Free mobile voice, text and data plans coming to UK | Hacker News Reader

Free mobile voice, text and data plans coming to UK

bbc.co.uk

40 pointsfunkylexoo23 comments

Has anyone seen the film the Kingsmen? [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsman:_The_Secret_Service#Pl...

Seventeen years later, Professor James Arnold is kidnapped by unknown assailants, led by Internet billionaire Richmond Valentine and his henchwoman Gazelle. One of Hart's compatriots, "Lancelot," attempts to stage a rescue, but fails as he is cut in half by Gazelle. Valentine, known for his philanthropy, continues to meet with various heads of state and VIPs; some of whom go missing afterwards. He also announces a giveaway of SIM cards, granting free cellular and Internet access.

LOL I jut saw the movie a week ago and this is so scarily similar. Especially after this is coming after the movie... makes me want to stick with my paid plan. You know hang with the Devil you know and not this new seemingly benevolent angel. LOL

Seen last Monday and my first thought after reading the title of the post :-)

I came here to say that haha

Lol, yeah that was my first thought, as well :-)

Though at this point, Zuckerberg and his Internet.org is more similar to Valentine's plan (excluding the genocide, probably) :-)

On a related note: Kingsman has some very nice camera work!

In Poland we had free data plans for a couple years now from company called Aero2 - they won the right to use a certain frequency,but only under the guarantee that they would offer free data usage on their network to everyone(for up to 5 years I think?). So I know a lot of people who bought cheap 3G modems and got their simcard with Aero2 just to have free internet at home, there are no usage limitations, except for the speed limitation(is limited up to 5mbps)). There is no contract either, you order the simcard online and can use it straight away.

There used to be no usage limitations except the 512Kb/s speed limit mandated by the regulator but later they introduced session length limits (60 minutes) and started requiring captchas on every connect. It's not very convenient or useful any more.

Just in case any entrepreneurs are reading this, I could live with that.

Such a package would also help my students a lot as well. We can probably find refurbished laptops from local recyclers the issue has always been the cost and faff factor of an Internet connection. A 3G mobile Internet pay as you go dongle is affordable now and again (£2 per 24 hour period, £4 for 3 days &c with low download caps for streaming content) but not all the time.

UK: I currently use a stunningly unreliable broadband connection which is around 6km from the local exchange, itself getting on in years but not scheduled for replacement. I have to pay a line rental and then a monthly fee for a broadband package on-top of that. About 2 miles from here they have fibre-to-cabinet and download speeds that max out the wifi card in my old Thinkpad (around 3Mbytes/sec).

A reliable half megabit even would be fine for remote desktop and email and wasting time on forums. I do big downloads from local cafe anyway because of the frustration factor.

From the Guardian coverage:

> FreedomPop is different to most mobile phone service providers because it only uses mobile data, employing an app available for Android and iPhone to send and receive text messages and make calls that are not carried over the traditional mobile voice network.

Still, free data is worthy of attention even if the calling/texting experience sounds iffy.

There have been plenty of these sorts of MVNOs in the past. For example, Ovivo tried to stay afloat by offering subscription plans above its free tiers. Still went bust.

When something is free there will always be huge uptake of it (see also: NHS). Some people will even get around the limits by having a collection of SIMs rather than pay for using the service (just like people will wait to go to the local GP to get an item for their child free on a prescription rather than get it for £2 from any pharmacy).

I share your skepticism about FreePop, and shall hang onto my GiffGaff sim with the £5 a month 'goodybag'. I'm your typical very low average monthly revenue customer.

On the NHS, I think we will need to disagree. Most people pay a prescription charge[1], to the extent that my own GP gives me a private prescription for the very low cost BP painkillers I use when my lower vertebrae are playing up as it is cheaper than paying the prescription charge.

The NHS is free at the point of need - I think most people in the UK know that it is paid for from general taxation, and very few people actively want to change that.

[1] http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Prescriptionc...

Now: would there be any market for data on location/activity from the large number of SIMs registered with such a company?

Freedom Pop, ugh my experience with them has been one of bait and switch. I bought a hotspot from them and I ended up canceling a couple of months after that due to unauthorized charges and suspicious account upgrades. To add insult to injury you have to call them to cancel your account something that took me hours to finalize. The one bright spot is that their customer service do not contest at requests to drop fees/charges it must be a common request from customers

This will be perfect for IOT devices

Oh wow, I didn't think of that when I saw this, but you're right. With this, I could place devices everywhere, in my car, my summer house, my garden, wherever, and they could all communicate with a central server.

I should probably work faster on that secure messaging protocol for embedded devices I wanted to design.

Something like shh?

Do you mean SSH? No, it's basically ECC keys that devices can sign their requests/responses with, over a message queue, combined with a simple pairing protocol to "trust" keys on initial setup.

Do they allow multiple SIM cards for the same person?

After my teenage son manage to run up £389 pounds of calls in one month on a package with "Free" calls I've been a bit wary of "Free" anything... :-)

Mind you was all my fault - when he got his phone he didn't make calls, ever, so I didn't pay attention in the shop when they explained what "free" meant. However, teenage behaviour changes drastically at various points and suddenly vast amounts of calls were being made to girls...

Usually they refund this kind of bill.

I think the extra service of getting a phone number in a different country is almost better than the free allowance. Although more and more people I know abroad are using data bound services more than they are calling/texting.

The catch is full data storage and surveillance by the UK gov.

Well that's not on when I pay good money to Vodafone for the same service.

That feature will be available to all UK customers very soon judging by Mrs May's hints recently. No opt-outs.

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