Want better mobile Internet access? Well, moving to the British Isles might be in order, or at least a trip to Ireland and the U.K. Vodafone has announced that has teamed up with Google, Myspace, eBay and YouTube in an effort to provide a more enhanced and robust service with those sites.
Additionally Vodafone mobile Internet users will access compressed and rearranged content of these and other Web sites to make it more mobile-friendly. The debate continues to wage on what is the best method for displaying Web sites on a mobile phone, but Vodafone is taking the route of compressing the content for its specific phones. Hopefully this should allow more streamlined use of the mobile Web. We’d hate to think anyone might fail to put in that eBay bid!
The service will be available to Vodafone’s 3G and 2.5G customers, and will allow users to surf the mobile Web for a fee of 99 (Euro) cents, or pay a fee of €9.99 per month. Of course there will be what Vodafone is calling “fair usage” price caps. Considering that YouTube and MySpace are in the mix we can hope that usage cap is actually fair.
If Vodafone takes a page out of T-Mobile UK’s book, the “fair use” would be 1GB/month.
Of course, I know plenty of users who go over that limit every few months and have never received a warning from the operator. Plus, unless you’re using the phone 24/7, hitting a gig of transfer is still a challenge.
Well, that’s until the iPhone arrives… That’ll change the game, being so smooth for web browsing.
I wouldn’t count on any fair use above 200MB… we’ve had Internet for Mobile phone in Portugal for 3-4months now and it is €7.5 for 100MB/month, or €.99 for 10MB/day