Dial up is always slower than GPRS.
I hate to browse with dial-up because of the stress of read-it-quickly-because-you-are-paying-by-the-minute feeling.
If you calculate the amount of MB that can go trough a dial-up connection at 9600bps in one minute you will find that that same amout of GPRS trafic will cost about the same. Same cost, GPRS faster -> GPRS wins.
If you forget to disconnect dial-up you go bankrupt, you don't have to worry about that with GPRS.
Without ongoing traffic you receive incoming call warnings with GPRS, with dial-up you have busy line until you disconnect
cant you use a isp that charge monthly ? eg freeserve �6.99 per month
surely this would work out better than �2.35 p/MB
I agree that it is indeed stressful to connect via dial up since you will be charged a per minute rate. There are alot of isp providers nowadays that provide unlimited access at reasonable rates. That solves the stress of connecting through dial up. But then again dial up connection is indeed slow. GPRS has the advantage of being fast and being always connected. The beauty of it is that you get billed only for the data you really downloaded. I called up my local cellular provider and i was told that they wont charge me ANYTHING for connecting or for browsing the web. That means i can browse all i want! Without being billed. I can even send email for FREE. The only time they will start charging me is if i downloaded stuffs like programs, pictures etc. Maybe you can contact your service provider. They might have the same policy 😊
[quote="Anonymous"]
cant you use a isp that charge monthly ? eg freeserve �6.99 per month
surely this would work out better than �2.35 p/MB[/quote]
In my country none of the existing 3 GSM operators have a monthly flat-fee (eat-all-you-want) plan, neither for dial-up nor for GPRS, neither for pre-paids nor for contracts.
Otherwise I guess I would prefer a flat-fee dial-up tarif over a pay-per-kb GPRS one.
who is your cellular provider ? i like the sound of that priceplan
With the 'Anytime' Dial up packages from freeserve you have to specify what number you are dialing from (To prevent multiple use of one account) and so they can tell BT not to charge you for the call.
The problem with this is that you can only specify a landline number, and even if you did mange to connect to the 'Anytime' server, you would still be changed the 0845 rate by your Service Provider as they wouldn't recognise it as a free number.
The only other thing I can think of is using a PAYG Dial up with Claranet, who can provide you with a 0208 number (London) which means the time you are using to surf will come out of your free minutes which are included in your talk plan and will not be charged at extra cost.
I do hope that UK service providers will pull their finger out soon and give us affordable flat_rate_use_as_much_as_you_like GPRS tarrifs, I personaly think Orange will be the first to do this as everyone else seems to be light years behind them in pricing structure, with Vodafone coming a distant second place.