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Work around for Vodacom’s mess

Jun 30, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Rants

I had a good grumble on Saturday about Vodacom’s unannounced implementation of an “improved mobile internet experience” (yeah, right!) and it seems like there’s a general uproar about the whole cockup.

It Online reports:

The South African chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-ZA) has reacted to Vodacom’s launch of a moble Internet service last week with a strongly-worded statement of condemnation, claiming the new services could actually degrade the Internet experience currently enjoyed by mobile users.

“Vodacom claimed to revolutionise Internet on the cellphone,” reads the ISOC-ZA statement. “They claimed that millions of Vodacom customers now (effectively) have the same experience of the Internet on their cellphones as they do on a PC.
“In reality Vodacom have broken the Internet for these millions of customers. This came without any warning and ISOC-ZA is united against this sort of behaviour.”
According to ISCO-ZA, a number of applications that include instant messaging, banking, specialised mobile applications such as email, Youtube, Twitter, Fring and at least a dozen others, are no longer working since the advent of Vodacom’s service.
“In technical terms, Vodacom installed a proxy service that was not sufficiently tested,” says the statement.
“The technology that Vodacom is using is not standards compliant and, considering Vodacom’s position as a dominant ISP, it should behave in a more responsible fashion.
“Furthermore, some of our members have claimed that Vodacom block many applications that it feels may threaten its business. While we have no direct evidence of this, we appeal to Vodacom to disclose what it blocks and intercepts on its networks.”
The statement goes on to advise users how to bypass the new Vodacom changes.

So how can you bypass the proxy service?

It’s pretty easy, just follow this process:

  • Tools
  • Settings
  • Connection
  • Access points
  • Vodacom
  • Options
  • Advanced Settings
  • Remove the Proxy server address

Thanks to Flint.za and fring for posting this fix. I’ve tried it on my N95 and it works.

What the hell is Vodacom doing?

Jun 28, 2008 | Rants

I don’t know what’s going on, but since Thursday 26 June, some applications on my phone don’t work anymore and my mobiwebs browsing experience has been completely screwed up!

And this has nothing to do with the N95 firmware upgrade I did on Wednesday because after that I tested all the bookmarks on my phone, tried out a few of my applications and everything was fine. But I noticed on Thursday night that things are definitely NOT fine anymore.

Vodacom seems to have hijacked my phone!!

They have plonked 2 horrible red and black bars at the top and bottom of each screen with the live! Logo, a search link and links to the top and bottom of the screen. How utterly invasive! The screen is bloody small enough thank you! And now I have to pay MORE for access because you’re adding to the page overheads?

AND the website screen layouts are now a total train wreck. They used to look 100% fine and now they are broken, with layouts that make no sense, odd buttons all over the place and much of the previously functionality of sites just no longer exists!

WTF??? How can they do this?!

I am extremely annoyed, to say the VERY least. I paid a lot of money for my phone and I use it a lot when I’m not actually in front of my computer. Now the browser is completely messed up, some applications no longer work and I may as well not even bother, it’s that painful to use. I think this is highly unethical and some heads need to do some serious rolling here.

Bear in mind too, those of you who are planning to get an iPhone … guess which network operator is supporting them??

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UPDATE 29/06/2008 – please see “Work around for Vodacom’s mess“.