Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Been using GPRS for a while for both my phone & test units ( ) & I know almost exactly how much data will have been sent to via my GPRS sims ~ 4mb max, so bearing in mind over the GPRS1 tariff inclusive, should be approx 3mb charge = £12??? Anyway, thereabouts.

For the record, unit sends 100 bytes every 60 seconds, 24/7 but I won't have been using the unit constantly during that time. It has since been re-programmed to send only a) when moving & b) when ignition on.

I got a bill for 10x that

Last month I also estimated that they overcharged me by about £10 (less useage) but this is ridiculous!

So anyone that is using Internet access via GPRS with Vodafone - BE WARNED Check your bills as I don't think they know what on earth they are doing

I wouldn't be convinced that Cellnet/O2 know how much to charge you for either



PS - I would not want to be the Senior Supervisor on shift tomorrow morning, especially as they cut me off mid-flow this evening [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

carl

Hmm, when they charge by the byte is that per byte of payload or per byte transmitted? Although your unit only transmits 100 bytes of data every minute, it may be that the protocol encapsulation overheads increase this (though not tenfold....). OTOH there may be a minimum transmission block size -- if it's 1k then that's 10 times as much as you need.

MartinM

Sorry to hear that - the rates aren't per bit and your sending bytes?? - that'd be a factor of eight explained?

Sorry not to have phoned you - I've been off sick all week. Should be back tomorrow

Regards

Martin

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Wap charges by bytes... no minimum mentioned...

Have a think about it, noway are they expecting people to pay £1.00 to view two pages of scoobynet

ChrisB

Might be worth dropping MarkO an e-mail (www.otway.com), although he'll check here tomorrow I expect.

I think he's on Voda and uses GPRS a bit.

stevem2k

my voda gprs costs seem right ...

23p for 13.5k , 22p for 13k , 30p for 17.5k

Starter tarrif, so 2p ish / Kilobyte

You sure they have you on the right tarrif ?

Steve

MarkO

I've been using GPRS/WAP to read my webmail regularly via my Siemens S45 on Voda for a couple of months now. Okay, so it's not mind-blowingly cheap, but checking my mail now and again - probably every other day - (and the odd i-chat post-fest ) hasn't seen the costs mounting up too much. I think it was about 8 quid last month, and about 10-12 this month. I can double-check if you like.

All I remember was that it wasn't enough to justify moving to the higher GPRS tariff (10 quid for a MB, IIRC) so I left it 'as is'.

What sort of stuff are you using it for? Webmail is text-only and very lightweight, but if you're using it for any other stuff (e.g., the WAP traffic sites with maps etc) perhaps it's the images that are the issue?

One thing that might be worth bearing in mind is that if you're sending 100bytes every 60 seconds, 24/7, perhaps each send/receive is rounded up to the nearest/next 0.5kb (since the billing granularity is per 0.5kb)? By my calculations you've transferred about 4.2Mb of data, but if a rounding/minimum system was in place you'd have been billed for 21Mb - massively increasing your costs...


[Edited by MarkO - 5/23/2002 7:24:20 AM]

kryten

EEEEKKK!!!

Can they give you a breakdown of the data transfer times/amounts or is it just a 'per session' figure?

Want me to add usage logging to the receiver at some point?

I'll see what I can find out about the charge structure....

Its certainly been about right for my GPRS web/email usage.

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

29mb of data transfered & the majority of that inside 10 days

Needless to say, a lot of people don't actually understand at Voda what I'm on about but we're getting through the mire...

It seems clear that their metering system is crap as there are periods of a couple of hours where they reckon over 1mb has been used NFW!!!

I've offered to fire data at them so that they can log the throughput as it happens. In addition we can show (via the log) exactly when connections were made/attempted/lost and exactly when data came through, so we can actually prove how much data was sent/received over the month of April. Just a tedious exercise

Voda charge per byte so in theory their figures should be fairly accurate. O2 charge per session (time conected) & then round up to the nearest K. However, a session can be 24hrs so again fairly accurate.

I've checked with O2 as well, but all the SIMS with them are within the bundled amount (1mb) except for one that is 24/7 @ 60 second intervals. Slightly higher useage than expected prehaps (Est 5mb on the month) but that one was just for testing throughput. Will re-adjust so that it only sends when ignition on and vehicle moving, the default for the others which are under.

kryten

don't forget that one of the inputs was floating and it was sending X times per second for a while.....

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Only in periodic bursts but that was before installed in test car & let lose on the world (ie not in heavy useage period)