Without broadband…
No this isn’t a rant about service providers, or UK ones anyway. Imagining life without broadband these days is very difficult as most airports, hotels and cities have widespread wireless access points and the few instances they don’t work my 3G card is not far away, at least until I travel further away. I’m sitting writing this on the end of a GPRS connection that took a long time to get sorted, but let’s start from the beginning.
Arriving at Jyväskylä Airport on Wednesday afternoon I logged into the wireless at 8 euros for an hour’s surfing to catch up on my e-mail knowing that after this I would incur a £10/MB fee for international data roaming, a ridiculous charge which makes Internet use more expensive than a premium rate phone line. I have never seen an airport so deserted but when my flight landed and took off with a new load of passengers, the entire hall was empty and I had to wait at the cafe till to pay for my drink and sandwich. Apparently this wasn’t very unusual which doesn’t surprise me.
Jyväskylä Airport – Deserted
The following day I pop into a shop to buy a pre-pay SIM card. When I tried this just over a year ago there was no data/GPRS service on pre-pay cards but this time the pricing is printed on the back of the pack at 1.50 euros/MB which is more in line with the not-so-bulk packages available in the UK. I spent the best part of two hours trying to configure it both on my phone and using my data card. On my phone I needed to send a text message “GPRS TILAA” to a short code number to activate GPRS services on the card but I wasn’t able to send any SMS messages. In the end I found that this was related to the configuration options on the phone relating to using GPRS to send the SMS messages in the first place rather than a GSM link. The DNA (the phone company) helpline was friendly but didn’t really help me fix this problem so I was left to my own resources. The error messages given out are just about useless in diagnosing the problem.
I also tried to get the SIM working on my Vodafone 3G Broadband Data card, but it wouldn’t even show me the network list. After spending a long time on this, I called Vodafone customer services back in the UK and I was informed by a helpful chap that the card was network locked and couldn’t be unlocked. I then had to use Bluetooth to my Nokia 9300. I finally managed to get the instructions on how to configure GPRS Internet access on my laptop from a 1MB PDF file which I had to download on my 9300.. and then I was online.. for about an hour at which point my 10 euros of call credit ran out and the connection began disconnecitng intermittently.. When on GPRS – do not browse normal websites.. you’ll eat up funds double quick time.
Finally today I recharged the pre-pay SIM (conveniently done electronically at a shop just by handing them a credit card and the phone number) with 100 euros which should cover me for quite some time.. as long as I make sure to avoid browsing the web like I am used to doing on my 3G card in the UK.
Fortunately as of tomorrow I will have broadband or wireless of some sort (I hope) so I don’t have to count the bytes 