An end of CSD WAP for the UK

Ricky is taking a break from watching Blyk to bring us the following:

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I picked up this article from The Register. On the 9th of July T-Mobile UK will stop CSD WAP connections and all customers will have to use an alternative such as GPRS, 3G and HSDPA!

Is there still anyone in the UK that still uses CSD WAP?

I remember about 6 years ago when some of the UK operators were offering unlimited CSD and I was one of those who used it loads as I had no internet at home! Looking back now we had the amazing speed of 9.6Kb/sec! I am sure that all of the SMS Text News contributors could not manage with this rubbish speed! However imagine how small Ewan’s last bill would have been from Vodafone if they only offered this speed, no qik, no shouzu, nothing!

One thing I hope that does not happen is that WAP sites continue to offer just plain simple text version. The most obvious example that I use daily is train times something in my opinion does not needs loads of pictures, the information should be kept as plain text so it downloads very quickly with our ever increased data speed being offered!

I have a feeling that the majority of SMS Text News readers will not be using CSD WAP, however if you are and you are a T-mobile plan which includes some WAP minutes, head over to their website to see if you are affected. It seems that older plans are the only ones that are affected. One very interesting point is that they are converting any wap minutes offered with these plans into voice minutes! Not data, which to me is slightly odd, you would have that would have given a couple of hundred MB instead!?

One thing to mention over the GPRS, Edge and 3G is that T-Mobile offers a cap rate of £1 per a day internet access for personal use and not using your phone as a modem which is much better value then £2.50/month for 30 minutes of WAP usage some customers are currently paying!

Finally if you are still using CSD WAP, I urge you to try GPRS (if your handset is capable) I think you are in for a shock in comparison to speed but also the cost, oh and welcome to 2008! J