T-Mobile offers unlimited Internet access for compatible cell phones through their $5.99 a month T-MobileWeb package. The service allows you to check your email, chat on popular instant messaging networks, and download games and applications.
The email access is very useful. When I’m on campus without my laptop, I use my cell phone to check my personal and academic inboxes for new messages, and I can respond to important messages.
On the other hand, the ability to download games and applications is very disappointing. So far, every decent game I’ve found requires an additional fee of at least $5. You’d think that paying $5.99 a month would entitle you to download a game or two for free. Furthermore, there are no applications currently available to download.
I don’t think I’ll be paying for T-MobileWeb anymore.
UPDATE: I should note that the aforementioned games and applications were found by browsing T-MobileWeb’s main menu. You may use T-MobileWeb to open regular URLs and download J2ME applications, depending upon your phone. A nice selection of J2ME midlets can be found here.
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Have you considered T-Mobile’s Sidekick internet option, which allows for unlimited internet for $29.99/month, but charges you $.20/minute when you use the phone for voice? I use voice so rarely, it’s not even economical to use prepaid, because it would expire out before I could use it. The Sidekick internet option lets me pay for the 24/7 internet service which is what I need, and then have the $.20/minute phone service when I need it (which is rare).
(I don’t have T-Mobile service yet, although I’m considering getting it real soon.)
You might be able to get the Sidekick plan, even if you don’t buy a Sidekick itself and just continue using your existing smartphone or PDA. There is a similar internet-only T-Mobile plan for Blackberry.
In the past with T-Mobile, you could get unlimited internet service for only $4.99, because of a loophole in T-mobile’s “T-Zones” program, which is their WAP application. WAP is a very limited form of internet browsing you see on some smartphones and other devices which only allows certain news, weather, sports, etc. sites to be browsed (and they have to feed the software just right — it does not use a full HTML browser to parse the information). It also charges for the software it downloads, as you have found out.
People discovered two years ago that if they signed up for T-Zones, which only cost $4.99/month back then, then they could still access all ports on the internet even though they were only supposed to access the internet through a proxy server designed for this WAP application. They just had to remove the WAP proxy settings from their browser, and then all the ports were open, and all content was free.
That would have been too easy to do with Sidekicks, so perhaps Sidekicks are password-locked out or something from having their proxy changed like that. But T-Mobile can’t control what people do with their PDAs.
T-Mobile caught onto this last November, and started blocking access to most ports from people who hadn’t paid for unlimited internet service. They accidentally blocked a lot of their own Blackberry customers in the process (that was eventually fixed).
Today, all but about 4 ports are blocked off by T-mobile unless you pay for the full internet service, which costs $29.95/month, or $19.95/month on top of an existing plan. This spring, they renamed “T-Zones” to “T-MobileWeb”, and raised it from $4.99/month to $5.99/month. The only ports which are allowed to pass through unblocked under this $5.99/month “T-MobileWeb” plan, are the ones having to do with IMAP, POP, SMTP, and this WAP proxy. (IMAP and POP are two protocols for grabbing email from a remote server; SMTP is the protocol for _sending_ email).
This page describes some interesting hacks to try to get around the new limitations — if you can set up a ssh (secure shell) server to run on one of the ports which is allowed to pass through, then you can use your smartphone or PDA to connect to your server, and then it can “tunnel” all connections through there so that you are no longer under restrictions:
http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2005/06/23/mossberg-on-cell-phones-and-e2e/
I already run my own server at home, and I could set it up to accept ssh connections in one of these unrestricted ports (rather than the default of 22). Then I could access the internet without restriction, from my PDA.
Before you give up and drop T-MobileWeb, if you’re technically inclined, then try this hack to see whether you can get around the port restrictions. Set up a server to accept incoming ssh connections from port 8080, 110, 143, or 25.
There is free ssh software available for the Sidekick, if that’s what you have. Search Google for “ssh sidekick” to find it. There is also that “putty” software out there for most other platforms.
That’s quite a bit of work just to get unfettered access through your cell phone. The Sidekick plan is horribly priced for anyone who also plans to use their phone for its intended purpose — to make and receive calls. Furthermore, given the maximum speeds you’ll get with T-Mobile’s GSM data services and the CPU power of most cell phones, tunneling through SSH will be a living hell for all but the most diehard users.
If you really need Internet access everywhere, I recommend trying out Verizon Wireless’s internet service. As for myself, the only reason I was content with T-MobileWeb was because email works well at low-speeds. But at $5/month, that convenience is costly (for a student).
This site shows you all the different ways to use your T-Zones / T-Mobile Web ($2.99 or $5.99 depending on when you bought it)
They have articles about how to connect your Laptop, Windows Mobile 2003 SE or 5.0, and even Blackberry
T-MobileWeb on the Smartphone or Laptop (http://www.gruups.com/tzones)
I’ve connected my VOQ Smartphone 2003 SE to it,and my laptop using a sony EDGE Card.
I’ve also gotten Web (firefox only), Email (POP3), and even Skype and MSN Messenger (just set the HTTP Proxy as described)
You can’t beat $5/month for internet.
Sure it’s not Wifi, but I’ve been on a laptop with Sprint and they where getting 170kpbs to 250kpbs
It felt really slow.
This is slower. Yes. But it’s maxes at about 160kbps (in my personal using of it.) and it’s usually hovering at about 60kbps to 80kbps.
You’re not flying. but is Internet at only double the speed worth $55 more?
Verizon has this for $59/month (if you sign a 2 year contract)
Sprint has it for $40 (for 40Mpbs /month ) or $80 unlimited
And I think Cingular has an unlimited plan for $60 but if you have a contract with them you can get it for about $20.
And NONE of them let you cancel the Internet or switch to a better internet (or worse) at any time without re-newing your contract.
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