Expensive Mobile Broadband Plans

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Expensive Mobile Broadband Plans

Damager

2125 posts

Uber Geek

#29051 20-Dec-2008 20:32

At the moment i have a 20 megs for $25.00 plan which served useful as i download emails to my Titan phone and with a 5 kb limit which is enough to get the gist of the email.

My Titan is unlocked to enable GPS and works a treat with Google Maps. As you can imagine 20 megs dies pretty quickly with just a few minutes of google maps and the gps while out and about.

The next plan (open term) is 200MB for $44.94 then 1GB (open term) for $67.44 <--- horrible!

The 24 month terms plans like the 200Plus plan arent too bad im not keen to go on a 24 month plan Will the WCDMA network arrival prompt better plans? if so then i dont want to be locked with an outdated plan with bugger all data allocation.

I would have thought in this day and age where promotion of mobile broadband, internet on the go etc are promiment, it's still absurdly expensive!

Nosied some of the aussie mobile telco plans and they have 300MB for $29.00 (open term) as long as your phone is on a plan!

Keen on others thoughts on this issue.

Cheers!

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honem

194 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#185377 20-Dec-2008 21:17

IDK what the case is now but when I was working at Telecom our default mobile data plan was frightfully expansive.

Like $4/k expansive.

The biggest problem was it wasn't that easier to figure out what it cost you on the default data plan. At the time there wasn't anything on the telecom web page you could find. People buying phones weren't advised. The only reason I knew how much it was waas I had managed to dig up a costings spreadsheet from the bowels of the Telecom intracnet.

I wonder has this changed ? Has Telecom been public with how much their default mobile data plan is ? Is there a pamphlet given to them at telecom stores now ?

I can remember giving lots of peoples credits on their mobile accounts for when their youngest had played with their phone and racked up tons of money on it :)

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jfnz

211 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#185386 20-Dec-2008 22:39

Please note: Any posts, comments, or contributions in this forum are posted by me as an individual acting in my own right and do not necessarily reflect the views of any company I work for, clients I've consulted for, or anyone else.

Damager

2125 posts

Uber Geek

#185487 21-Dec-2008 14:34

Anarkist: k

With a very unhelpful comment like that, how did you manage to get Trusted status?

Damager

2125 posts

Uber Geek

#185501 21-Dec-2008 16:00

honem: IDK what the case is now but when I was working at Telecom our default mobile data plan was frightfully expansive.

Like $4/k expansive.

The biggest problem was it wasn't that easier to figure out what it cost you on the default data plan. At the time there wasn't anything on the telecom web page you could find. People buying phones weren't advised. The only reason I knew how much it was waas I had managed to dig up a costings spreadsheet from the bowels of the Telecom intracnet.

I wonder has this changed ? Has Telecom been public with how much their default mobile data plan is ? Is there a pamphlet given to them at telecom stores now ?

I can remember giving lots of peoples credits on their mobile accounts for when their youngest had played with their phone and racked up tons of money on it :)

Here's the link to the current pricing, The casual rate is $9/MB

http://www.telecom.co.nz/content/0,6845,205980-203067,00.html

grb67

63 posts

Master Geek

#185515 21-Dec-2008 18:17

The 200mb plus plan is available open term for $39.95 + GST.
You can only change plans once per month, but there is now an online data useage check for Telecom mobile broadband.
http://telecom.co.nz/mbbmeter

raytaylor

4017 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#186108 25-Dec-2008 23:47

Is mgmaps avaliable for your phone - sorry i dont know much about the titan but i have the nokia 6275i and i have downloaded maps from google maps, and earth into the mini sd card on the phone. Approx 500mb for the major cities and towns. Only need to use the internet / wap to do a lookup query for an address which is usually about 2kb.

This is a much better way to do it.

Ray Taylor

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Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

Damager

2125 posts

Uber Geek

#186217 26-Dec-2008 22:45

raytaylor: Is mgmaps avaliable for your phone - sorry i dont know much about the titan but i have the nokia 6275i and i have downloaded maps from google maps, and earth into the mini sd card on the phone. Approx 500mb for the major cities and towns. Only need to use the internet / wap to do a lookup query for an address which is usually about 2kb.

This is a much better way to do it.

nice suggestion raytaylor. i checked out mgmaps and looks great. the process to install on a pda/windows mobile phone is quite a process but will give it a go. be nice if they had a simple installer though!

merry xmas!

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raytaylor

4017 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#186281 27-Dec-2008 17:56

You will also find that through digging in the forums you will find links to the programs used to download the maps onto your memory card. Its quite hard but works well once you have got it going.

Basically its something along the lines of
1) Format the memory card using your pc with a low allocation unit size - see the forums on info for this. Basically there are thousands of maps files and by default the files use up more than double than their auctual size unless you format the card correctly.

2) Visit some special website they set up (link in their forums) which has a google maps interface. Draw a box around the area and select the types of maps you want (maps / terrain / earth) and then select your zoom levels. This generates a small file that you download and open with gmapmaker and it downloads the auctual files.
I drew around all the major towns in the country and set the zoom level to something like 16
Then i just went around the whole country and set the zoom level to ~10 so i had maps of the state highways and most rural roads and then have greater detail only when im in a town.

If you do some searching through the geekzone forums or google-nz you should be able to find some cache packs that people have posted that you just unzip onto your card. Usually about 500mb in size.

3) Copy these onto the card, enable cache mode in mgmmaps on your phone and then point the cache directory to the cache on the card and turn off its live maps.

Basically it will only need to use internet to query directions from google so it can draw lines as it only has an image cache - not a street directory on the phone. Usually a query is 1-10kb so its no prob for you.

Anyhow a bit of hunting around in their forums and patience is needed to get it going.

Ray Taylor

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Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here