11 posts tagged “x-series”

I've had enough of Mumbai.  I want to speak to someone in Scotland or Maidenhead.

What am I waffling on about?  The fun and games that is trying to get something resolved when speaking to people in a call centre half a world away!  On my 3 mobile phone I have X-Series Silver.  It's an internet add-on that's supposedly unlimited but with a fair-use limit of 1GB (or 2GB - depending who you talk to or what Ts&Cs you read).  When you get near to the limit you're sent an SMS to warn you.  However, I only ever get an SMS telling me I've gone over - never an "about to".

Users, including myself, keep getting these messages even if they've not gone anywhere near the limit.  As such, most of us ignore them.  You finally get your bill in and find out you well under.  Of course there should be a way to keep an eye on what you're using - and there was - just not anymore!

I've spoken to two people so far today, presumably in Mumbai.  No matter what, they're stuck with their script and as hard as I try they won't deviate from it.  It's kinda like talking to robots.  It's also funny how their accents become harder to understand the more you press them (or is that just me?)  One minute their English is crystal clear, next minute you have to keep asking them to repeat themselves as they sound like the guy from Channel 4's Phonejacker!

Ho hum.

Ideally I'd have the direct line to the Scottish chap that sorted out a previous internet issue earlier this year.  He knew what the problem was likely to be straight away.  He had the same service on his own handset so had personal experience too.  He didn't suggest any generic "solution" and it was obvious he wasn't stuck with a script.

You'd think I might know someone at 3 that could fast track any issues I have, but I don't!  That's probably a good thing in a way though as I get the same treatment as any other customer.

Back to my search... (excuse any typos, I've got some phoning to do!)

This is 'work in progress' and I'm still not 100% sure this actually works - so far it seems to but anyhoo...

I have lots of problems with streaming audio via the internet connection on my phone (an N95 8GB) and the loaner from WOM World (Nokia 6220 Classic).  I have no idea how HSDPA (aka 3.5G) works, but for some reason I had a hunch that turning it off may improve matters.  I did so last night (on the 6220) and my streaming problems seem to have gone away.

I even managed to stream two radio stations at the same time and neither dropped the connection in the 10 minutes I had them going.

Living really close to an HSDPA enable 3 UK mast, it would seem counterintuitive to turn HSDPA off - but if it works, it works!

Three mouse mat

Regarding my internet connection woes, I've put the SIM provided with my trial Mobile Broadband "dongle" into my Nokia N95 8GB.  All the websites I tried worked, Yahoo! Go worked - not a problem.  Just put my SIM back in and none of the same sites nor Yahoo! Go work.  Will the tech support guys on 333 now accept my phone isn't the problem?  I have little faith, but who knows!

I'll be ringing them shortly...

Just off of the phone to 3's Tech Support peeps.  They rang me up regarding my (lack of) internet access on my phone (I have their X-Series Silver which offers "unlimited" full interweb access).

For about a week now I've had problems accessing anything other Planet 3, Google and parts of Yahoo!  I've only briefly had outside access beyond those for short periods on Thursday and Sunday.

The first guy I spoke to (Thursday afternoon) alleged he'd done nothing, yet whilst on the line to him my internet came back on!  Well, it only lasted a couple of hours and I got back on the phone.  The next guy got me to jump through many, many hoops - some I realised were completely insane (and meant I had to re-do all my phone's personalisation - it also seemed to mess up Bluetooth and WLAN settings), yet I duly followed the instructions.  It got me nowhere and he was stumped.  Today...

Well, today I got a call from another bloke and he asked me to try my SIM in another phone.  So, I did - I put it in the 3 Skypephone.  He asked me to go to a bunch of sites, I did, and none of them loaded.  He then asked me if there was a 3Store nearby - to which I replies, yes.  It turns out I need to go there and try my SIM in a bunch of known working phones.  The likelihood after that is that'll need my phone flashed to the latest software/firmware.

To me that sounds wrong.  I'm no tech expert but I've got this hunch that if I replicate the internet access problem when my SIM in another phone, the SIM (or rather my service/account) is where the blame lies.  But, instead, I have to traipse into town and go through this silly process as if I don't they won't "escalate" it further.  All the time and effort it takes to get my phone the way I want it, the applications, the content, the settings and bookmarks.  I'm gonna have to do that all over again to make them happy and I'd happily put money on my phone not being the problem!

I got an email from a reader, let's call him Dan as, er that's his name!  Anyway, he'd come across a previous blog post of mine whilst seeking out more info on the text message warning he'd received from 3 UK.  In my original post: 3, give me back 'data usage', give me a heads up and sort out your FUP as it's FUBAR! I mentioned how I got a text message in the middle of the night telling me I'd gone over my fair use limit and that I should cease using data until the start of my next billing cycle.  You can see the text message below:

3 giving me no advanced warning and their link doesn't work either

Today though, it seems Dan wasn't alone - many 3 customers have experienced the same problem in the wee small hours and some, it would appear, have gone nowhere near even the 1 GB limit (let alone the 2 GB that is now the  actual "secret" limit).  Check out Ben Smith's article on SMS Text News: 3UK data ‘fair use’ policy problem and gerrymoth's: No internet for 7 days, I’ll never survive on his nokiAAddict blog.

The problem now seems to be resolved... at least for the time being.  The silver lining is that lots of people have aired their views on 3's notification and billing systems as well as their lack of a data usage meter (we used to have one and it worked but they took it away and don't seem to realise!)

Anyway, other than the beep, beep, beeps of the texts keeping people awake at night, I wouldn't lose any sleep over the warnings.  Below you can see my bill that I've just received for the period when I was warned.  The first picture is of the summary.  The bill quite clearly states that I've not used even one meg outside of the allowance...

3 data usage summary - Bill date: 13th May '08

And below is a break down of each day's use.  You can see I kept on using the internet on my phone after the warning, albeit more sparingly!  You can also deduce that the fair use allowance is clearly more than the 1 gig mentioned in the small print.

Day by day breakdown (I was warned on the 1st)

It's a shame they haven't gotten their act together on this as otherwise 3 UK's data/internet offerings are great and, IMHO, can't be beat.  Having said that I have a sneaky suspicion of late that they may have throttled my service as Nokia Internet Radio isn't working nearly as well as it used to be but I need to do a bit more digging and delving to find out if that reall is the case or not.

When I could get Sling Player working on my phone it was great.  Unfortunately it wouldn't work with my replacement wireless router.  Oh well, I thought, I'll just have to plug the wired one back in again.  Still couldn't get it to work.  Tried really hard, did everything I could think of and wasted a lot of time.  In the end I figured it just wasn't worth it and my Slingbox is just sitting there months later with blinking lights and no way to communicate with the outside world.

I could've just checked which WiFi router Sling Media recommends and gone out and got one but I just don't have the money to waste on another dud and there's no way of knowing if that wouldn't cause some other problems somewhere else.

I can no longer use Sling over 3G on my phone anyway as I've since dropped my X-Series service (from 3 mobile) down from Gold to Silver.  Saves me £5 p/m and really, was a non-working Sling Player really worth £5?!!

Anyway, it now appears that Sling have made what amounts to be a fool-proof Slingbox - the Slingbox is the modem, it plugs straight into a cable connection.  It really should be plug and play.  Initially US cable TV only.

Found via Electricpig

The above is a web-only clip from British channel Five's 'The Gadget Show'.  It features presenter Jon Bentley testing out and musing over VOIP* application Fring.  The demonstration doesn't go too smoothly, which is a shame as Fring is pretty good IMHO and if I were to criticise it it wouldn't be for anything seen in the clip.

I noticed that the two handsets used were on Three and that one of them was an N73** (X-Series by the looks of it).  Hardly cutting edge, is it Five? ;-)  I'm just about to give mine to an eleven year old (and I imagine they'll be less than impressed!)  As they're using Three I think they needn't worry about the data plan.   VOIP isn't barred in Three's T&Cs (unlike with some other operators) and the price of the plan (presumably they'll be on £5 per month) would ensure a lot of very, very cheap calls and IMs!

Five, Three?  What is it with company branding these days!?! ;-)
*VOIP = Voice Over IP (voice calls routed over the internet)
**the other one being a 6120 classic I do believe...

The last post demonstrated what can be done with an all-you-can-eat plan and it didn't really even scratch the surface.  Not bad for £5 a month (that's about $10 or €7.50)!

However, I pay £10 a month and get a little bit more.  What more could I want?  Well that extra fiver a month gets me 80 hours (every month) of streamed media from my home to my mobile wherever I can get a signal from 3 (even in places like Hong Kong or Australia!)

On my phone I can watch or listen to videos, music and photos that are on my PC using a thing called ORB.  It's okay but not great.  On it's own it's not really worth any extra money (the sound and picture quality are pretty awful and having to leave your computer on is a pain) but Slingplayer more than makes up for it.  The icing on the cake is that customers on the £10 plan get the Slingbox for free on a 12 month subscription.  The box retails at a penny under £100 in the UK so it's quite clearly a bargain!

So, what is this box and what can it do?  Well you connect up the box to whatever your TV is hooked up to - so that could be satellite TV, a cable box, Freeview even CCTV.  The Slingbox then connects up to your broadband and sends the audio and video through the internet to your phone or PC wherever in the world you can get 3 (phone) or broadband (PC)

Once set up you can also control your set-top-box on your phone.  You can change channels, look at the programme guide, change settings and control playback on PVRs like Sky+ and TiVo.  Most major makes and models are supported but unfortunately not all.  If your Freeview box or satellite receiver isn't supported, you can still watch it but can't control it.  So, not much good if you want to watch a couple of different channels when away from home!  Well, not unless you have someone at home that you can call up.  Which leads me to another downside - if someone is at home watching what's on that box, when you tune in and turn over they'll be watching what you want to watch.  So, okay for singletons and those that can spring for a couple of cable/satellite subs - not okay for families on a budget.

I'll look at the pros and cons of the Slingbox and the Slingplayer software in more depth in a future post.  In the meantime check out these pictures of my Slingbox/player in action!

I should point out that these are all screengrabs direct from my phone.  The pictures are pretty much how you'd see them on the phone.  As you can see, I like watching the news from Russia, the weather, The Simpsons and Anderson Cooper stuck in a burning forest (Bill O'Reilly would be better though)