« Seattle Mobile | Main | My New Phone - Nokia 3230 »
March 25, 2005
T-Mobile Joins the Ranks of Carriers Who don't Get It.
I bought my Nokia 6600 from T-Mobile (for $399) because it is a smart phone and I wanted to run network enabled applications on it. I've been very happy since I bought it in July. However for the last few months, I've had some problems. I bought PicoBlogger and it wouldn't start up and the traffic app that Ryan wrote won't fetch data. I finally got through to T-Mobiles tier 3 support and discovered why; T-Mobile has disabled port 80 (the web) on their T-Zones service. If you have a network Midlet or Symbian app that you bought, you can't use it on T-Mobile anymore unless you sign up for their "Internet" service; which is $20.00 per month!!! So I'm sitting on about $50 worth of apps that I've downloaded for my $399 phone and they won't work on T-Mobile unless I spend another $20 a month. Apparently they want to make sure everyone signs up for their expensive Internet service instead of just T-Zones.
One thought is that they are doing this because the GPRS network is so overloaded that T-Mobile doesn't want to encourage data use on their network.
Probably one of my next posts will be titled "David Moves to Cingular". It's ridiculous to have to pay an extra $20.00 a month just to use a mobile blog app and check the local traffic on top of the $5.00 a month I pay for WAP access through T-Zones.
I you are an applications/game developer that makes networked apps/game, you just effectively lost 10% of the mobile market in the U.S.
Posted by David Adams at March 25, 2005 05:14 PM
Comments
Hi, David. I was a T-Mobile user and had the same problem. After over a year of surfing the net using Opera on my 3650, I suddenly couldn't anymore. I've since switched to Cingular, same as you. But only because T-Mobile service doesn't work inside my new house.
Before I switched, though, I solved the blocked port 80 problem by enabling my 3650 to access the internet via proxy. Worked like a charm. I point this out for any T-Mobile users who are reading this and haven't yet switched.
Simply enable the "proxy" option inside the settings menu of your Series 60 smartphone, then create a new connection using 216.155.165.50:8080. Then log on and you're back to normal. (This is entirely from memory, but I'm reasonablt certain that's all there was to it.)
Posted by: Doug Thacker at April 1, 2005 12:46 PM
T-mobile's block of port 80 is so maddening, and it has created an unreal level of dissatisfaction among people who used it - i.e. tastemakers and early adopters. This is going to come back to bite them hard. One question, though, isn't Cingular's data plan $25/month for unlimited? $5 more than T-mobile?
Posted by: David Jacobs at April 1, 2005 02:12 PM
Yeah. Cingular is $5more than the T-mobile data plan. Although to get T-Mobile's data plan, they were going to require me to upgrade my voice plan to get more minutes. (yeah that makes sense). Anyway, Cingular is integrating AT&T's EDGE network in with theirs so I will be able to take advantage of higher speeds with my EDGE phone, instead of T-Mobile's treacle (that's molasses for you Americans) like GPRS network.
Posted by: David Adams at April 1, 2005 03:31 PM