Does anyone have Virgin Mobile service in the US? I considering switching to them and I was trying to find out if they have an internet browser on their phones. There seems to be Virgin Xtra stuff which I don't care about; I'd want to go to non-vendor-specific mobile web sites, like my local movie site and Yahoo's driving directions, etc.

Okay, so I called Virgin Mobile and they claim that I can see only the sites they want me to see, most of which seem like utter crap.

So, is there any way I can actually do it?

One of these will meet your outlined needs and more.....

http://www.garmin.com/products/iQue3600/

I love mine. I can't believe all the business information it contains, most importantly, phone numbers. Also like the searching capabilities.

I could go on and on, and no, I don’t work for Garmin.

I understand your point, I think, but that's not the issue. It'd be real nice if I could have the added feature of being able to go to www.movieminder.com with my phone, but the crux of the matter is that Virgin is way cheaper for how my wife and I use our phones than what we have now or, seemingly, any other plan out there. I just wanted to have a new feature on the phone to convince my wife to try to sell it to her. (She has a real problem with paradigm change, which will be required going to Virgin's billing plan.)

I was addressing the needs more than the solution. My IQue works great for finding a movie theater and their phone number (as well as the distance and other info.) and it is far better than Yahoo for driving directions. I'm sure it might not fit other needs that you might have (like browsing this forum in the car) but it may.

I usually look at what I need rather than how do I fix the current solution. I often find a better path that way.

What I need is cheaper mobile phone service. Other services have WAP access. It would be nice to have it, but it's not a requirement. (I usually check such things before I go.) I was just trying to find out if there's some way to get them that's not supported, just as a bonus.

What's "cheaper"? Price range?

Absolutely. I went back though my last twelve months or so of usage and Virgin came in, at worse, a few dollars cheaper, in most cases, half or less, and in a few cases, just ridiculously cheap.

Neither my wife nor I use the phone that much. We have the cheapest plan Cingular offers and almost never go over our alloted minutes. Plus, Virgin doesn't charge any hidden fees. It's minutes and that's it, at least according to a friend who has Virgin service.

The only drawback is buying a new phone, which they'd claim would be a plus, but it's got lots of bells and whistles we'll never use. Hell, we barely use the speed dial stuff as it is. The only advantage all those bells and whistles would offer to us is if we could use it to view WAP sites, and even then, it would just be a few.

It's probably too expensive for what you want, but I thought I'd just post what my plan is.

I'm on TMobile with a $65/month plan. Yeah, it's quite a bit, but with that I get 600 anytime, unlimited night/weekends, and absolutely unlimited GPRS/WAP internet access. As far as I know they're the only carrier with such an internet plan.

If the internet part appeals to you, that part is $20 a month, and I believe you can add it to any plan including cheaper ones. I use more minutes now than I used to since my mobile replaced my landline.

Your plan is old and I think you are getting ripped off or are not paying attention to your bill. Check out my plan.



I have 600 anytime, 3-day weekends (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday unmetered) and free nights ($2.99 option when I signed. I think it now costs $4.99 extra). All T-Mobile monthly plans include free WAP access via GPRS now. I think you should have gotten a notice in the mail about it. I pay nothing extra for GPRS on my plan. I can also use the bluetooth adapter in my laptop to use the phone as a modem when out and about. That kicks ass!

Just giving you the heads up.

PS- I use http://voicestream.moviefone.com for WAP movies listings.

Do you really not pay any extra for your unlimited GPRS usage? I thought it was an extra fee. My contract expires next week and AT&T has the most outrageous data prices...

Matthew

Here's a fatwallet.com thread about it from about 2 months ago.
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=18&threadid=238220

You misparsed my question, which was a request for you to share the price range of "cheaper"

Darnit, I replied to your post, or I thought I did.

Anyway, what I was going to say is that folks on the boards I visit had said that there have been good and bad experiences trying to connect to GPRS through the WAP service. It may just be with our phones, which aren't officially supported by TMobile (P800). It was either that, or people were experiencing slower connections that way.

I think I was incorrect in the price of my plan. I think it's $60 total, $40 for the voice segment, which is only less expensive than yours by $3 ($5 now, according to you), but doesn't get 3-day weekends (doesn't really matter for me).

What's all that Usa (is it supposed to be USA) stuff at the bottom of your bill? Extended calling area?

Oddly, T-Mobile is not available in North Carolina.

My Cingular bill -- $19.99 plus taxes and other random fees (including just a little roaming) -- came to $302.20 for the last 12 months' bills (not including a $36 charge because I was a day or two late paying the bill). Grabbing the minutes used for those months and assuming the worst case for the price of those minutes (that is, all 25¢ minutes, never getting past the daily ten minutes to get to 10¢ minutes), that adds up to $105.25. Now, Virgin requires a payment of at least $20 every 90 days, so it might be possible that the timing would work out that I'd end up paying more than that semi-optimal cost (for example, I had 3 months in a row that would have cost a total of $7.50), but it'll still remain at about a third the price. And even if I got their most expensive phone, I'd pay for it within a year, and it's easy to just not buy a computer game or two and write it off totally for that time period.

The only way I'd see using more time with the phone is if it were WAP-enabled, which it's not, and due to checking voicemail which I currently don't have and would use from time to time with the new phone. But it probably wouldn't add up to that much.

Also, I really like the way that all the hidden fees really are hidden. Virgin's costs are paid totally by the per-minute charge. There are no taxes or fees, roaming or any other sort, to be paid.

I went back and figured what I'd actually pay Virgin based on those months' usage. Assuming I pay $20 each time I pay and I have to pay at least $20 every 3 months (as opposed to 90 days), I came out with a final cost of $120 with a good number of minutes left over, although on the verge of paying more for a three-month hiatus in payment.

What's all that Usa (is it supposed to be USA) stuff at the bottom of your bill? Extended calling area?

I don't know.

Check out my plan.

Yeah, baby. That looks good.

I signed with Verizon for a national plan when I thought I might still be traveling for work. Now that I landed a no-travel job, for good or ill, I think I am going to bail for a cheaper plan. Probably T-Mobile as I'd like SMS for server/NMS messages. And Bluetooth....mmmm...... Palm T2..... and new Powerbook. Yes, T-Mobile.

My one problem. Installed a hard-wired car kit for my Motorola V60 and T-Mobile has dropped the V60 from its offerings (too bad, I really like that little phone) so I may need to resort to eBay....

(oh, and, yes, on the occasion of becoming a "perm" university employee I had to run down and succumb to Apple academic pricing and buy a 12" Powerbook. Pretty sweet.)

My TMobile plan has, I believe, national coverage. I chose not to have a regional plan because there didn't appear to be any price difference. Plus, the regional one wouldn't cover me between the two main places I spend my year.

But yeah, I've been pretty happy with the service, except they keep insisting that I live in a good coverage area, yet I don't receive a very good signal around my house.

I am making this post on my laptop. I am posting from a Comfort Inn in Clifton Park, NY. I am accessing the net through GPRS on my phone and using bluetooth to get it on my laptop. Technology rules.

Wave to my Grandmother, who lives in Clifton Park. What're you doing in Albanyland?

-Zeke

Probably T-Mobile as I'd like SMS for server/NMS messages. And Bluetooth....mmmm...... Palm T2..... and new Powerbook. Yes, T-Mobile.

This combination works wonderfully with my Powerbook. Let me know if you have any setup questions. I have to call TMobile back up and get them to fix my bill. In asking them for assistance, they conviently charged me $20 a month for data services since they didn't bother to look at my account closly first.

It also looks like T-Mobile singed an agreement with AT&T now, as my phone will roam onto their GSM network for free now. No data services though when this happens, but at least now I have cell coverage out to my parents house.

What're you doing in Albanyland?

This

I am up near Saratoga Springs quite often though.

I am in Philly now. The GPRS connection is much stronger and faster here.

Aaah. Just passing through. That's really the best thing to do in Albany.

-Zeke

Saratoga is of course another matter completely.

This turned out to be a great thread for me. I just called T-Mobile and upgraded my old "North America 300" plan (300 minutes/month + Canada is considered "home") to the new "Get More Plan" (600 minutes/month + free nights and weekends, but no free Canadian roaming). I told them I didn't want the T-Zones stuff, yet my phone is still happily going to Moviefone, Yahoo, and everything else. Sweet! Even better, I was able to keep my old international calling plan (no longer offered), that offers radically cheaper inbound rates (but more expensive outbound rates) for my occasional European trips.

Now, how did you configure your laptop to use the phone's GPRS? Neither my phone nor my computer do Bluetooth, but they do have infrared. I also own the cheesy USB cable so I can sync stuff from my PC. What's the right way to configure things? Do I need to install the Nokia PC Suite on my laptop, or do I just somehow configure the laptop to treat the infrared port as a modem and dial some number over it?

I can't remember offhand how to tell Windows to use an IR modem, though I do remember it was pretty easy.

The "phone number" to have the PC dial will be *99***1# . The 1 at the end is the GPRS profile on your phone. If 1 doesn't work, try 2, 3, or 4. (I doubt many phones have more then 4 profiles out of the box). Username and password should be fine to leave blank, as there is none.

I'm not sure how you would do it without blueooth or IrDA. Basically, you have to get your computer to see your phone as a modem somehow and enter this as the phone number in Dial Up Networking:

*99#

That will tell the phone to use GPRS and act as a modem for the connecting device.

I would totally be all over T-Mobile if their coverage didn't suck in my area. AT&T's GSM coverage has been good to me so far, but $0.03 per kilobyte of data is ridiculous.

Wow, that was easy. I had to tweak my BIOS to enable the IRDA port. Then I spent ten minutes hunting around menus looking for how to enable the IRDA but it turns out it was on, by default. You can't turn it off (as far as I can tell).

So, all I had to do was enable IRDA on the phone, move it in range of the computer, and foomp!, a "generic cel phone modem" appeared as COM4. No need to install any drivers or anything. I created a new dialup account for *99#, called it with no username or password, and there I was, surfing the net. Without paying the extra charges. There's no way T-Mobile will let this last forever, but it kicks butt for now.

Edit: in case anybody else tries this and it doesn't work as smoothly, Google helped me find more detailed instructions in a nice PDF from Nokia. The only missing instructions there are the magic *99# phone number.

Yeah, I hope it lasts forever but it's hard to imagine it would. Unless 99.9% of T-Mobile users are unaware of this service (which probably isn't far-off).

Unless 99.9% of T-Mobile users are unaware of this service

Or, worse yet, the users who are paying $20/month for their flat-rate bandwidth discover they can get it for free. T-Mobile may not notice that they're giving people free service, but I'll bet they do notice when people downgrade their calling plans. Maybe, just maybe, they're using this as a teaser to get people signed up, letting them turn the screws later. Of course, if other vendors find themselves forced to compete (offering high-quality undocumented services?!), then we'll have an interesting sort of competition.

Well, it's almost perfect. I can make web, smtp, and imap/ssl port connections. I can't make SSH connections, and it's not clear how many other ports are shut off as well. Still, not bad for free.

(I'm writing this on the plane, waiting for take-off. Wheee!)

Unless you subscribe to the VPN plan, many ports are blocked. Whatever. I'll take it for free!