!!!!)

MY GAWWWDDDDDDD

£300 a month, this is mad. Unless orange stamp down it's GPRS bundle prices then I bet, the majority of the population with SPV's will never go online again on their fone. Orange targeted this fone to all users for commerical and business market, but how are we supposed to be able to run the phone given its cutting edge internet access features if it's damn bloody too exspensive to run even at an execuctive level.

I was hoping to be able to chat to my friends alot on the Instant Messenger service and be able to do that all day and night. This was one of the main reason why I wanted the SPV. Yes! cutting edge technology and the latest gadgets do come at a cost but not like this......

Who can afford to pay for GPRS if its going to be that damn exspensive. Imaging the GPRS Costs on top of your monthly line rental and phone bill and not including your txt messaging and MMS photo messaging which costs a ridiculous 40p a go......

I think I will cancel my order immediatley.

BAH!!!

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

But seriously, how many hours would you use messenger on your phone per day?

You're really not going to use it 24/7/31 are you?

The battery wouldn't take it for a start :D

I wonder if IM+ on the 7650 is more or less efficient...

P

[Guest Bazz]

Remember that cost of 10Mb for 8 days is for always on IM - 24 hours a day for 8 days straight. That's VERY unlikely. Why keep it on while you are sleeping for example?

This is also just a simle test I did, so I wouldn't take it as conclusive.

Still, I think the prices'll have to come down a little and I reckon they will if they get enough people to use them. Remember it's still early days on GPRS and it took a whgile to get unlimited on

Still we're gonna have to be careful after the "unlimited" promo runs out and remember to cut off a conection when we aren't using it, or use it docked so it uses a uses your PC connection. Then again you're gonna have got over the wow factor and use it less anyway.

As for sending the phone back - well I wanna use it for more than just IM. I mostly wanted it for an MP3 player and for surfin the web. The IM feature was an added bonus (though what a bonus - I was sitting at home when my mate who was travelling the world and passing through Brazil started IMing me and had a good long conversation with her - for no extra charge - cool!)

[Guest studiosonic]

I don't see what the cost of GPRS has anything to do with the SPV. GPRS is over priced by the networks and new phones come with a GPRS option. You don't have to use it, but if u do then it'll eat money like nobody's business. U don't think it'll be just the same on the P800 when it comes out, unless the GPRS pricing system is changed??? :?: :!: :!: :!:

[Guest dj simonz]

my point is,

For me buying a SPV smartphone or any other smartphone (nokia, erricsson) regardless, is that I wanted to use communication software and go online anytime I wanted to whilst on the move. I was not however, aware of the high costs incurred for the GPRS tariff.

Yes I wont be using IM 24/7, but what about general browsing of websites and emailing. If someone was to send me an email 0.5mb which is common these days, then that would eat up £8 just to receive an email. What about if someone maybe sent me a large attachment and I was unaware of its size until downloaded (for e.g. outlook on windows doesnt tell you how big the emails are that u are downloading from the server)

Even accessing a normal website eats up an average 50kb....

[Guest Bazz]

If you are going to use GPRS a lot then you can choose a higher GPRS plan to get it cheaper.

£300 for 40Mb is not what you have to pay. Granted Orange don't make it easy by not including a GPRS monitor on the phone but you'll have to decide how much you want/are willing to pay for...

Barry

[Guest studiosonic]

Well yes, the whole GPRS charging system will need to be looked at seriously. I'm sure it will be at the end of the SPV pack. I imagine GPRS access will drop like a lead balloon otherwise.

Until pricing is realistic for e-mail checking and web browsing in general then it won't be widely used.

[Guest dj simonz]

hmmm...having a GPRS fone for me now is beginning to sound unfeasible in terms of costs.

[Guest studiosonic]

...but all phones, even just the basic ones, are GPRS phones these days. Doesn't mean u have to use it though. U could still download the latest things to your smartphone by using your pc connection via the docking station. The SPV won't become useless without GPRS.

[Guest dj simonz]

yeah u have a point, im just thinking sooo sooo negative these days. Its Xmas afterall....

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

As we are all talking about the 10MB cap would there be some way that we could decide our usage i.e (when the promo is over) and when that limit has been reached our access is automaticaly blocked without a call to Orange to increase the ammount? could be a way to stop nasty bills.

Any ideas if this is possible?

[Guest Bazz]

May be possible on the Orange end, but why would Orange want to do that? I think they'd you rather run up bigger bills!

[Guest JaToAc]

my first gprs experience was my first internet setup between my pocket loox and my t68. wow great AND expensive. only for gprs on the german vodafone gprs by call i had to pay eu 150 (+ normal phone usage). that made my day... (not mentioning my girlfriend)

[Guest dearsina]

0.5 Mb £4.00

5 Mb £15.00

10 Mb £25.00

15 Mb £30.00

30 Mb £47.00

50 Mb £58.75

100 Mb £111.63

500 Mb £528.75

I hope this settles the argument about GRPS' true price.

Let us compare it to SMS, just for fun:

1 text message is 160 letters. For the sake of this exercise, let us say that would be equal to 160 bytes. It costs 10p to send 160 bytes, which comes up to £625 for 1MB. To be fair, they have a 120 SMS for £8 deal, and using that, the total come up to just £416 for 1MB. Bargin. So while GPRS is £528.75 for 500 MB, SMS will cost you £208,333 for the same amout of data. That's about 384 times more expencive. So you can say the prices have dropped quite a bit. Perhaps not as much as we would like them to, but hey, nobody is perfect.

Anyway. :-)

sina

[Guest graham]

I think the end game *is* definitely phones connected via GPRS 24/7/31 - with an IM client always on. Then we can forget SMS and its ludicrous charges altogether. I'm sure the MSN Messenger protocol wasn't designed with mobile per-byte charging in mind, and is more bloated than it needs to be - hopefully they will be able to slim it down in the not too distant future. Then all we need are batteries that can last a couple of days with GPRS always on...

[Guest timodonnell]

Even more galling when you realise that SMS is sent on a network signalling channel which was never planned to carry revenue-generating data. To the networks the whole SMS phenomonen is pure profit!

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

That kinda explains why they were so suprised it took off!

Makes it very annoying they charge such rip off fees for it tho...

P

[Guest richto]

Surely that .5 mb is per day for £4 a month. The current 10MB usage limit must be per day - just downloading a game uses 5MB+

[Guest madu]

I heard in one of the posts it said 10MB per day but max 50MB per month during this trial period.. Is that right then??

[Guest Will]

Out in town today, and thought i would ask in the 2 Orange shops I encountered.

shop1 : oh it's completely unlimited, but if you go crazy i think they will stop you.

shop2 : Max 50meg per month.

So who knows :oops:

[Guest madu]

VAT included - still unimpressive:

-------------------------------------------------------

| Gprs pack | £/Mnth | MB/Mnth | £/MB |

-------------------------------------------------------

GPRS bundle 1 £4.00 0.5MB £8.00

GPRS bundle 5 £15.00 5MB £3.50

GPRS bundle 10 £25.00 10MB £2.50

GPRS bundle 15 £30.00 15MB £1.50

GPRS bundle 30 £47.00 25MB £1.35

GPRS bundle 50 £58.75 50MB £1.18

GPRS bundle 100 £111.63 100MB £1.18

GPRS bundle 500 £528.75 500MB £1.18

-------------------------------------------------------

Dunno why I bothered with the table above, here's a link:

http://www.orange.co.uk/talkplans/gprs/costs.html

So it seems like many of us will have to forget that GPRS exists, when the trial is over...

[Guest dearsina]

Officially: Limit is set to 'Excessive use', and users over 10 MB (a month, I asked customer service) will be told to try to reduce their usage.

Now what I read from this (from previous experience from Norway during the "launch" of SMS services, or TXT as its called in Britain) is that they'll pretty much give you free hands, and I'll doubt they'll be sending messages to everybody who crosses the arguably very low limit of 10MB, unless the system crashes, and then they might become a bit more strict. Simply because they are obliged to maintain a service.

The whole idea behind this GPRS deal is to create a habit of using a potentially very addictive service (MSN Messenger 24/7, you know that spells trouble), then charge for it. This model of business is very similar to the way a drug dealer works, first fix is free, and once you're hooked... and you know the rest better than I do.

sina

london

[Guest madu]

and........

GPRS - Free roaming trial - Fair Usage Policy

To ensure the availability of this promotion we ask that you restrict your usage to a maximum of 10 MB per day and no more than 50 MB in any one-month. We may request users exceeding this limit to reduce their usage of this service. If usage continues above this limit then we reserve the right to remove this facility from your account for the duration of the free promotion.

Please note that it is 'Free roaming trial' coz I didn't find SVP pack T&C, so not sure if it applies to us.