data charges in italy

[donpedro]

Hi Effendi,

Thanks for the quick reply!
Here is some information I found on your site:

TIM: €0.20 fixed charge per session for TIM WAP Portal. €0.006/KB for Internet/HTTP – 1KB minimum.
Wind: €0.30 fixed charge per session for Wind WAP Portal. €0.003/KB for Internet/HTTP – no minimum.
3: € 0.60 connection fee, then €0.004/KB
Vodafone GPRS: € 0.30/5 min (plus € 0.50 set-up fee)
Vodafone UMTS: € 0.60/5 min (plus € 0.50 set-up fee)

So if I understand you correctly, the minimum charges for TIM and Wind are irrelevant in our case because they only apply to WAP traffic and not Internet/HTTP?

Re 3, do you know if there is any place on their site where the 12KB trigger is confirmed in writing? I found the €0.60 minimum charge in connection to use of what they call “Fast Mobile Modem” (using babelfish for translation to English…). And there was a mention of a product called Naviga3 that costs $9 per month and had a €0.15 minimum charge. One footnote I found several places mentioned that a session is considered expired after 30 minutes of inactivity. But I couldn’t find anything about the 12KB of usage for a new session to be charged.

Vodafone had a page that explains data pricing at http://www.190.it/190/trilogy/jsp/ch...y_skip_md=true. From what I can tell there is a minimum charge of €0.29 per session for Internet/HTTP traffic outside of Vodafone Live (and then €1 per 15 minutes usage).

Thanks again for your help. I have worked in the mobile industry for a long time and this Italian data plan structure is still one of the more confusing issues I’ve come across…

-don

[Effendi]

Originally Posted by donpedro

So if I understand you correctly, the minimum charges for TIM and Wind are irrelevant in our case because they only apply to WAP traffic and not Internet/HTTP?

exactly, you got the point.

Originally Posted by donpedro

Re 3, do you know if there is any place on their site where the 12KB trigger is confirmed in writing? I found the €0.60 minimum charge in connection to use of what they call “Fast Mobile Modem” (using babelfish for translation to English…). And there was a mention of a product called Naviga3 that costs $9 per month and had a €0.15 minimum charge. One footnote I found several places mentioned that a session is considered expired after 30 minutes of inactivity. But I couldn’t find anything about the 12KB of usage for a new session to be charged.

the 12KB are written nowhere, but it comes from experience. Now I'm not sure if they are still 12 or a bit less since I use 3 only with Naviga3 option (which has NO setup fees for the first 50MB/day), but I guess they still use this strange way of billing since they had many problems when they billed the 60 cents setup also when people didn't connect to internet...

Anyway let's wait and see if AndreA or other Italians can confirm it.

Originally Posted by donpedro

Vodafone had a page that explains data pricing at http://www.190.it/190/trilogy/jsp/ch...y_skip_md=true. From what I can tell there is a minimum charge of €0.29 per session for Internet/HTTP traffic outside of Vodafone Live (and then €1 per 15 minutes usage).

that's the "per minute" billing, which is actually a per 15 minutes billing, plus set-up fee, and it's really bad for your program. But you can ask Vodafone to have the per KB billing, which should be without setup fee, but I'm not sure and finding something on Vodafone website is some sort of miracle...

Originally Posted by donpedro

Thanks again for your help. I have worked in the mobile industry for a long time and this Italian data plan structure is still one of the more confusing issues I’ve come across…

that's obvious, we're in Italy!