First they broke the web - now Vodafone break push email

Had this in from SMS Text News reader Reuben Raveendran, talking about his experiences with the new Vodafone Mobile Internet service. He’s very kindly allowed us to quote his email, so over to Reuben..

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On Wednesday last week I called up Vodafone to add the £7.50 “Mobile Internet” bundle to my account and was looking forward to using it the next day (activates overnight) on my Nokia E61. I used the “internet” GPRS access point like I have in the past and was joyful that I no longer had to pay £2 per megabyte for Good Mobile Messaging and Roadsync or so I thought…..
 
I did my usual RSS feed reading that Thursday morning and read about how Vodafone had butchered the internet. Various individuals commented that you can avoid the butchering when web browsing on your phone by switching your preferences to “PC Standard” or using the “internet” access point instead of the Vodafone Live access point. I then wondered if usage of the “internet” access point was actually covered by the £7.50 bundle and today I can unhappily confirm that it isn’t because my unbilled usage for last week has finally updated and I was charged whenever I used the “internet” access point. To be fair Vodafone do state that you have to use the wap.vodafone.co.uk (Vodafone Live) access point to use the “Mobile Internet” bundle. (second paragraph under Pay Monthly customers)
 
The big problem is Good Mobile Messaging refuses to work through the Vodafone Live access point because of the gateway in the middle that breaks the end to end connection. Roadsync will connect to an Exchange server with Activesync Direct Push but will disconnect after 2.5 mins with a timeout error. This doesn’t happen when using the “internet” access point. So if you plan to use push email with Vodafone forget about signing up  with Vodafone’s “Mobile Internet” data bundle because it just won’t  work. It would be nice if you could warn your readers about this. It’s back to WiFi for me and I’ll just have to wait a few more months for my contract before I’m off to T-mobile or Three where I don’t have to pay £2 per megabyte for a few megabytes of email…..

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Thanks Reuben for sharing your experiences – but oh dear me. Why can’t this stuff just work? I’ve seen tube posters around London extolling the virtue of using mobile email with Vodafone. I think it’s part of the same campaign that suggested mobile TV was a good way to cheer up your morning commute into work on the train. I wonder sometimes whether the marketing people actually speak to the product and technical people at mobile operators..