Bad (formerly good) news from the big chaos of Wind...

[Landis]

Originally Posted by Motel75

I'm not sure I'd describe this as "good news" as the prices are still not all that great. I'm not sure I'd want to do business with a company like this anyway - the only reason for € 300/MB (never mind 900!) is to rob their customers. If the've done it once, they'll do something similar again.

It's still a lot cheaper than what you'll get by using your regular postpaid abroad. The Mega Options were never intended to be used outside of Italy. I'm sure WIND lost serious money when people started using them in their homecountries because it was actually cheaper than anything the locals offered.

In my opinion ~50mb for €30 is still a good deal if you travel a lot. You don't have to pay attention to what network you're using and don't have to fear a 4 or 5 digit bill coming home.

Any news on extending the Mega Options after July?

[Effendi]

Originally Posted by Landis

Any news on extending the Mega Options after July?

it's still soon, and in this period it's a total chaos, so it's better not to think about it!

[Effendi]

Of course they are not reliable, but it's a prepaid offer, you can use it if you find it good and stop whenever you want. And of course it's not such a good news, paying 300 euros per MB is still nonsense, but still better than 900

Of course there is USSD (*124*number#) for the countries where CAMEL has been dismissed.

[ticex]

This sounds like good news BUT I've checked just now and my usage on Mega-15000 yesterday & today in Belgium, Germany and UK is (as far as I can calculate) being charged at EUR 0.90/kb. Here's a copy of the entries in 155.it:

25/03/2007 13:02:26 SC*** Regno unito Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 22342 Byt. 19,636524 dettaglio
25/03/2007 13:02:00 SC*** Regno unito Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 144 Byt. 0,126563 dettaglio
25/03/2007 12:31:49 SC*** Regno unito Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 54052 Byt. 47,506641 dettaglio
25/03/2007 12:31:41 SC*** Regno unito Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 1198 Byt. 1,052930 dettaglio
25/03/2007 10:15:07 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 297271 Byt. 261,273346 dettaglio
25/03/2007 10:14:38 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 275 Byt. 0,241699 dettaglio
25/03/2007 10:10:41 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 2543 Byt. 2,235059 dettaglio
25/03/2007 10:07:06 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 48679 Byt. 42,784275 dettaglio
25/03/2007 10:01:10 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 23790 Byt. 20,909180 dettaglio
25/03/2007 09:53:11 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 8624 Byt. 7,579688 dettaglio
25/03/2007 09:52:19 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 1372 Byt. 1,205859 dettaglio
25/03/2007 09:50:13 SC*** Germania Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 19674 Byt. 17,291603 dettaglio
24/03/2007 05:01:38 SC*** Belgio Traffico Internet -- Connessione dati GPRS -- 181448 Byt. 159,475784

[Effendi]

Yeah, they had problems in converting to the new tariff... yeah, it's absurd, and I ask your pardon for having not written it sooner (but I knew it just few mins ago). They'll try again to change the tariff soon, but I have no idea when... they are in total chaos...

[Effendi]

Other news from Wind, this time bad and totally different from the supposed-to-be good ones!

You should receive an SMS saying that from the 28th of April the MEGA options won't work outside of Italy anymore! So no 90cent/KB tariff anymore, but just the normal tariffs, i.e.:
- € 0.0125/KB in Zones 1 & 2 (= € 12.80/MB)
- € 0.0250/KB in Zones 3 & 4 (= € 25.60/MB)

Anyway it's incredible the chaos in Wind, every week they change their options, and that's not only with the Mega ones...

[Gargoyle]

hope they don't suddenly change the mega options within Italy.

I may switch to vodafone anyway; with my Moto v400 I get very slow connect speeds with wind, nominally 284k but in reality it acts like a very slow old dialup. vodafone will cost more, abut €20 a month IIRC, plus €50 for the little USB plug-in box, but that's for true high speed.

[ticex]

Oh dear...well dissapointing as this news is it is kind of refreshing to hear a vaguely logical announcement by Wind. I guess that this will also apply to the WAP-pass option that, as far as I recall from previous posts, was charging at the old rate. However, perhaps this one has slipped Winds notice so maybe somebody with this option active could mention if they receive this notification SMS? I'll put a post if/when I receive the MEGA notification SMS as well.

So, for me it will be back to the old days of a different data sim for every country. In case it's helpful for anybody in preparation for the final death of MEGA-15000 I've used and tested the following prepaid solutions in the countries I've visited over the past week:

UK - T-Mobile (£1 daily maximum charge for unlimited data pass, with UMTS)
Belgium - Dixitel (€1.50 per MB or perhaps also €10 per month for a 10mb bundle sold as a "messenger" service - only EDGE, no UMTS)
Poland - iPlus SimData (UMTS - can't remember the exact pricing but it was really cheap)

and finally...of course in Italy I'll keep the Wind for national Italian usage!

Next month I'm going to also setup Aldi mobile for Germany and Low Call for The Netherlands. The only country I visit often that I'm struggling to find an economic replacement to Wind for is France....typically the French "cartel" of operators seem to have really un-economic tariffs with short voucher expiry etc. so I think it's maybe cheaper to use a roaming UK Virgin sim! I am kind of hoping for just checking email in France the Wind Wap Pass will keep working though

Perhaps if anybody else can add in any other alternatives for us European travelling data users that have got lazy and used to the convenience of Wind

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by ticex

Poland - iPlus SimData (UMTS - can't remember the exact pricing but it was really cheap)

UMTS with HSDPA/GPRS with EDGE - about 0.08€/MB in 100 kB increments, CSD/HSCSD about 0.08€/min with 1/1 debiting, can be reduced even by 16.66% by using large top-ups. In Poland even the most expensive prepaid GPRS costs slightly over 1.5€/MB (6.10 PLN but the latter is really much for us ).

[Effendi]

Of course that applies to Italy only.
Talking about Wind Pass, I never had any problem, I'm using it every month in Italy and abroad and I was always charged correctly. That's my favourite option, cheap and useful...