Telecom New Zealand mobile data roaming changes

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#402838 10-Nov-2010 13:42

Wholly crap thats way more expensive than even NZ. I don't get why Japan being the "high tech country" can be so behind the rest of the world lol. Some things ultra high tech, others are very low tech. Had to fax a form through to them even lol.

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ALTRON

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#402851 10-Nov-2010 14:12

Yep they're total dinosaurs when it comes mobile data with heaps of red tape, tons of fine print about data allowances etc. Forms to fill out.

old3eyes

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#403236 11-Nov-2010 09:01

timmyh: When data roaming was defined by the 3GPP the telco world wanted to control access to the internet, so the way it works is that wherever you are in the world, your data has to come back to your home network to then go out to the internet - completely nuts!

What should have happened is that a single APN was defined, say "internet" which every mobile carrier implemented and every handset was pre-configured with. Then, when you were roaming, your handset connected to this APN for internet traffice and the the roamed network knew to pipe this traffic out to the internet locally. But alas...

Now that's just way too logical for the telcos to understand

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NealR

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#403389 11-Nov-2010 13:38

Actually as someone who has spent nearly 10 years writing standards for celluar services with a specific focus on Data roaming I can comment on why local Internet access is not common.

The quick summary is that we found that many customer services, especially non Telco ISP email, failed when local Internet breakout is used.

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Behodar

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#403391 11-Nov-2010 13:40

Plus when going via NZ, we can still use Twitter and Facebook in China :P

timmyh

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#403571 11-Nov-2010 19:47

NealR: Actually as someone who has spent nearly 10 years writing standards for celluar services with a specific focus on Data roaming I can comment on why local Internet access is not common.

The quick summary is that we found that many customer services, especially non Telco ISP email, failed when local Internet breakout is used.

Neal

With respect, this would be because the local mobile operator is blocking various traffic types out through its firewall. So part of the APN definition would've been the type of IP addressing and the firewall rules. Internet access of mobile data shouldn't be any different to WiFi, fixed line etc.

NealR

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#403728 12-Nov-2010 08:14

With respect....the major problem has been with ISP Email servers blocking access from IP address ranges that they had not considered "safe". APN definition was never considered a problem as this was something we knew we needed to address in the standards development.

Like I said, after nearly 10 years of working in the 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards groups with a specific focus on data roaming I know a little bit about this topic. :)

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#403731 12-Nov-2010 08:20

timmyh:
NealR: Actually as someone who has spent nearly 10 years writing standards for celluar services with a specific focus on Data roaming I can comment on why local Internet access is not common.

The quick summary is that we found that many customer services, especially non Telco ISP email, failed when local Internet breakout is used.

Neal

With respect, this would be because the local mobile operator is blocking various traffic types out through its firewall. So part of the APN definition would've been the type of IP addressing and the firewall rules. Internet access of mobile data shouldn't be any different to WiFi, fixed line etc.

As NealR said... Most ISPs block incoming connections from outside their network. Very unusual to find an ISP - or mobile operator that block outgoing email connections. Your comment doesn't stack up...

Zeon

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#403744 12-Nov-2010 09:05

NealR: With respect....the major problem has been with ISP Email servers blocking access from IP address ranges that they had not considered "safe". APN definition was never considered a problem as this was something we knew we needed to address in the standards development.

Like I said, after nearly 10 years of working in the 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards groups with a specific focus on data roaming I know a little bit about this topic. :)

Seeing that NealR is talking about email services and the fact they only work inside certain ISP IP ranges I presume he's talking about the extortionate Telecom practice of charging a fee so you can pop or access via IMAP your account from another ISP. It's absolutely ridiculous but I guess Telecom try to be as unhelpful as they can for probably marginal money they make because of this.

Also I see no reason why an ISP can't run authentication on their SMTP server from address space outside their network. All major email hosting providers do without incident including Gmail whom are probably one of the largest.

If they are worried about hacking attempts etc. coming from abroad there are options like limiting the number of tries with an incorrect IP address from outside their network before initiating a time-out period for that IP. It is incredibly effective for example on fail2ban on linux.

I'm not trying to personally attack you here NealR and by the sounds of it your not on the email side of Telecom anyway. It may not even be Telecom (although I do suspect they have, or had at this attitude) and other carriers overseas.

ISPs should not be in the business of hosting email if their systems are not strong enough to offer access from any parts of the internet.

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sbiddle

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#403749 12-Nov-2010 09:10

And the issue isn't just an email one. Many companies use VPN's for remote access from laptops over public APN's and lock down access to specific known IP ranges as an additional security measure. Allowing VPN access for roaming staff would lose the ability to do this.

One other key issue is that managing data billing is so much easier when it's travelling back to the home network. Having this done by a foreign operater adds an entirely new layer of complexity!

timmyh

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#404141 13-Nov-2010 09:51

The quick summary is that we found that many customer services, especially non Telco ISP email, failed when local Internet breakout is used.

Neal

So if I understand correctly you are saying that when one of your customers is roaming you want to provide the same service as if they are still on your access network? Yes mobile data roaming technically allows this but at such a prohibitive cost that it's a complete waste of time. In reality users travelling are better off to buy local SIM cards or use WiFi. And for this to work effectively they need to know how to access their email servers using the special secure settings - which are hard to find and configure.

Really we are talking about fundamental approach to access network vs. services network. And frankly I don't think that Telcos should even provide email - and recent outages show that they struggle.

The internet is the services delivery network and the physical access network should only be used to get on the internet. Compare the ease of using Gmail or Hotmail on any access network anywhere in the world vs. trying to use Telco provided email.

To tie this back to the topic of this thread, the reason that mobile data roaming costs so much is cause the Telco's are still fighting against the separation of access and services.

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#404154 13-Nov-2010 10:21

Zeon:

Seeing that NealR is talking about email services and the fact they only work inside certain ISP IP ranges I presume he's talking about the extortionate Telecom practice of charging a fee so you can pop or access via IMAP your account from another ISP. It's absolutely ridiculous but I guess Telecom try to be as unhelpful as they can for probably marginal money they make because of this.

Also I see no reason why an ISP can't run authentication on their SMTP server from address space outside their network. All major email hosting providers do without incident including Gmail whom are probably one of the largest.

You might need to get with the times...

You can access any of Telecoms mail services (Yahoo!Xtra, Officemail, Telecom Businesshub) from external ISP's without paying any additional fees.

SMTP authentication is offered by default too (in fact required for most of these).

This is getting off topic however..

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drajk

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#404296 13-Nov-2010 18:54

graemeh: Much better to just get a local SIM or go WIFI :)

Thats what I generally do - just returned from a trip to Aus - recharged one of my Telstra SIMs with $100 and they gave me a bonus $900 of calling credit (incl calls to NZ) and 1Gb data - in 11 days only managed to use approx $300 of the calling, didn't use anywhere near that much data as had Three Data 12Gb/1yr prepaid for laptop and was just using Telstra for phone - at the end of the trip still had the $100 I recharged in my account although the bonuses disappear in approx another week (1month expiry).

Glee

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#405940 17-Nov-2010 15:26

sbiddle: One other key issue is that managing data billing is so much easier when it's travelling back to the home network. Having this done by a foreign operater adds an entirely new layer of complexity!

And yet they manage it quite easily for outgoing voice calls

myopinion

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#405955 17-Nov-2010 15:44

We just had a $1200 bill for an employee roaming in Aus. 120MB at $10 per MB. That was with Vodafone. Maybe Vodafone will come to the party soon.

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