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

[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 ).