Greece HSPA (prepaid and postpaid offers) - Page 4

caliston · 29-12-2008, 21:44

Argh, that's annoying. I've been making heavy use of Wind Plus Non-Stop.

What's the easiest/cheapest postpaid contract to get those addons? I saw mention of a no-monthly-fee contract in the 'Greece GPRS' thread. If you have a contract and buy an addon, is it for every month of the contract or just for the next month? Or can you just cancel it after a month? Do networks have English-speaking operators I can call to make these changes, or is it necessary to go to a shop?

Are there any other roaming/etc options available? I see the Wind Italy is EUR3/MB when roaming... still not that cheap.

caliston · 30-12-2008, 09:44

Or I don't suppose you can buy a new COSMOTE/WIND 40MB addon in less than a month? So you pay EUR3.49, get 40MB of non-portal data, and then pay 3.49 again for another 40MB. That would be EUR0.1/MB - a bit better. Or is it restricted so you're only allowed one lot of 40MB per month?

gmmour · 01-01-2009, 18:07

All operators are bilingual. Wind 1 is a no-monthly-fee contract (the genuine one), DON'T go for Wind Flexy 0 or Cosmote and Vodafone no-fee contracts, they actually have a 12 month contract period, whilst Wind 1 is the only program that has no fee and no contract period (remnant of the old Q1 program of Q-telecom, taken over by Wind)!

You can get the ADSM add-ons on contracts as mentioned on this site: http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?langid=2&pageid=1213
But, it says the add-on is available on ALL consumer tariff plans but in the parentheses Wind 1 is NOT mentioned... Look for yourself or call them +306935601260, all operators are english speaking...

If you go for the WAP add-ons, all operators now offer them with 40 MB off-portal (i.e. Web browsing)... And you can activate them on Wind, Cosmote and Vodafone prepaids...

Wind also offers that PAYG ADSM packs which cost 10 Euro for 1GB for 1 day and 30 Euro for 1GB/day for 7 days... Pretty expensive. But you can surf 1GB per day for let's say two weeks in Greece with 60 Euro... You can also sign up for a mobile broadband contract, if you don't get a subsidy (i.e. a USB HSPA modem) with it, you can cancel whenever you want, so it will be the most inexpensive solution if you plan to stay for a month, more or less... They say you can't cancel with them before 2 months, but you actually can and if they refuse to do so you can apply for (totally free) number portability to a prepaid and they have to cancel your contract as soon as the portability is activated (nowadays it's 2 weeks according to greek regulations)...

Thus, get a mobile broadband contract from any company and cancel it when you leave, either by applying to them or if they refuse to cancel before a 2 month minimum duration (which is not legal actually but they do it), just apply for a free number portability to another operator's prepaid and your contract is automatically cancelled even though the 2 month minimum contract duration hasn't passed... If you have a credit with them (because your first account payment will include 2 installements) then you can sort it out to get your money back on the credit card (provided you have signed up to pay by credit card)...

Hope it was not confusing....

Feel free to ask anything.

Happy New Year!

caliston · 03-01-2009, 14:54

Thanks, I'll give one of those a try (not decided which yet)

caliston · 05-01-2009, 18:25

I've got WIND working. I also have a COSMOTE SIM - can you tell me how to activate the 40MB package on COSMOTE - I can't find anything about it on the website. COSMOTE happens to have far better signal where I am in Athens (100% in both 2G and 3G, WIND and Q only have 2G 40-50%)

Also, now WIND and COSMOTE have imposed limits to WAP data, is there any way to see how much data you have remaining?

caliston · 08-01-2009, 18:18

I've managed to get the COSMOTE WAP package working, so here are some details. COSMOTE's WAP access is called My View, and the EUR4 for 40MB deal is called My View'n'Web.

When you want to go started, text 'WAP' to 1333. This activates WAP access - the first time you use it you get 15 days free access for up to 40MB of internet sites. They send you a configuration SMS which needs a PIN - this comes in the preceding text (my PIN was just the number 1).

The settings are:
APN: wap
Proxy IP: 10.10.10.10
Proxy port: 8080

For some reason I couldn't make it work on 3G even though my phone (Nokia N70) was showing 100% 3G signal - phone said 'packet data not available'. The same happened for the Internet APN (see below). If I force my phone to GSM (2G) only, it does work.

The COSMOTE WAP homepage is http://wap.cosmotemyview.gr/
I haven't checked as I'm still on the introductory 15 day package, but I think the My View'n'Web monthly pass can be bought via this site from your phone.

HTTP and HTTPS do work just as on the WIND proxy - I haven't checked to see whether there's a size limit or any mangling of content. SSH using PuTTY as I described in the Greece GPRS thread works also (changing the proxy address and port)

I've only just started using it, but given the much better signal I've had with COSMOTE I think I might choose it in preference to WIND.

COSMOTE also do a non-proxied real internet connection, whose APN is "3g-internet". I suspect this will be expensive. (Normal WAP data is charged at EUR0.0119/KB so EUR12.2/MB and I think internet data may be the same)

DaveRo · 09-01-2009, 11:26

I looked at Cosmote's and Wind's new WAP offers when I was in the Ionian in October. Both said that the Poseidon weather site was part of their portal - so maybe excluded from the 40Mb. Can you tell whether it is?

Poseidon

I also talked to a guy in a Vodafone shop in Vathi on Kefalonia. I told him why we (sailors) needed data access on prepaid cards. He said that Voda might be doing 'something' on prepaid 'next year'.

He was probably just being polite - or stringing me along - but it might be worth enquiring in a Voda shop while in Athens.

Dave (in the UK - returning to Greece in April)

caliston · 09-01-2009, 19:06

I'm not sure how I'd check. I haven't found anything like a data meter on either COSMOTE or WIND where I can see how much data I've used to date. So the only way I'd be able to test it is use exactly 40MB internet data and then see if that sites was then charged. But given the punitive rate for non-included data (the rest of my EUR10 topup would go in about 500KB) I don't really want to risk going too close to the 40MB limit.

I'm not sure a salesman in a relative backwater would know the inside track on what Vodafone in Athens are planning, but it would be a useful advance. Really I'd like for Hutchison (Three networks in UK, Australia, Italy, Sweden etc) to buy COSMOTE or WIND and then expand Three Like Home (where you get identical tariffs at home and roaming in Three countries) - then Three UK or Ireland's generous Mobile Broadband tariffs would apply. Ah well...

gmmour · 11-01-2009, 10:07

Sorry for the late responce, I had the chickenpox at age 24 and spent the holidays in bed...

Well, you don't get 3G because you have to ask them to "activate" 3G on your line, this means videocalling and 3G data... Just call their cc and ask for "3G to be activated on your line"...

caliston · 18-01-2009, 10:29

I hope you've recovered now... that's not a pleasant experience (my father had it at age 53).

Thanks for the tip. I haven't got around to doing it as 2G isn't too bad - on limited bandwidth connections it's actually quite useful in saving the kilobytes.

Now the bad news. COSMOTE's My View'n'Web pass is strictly 40MB/month. It won't let me buy the monthly pass until after the 15 days trial period has elapsed even though I've used almost all the 40MB, so I'm guessing once you've used your 40MB you can't buy any more data until a month after you bought the pass. In addition, the monthly pass renews automatically so you have to remember to cancel it when you're done.

I've just tried renewing my WIND Plus and the same happens - a text to reply saying I already have it, and no debit from my account.

[ some days later ]

But there's a silver lining to this cloud. I've now gone quite a way above the 40MB in my COSMOTE trial period, and my balance hasn't reduced. The traffic I've recorded is about 60MB, but I imagine I've done more like 80MB. So buying a COSMOTE SIM for EUR5 and just using the 15 day trial period might be a way forward for 'unlimited' internet (ie until they notice and block it). Unlike WIND, I don't think COSMOTE have a 1MB size limit nor an annoying mangling proxy.

Even if they do limit this offer to 40MB, there's another way out. Just buy a pile of COSMOTE SIMs for EUR5 each. Activate the trial period, use for 15 days or until you exhaust the 40MB plus the EUR1 of credit (that'll get you about 100KB at the metered rates) at which point it should stop working. Throw away the SIM and use another one. That works out at EUR5 per 40.1MB, or about 12.5cents/MB. Unless they lock the trial offer to IMEI (which sounds unlikely) then you can get through as many SIMs as you like. I bought another SIM in the interests of research but haven't tried this because of the lack of limit above. I would advise not buying more that two or three SIMs at a time in case shops get suspicious, or run out of stock. But Germanos and OTE/COSMOTE shops are quite plentiful, so that shouldn't be a problem.

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	(#31)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	29-12-2008, 21:44 Argh, that's annoying. I've been making heavy use of Wind Plus Non-Stop. What's the easiest/cheapest postpaid contract to get those addons? I saw mention of a no-monthly-fee contract in the 'Greece GPRS' thread. If you have a contract and buy an addon, is it for every month of the contract or just for the next month? Or can you just cancel it after a month? Do networks have English-speaking operators I can call to make these changes, or is it necessary to go to a shop? Are there any other roaming/etc options available? I see the Wind Italy is EUR3/MB when roaming... still not that cheap.

	(#32)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	30-12-2008, 09:44 Or I don't suppose you can buy a new COSMOTE/WIND 40MB addon in less than a month? So you pay EUR3.49, get 40MB of non-portal data, and then pay 3.49 again for another 40MB. That would be EUR0.1/MB - a bit better. Or is it restricted so you're only allowed one lot of 40MB per month?

	(#33)
gmmour (Offline) Member Advanced Member Posts: 92 Join Date: 03 Oct 2006 Country:	01-01-2009, 18:07 All operators are bilingual. Wind 1 is a no-monthly-fee contract (the genuine one), DON'T go for Wind Flexy 0 or Cosmote and Vodafone no-fee contracts, they actually have a 12 month contract period, whilst Wind 1 is the only program that has no fee and no contract period (remnant of the old Q1 program of Q-telecom, taken over by Wind)! You can get the ADSM add-ons on contracts as mentioned on this site: http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?langid=2&pageid=1213 But, it says the add-on is available on ALL consumer tariff plans but in the parentheses Wind 1 is NOT mentioned... Look for yourself or call them +306935601260, all operators are english speaking... If you go for the WAP add-ons, all operators now offer them with 40 MB off-portal (i.e. Web browsing)... And you can activate them on Wind, Cosmote and Vodafone prepaids... Wind also offers that PAYG ADSM packs which cost 10 Euro for 1GB for 1 day and 30 Euro for 1GB/day for 7 days... Pretty expensive. But you can surf 1GB per day for let's say two weeks in Greece with 60 Euro... You can also sign up for a mobile broadband contract, if you don't get a subsidy (i.e. a USB HSPA modem) with it, you can cancel whenever you want, so it will be the most inexpensive solution if you plan to stay for a month, more or less... They say you can't cancel with them before 2 months, but you actually can and if they refuse to do so you can apply for (totally free) number portability to a prepaid and they have to cancel your contract as soon as the portability is activated (nowadays it's 2 weeks according to greek regulations)... Thus, get a mobile broadband contract from any company and cancel it when you leave, either by applying to them or if they refuse to cancel before a 2 month minimum duration (which is not legal actually but they do it), just apply for a free number portability to another operator's prepaid and your contract is automatically cancelled even though the 2 month minimum contract duration hasn't passed... If you have a credit with them (because your first account payment will include 2 installements) then you can sort it out to get your money back on the credit card (provided you have signed up to pay by credit card)... Hope it was not confusing.... Feel free to ask anything. Happy New Year!

	(#34)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	03-01-2009, 14:54 Thanks, I'll give one of those a try (not decided which yet)

	(#35)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	05-01-2009, 18:25 I've got WIND working. I also have a COSMOTE SIM - can you tell me how to activate the 40MB package on COSMOTE - I can't find anything about it on the website. COSMOTE happens to have far better signal where I am in Athens (100% in both 2G and 3G, WIND and Q only have 2G 40-50%) Also, now WIND and COSMOTE have imposed limits to WAP data, is there any way to see how much data you have remaining?

	(#36)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	08-01-2009, 18:18 I've managed to get the COSMOTE WAP package working, so here are some details. COSMOTE's WAP access is called My View, and the EUR4 for 40MB deal is called My View'n'Web. When you want to go started, text 'WAP' to 1333. This activates WAP access - the first time you use it you get 15 days free access for up to 40MB of internet sites. They send you a configuration SMS which needs a PIN - this comes in the preceding text (my PIN was just the number 1). The settings are: APN: wap Proxy IP: 10.10.10.10 Proxy port: 8080 For some reason I couldn't make it work on 3G even though my phone (Nokia N70) was showing 100% 3G signal - phone said 'packet data not available'. The same happened for the Internet APN (see below). If I force my phone to GSM (2G) only, it does work. The COSMOTE WAP homepage is http://wap.cosmotemyview.gr/ I haven't checked as I'm still on the introductory 15 day package, but I think the My View'n'Web monthly pass can be bought via this site from your phone. HTTP and HTTPS do work just as on the WIND proxy - I haven't checked to see whether there's a size limit or any mangling of content. SSH using PuTTY as I described in the Greece GPRS thread works also (changing the proxy address and port) I've only just started using it, but given the much better signal I've had with COSMOTE I think I might choose it in preference to WIND. COSMOTE also do a non-proxied real internet connection, whose APN is "3g-internet". I suspect this will be expensive. (Normal WAP data is charged at EUR0.0119/KB so EUR12.2/MB and I think internet data may be the same)

	(#37)
DaveRo (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Fan Posts: 153 Join Date: 07 Jul 2006 Country:	09-01-2009, 11:26 I looked at Cosmote's and Wind's new WAP offers when I was in the Ionian in October. Both said that the Poseidon weather site was part of their portal - so maybe excluded from the 40Mb. Can you tell whether it is? Poseidon I also talked to a guy in a Vodafone shop in Vathi on Kefalonia. I told him why we (sailors) needed data access on prepaid cards. He said that Voda might be doing 'something' on prepaid 'next year'. He was probably just being polite - or stringing me along - but it might be worth enquiring in a Voda shop while in Athens. Dave (in the UK - returning to Greece in April)

	(#38)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	09-01-2009, 19:06 I'm not sure how I'd check. I haven't found anything like a data meter on either COSMOTE or WIND where I can see how much data I've used to date. So the only way I'd be able to test it is use exactly 40MB internet data and then see if that sites was then charged. But given the punitive rate for non-included data (the rest of my EUR10 topup would go in about 500KB) I don't really want to risk going too close to the 40MB limit. I'm not sure a salesman in a relative backwater would know the inside track on what Vodafone in Athens are planning, but it would be a useful advance. Really I'd like for Hutchison (Three networks in UK, Australia, Italy, Sweden etc) to buy COSMOTE or WIND and then expand Three Like Home (where you get identical tariffs at home and roaming in Three countries) - then Three UK or Ireland's generous Mobile Broadband tariffs would apply. Ah well...

	(#39)
gmmour (Offline) Member Advanced Member Posts: 92 Join Date: 03 Oct 2006 Country:	11-01-2009, 10:07 Sorry for the late responce, I had the chickenpox at age 24 and spent the holidays in bed... Well, you don't get 3G because you have to ask them to "activate" 3G on your line, this means videocalling and 3G data... Just call their cc and ask for "3G to be activated on your line"...

	(#40)
caliston (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 11 Jun 2007 Country:	18-01-2009, 10:29 I hope you've recovered now... that's not a pleasant experience (my father had it at age 53). Thanks for the tip. I haven't got around to doing it as 2G isn't too bad - on limited bandwidth connections it's actually quite useful in saving the kilobytes. Now the bad news. COSMOTE's My View'n'Web pass is strictly 40MB/month. It won't let me buy the monthly pass until after the 15 days trial period has elapsed even though I've used almost all the 40MB, so I'm guessing once you've used your 40MB you can't buy any more data until a month after you bought the pass. In addition, the monthly pass renews automatically so you have to remember to cancel it when you're done. I've just tried renewing my WIND Plus and the same happens - a text to reply saying I already have it, and no debit from my account. [ some days later ] But there's a silver lining to this cloud. I've now gone quite a way above the 40MB in my COSMOTE trial period, and my balance hasn't reduced. The traffic I've recorded is about 60MB, but I imagine I've done more like 80MB. So buying a COSMOTE SIM for EUR5 and just using the 15 day trial period might be a way forward for 'unlimited' internet (ie until they notice and block it). Unlike WIND, I don't think COSMOTE have a 1MB size limit nor an annoying mangling proxy. Even if they do limit this offer to 40MB, there's another way out. Just buy a pile of COSMOTE SIMs for EUR5 each. Activate the trial period, use for 15 days or until you exhaust the 40MB plus the EUR1 of credit (that'll get you about 100KB at the metered rates) at which point it should stop working. Throw away the SIM and use another one. That works out at EUR5 per 40.1MB, or about 12.5cents/MB. Unless they lock the trial offer to IMEI (which sounds unlikely) then you can get through as many SIMs as you like. I bought another SIM in the interests of research but haven't tried this because of the lack of limit above. I would advise not buying more that two or three SIMs at a time in case shops get suspicious, or run out of stock. But Germanos and OTE/COSMOTE shops are quite plentiful, so that shouldn't be a problem.