This is for all the NOP lovers and haters!
Different people have different stories about NOP. So here's mine.
I live in Bengal and have recently started using NOP. It costs Rs. 104 a month. Using the default phone browser, only limited sites can be visited. Also there's a download limit of 3mb per file. Previously people could hack into Airtel Live and enjoy unlimited free download which is now blocked. The culprit is APN name. The "aitelwap.com" is for NOP and "airtelive.com" for Airtel Live. Other settings, even the proxy server for connection are same. If you connect through Airtel Live, they charge 10p/10kB which is huge (Rs. 50 for a 5MB song).
I am using Nokia 6600. You might say that its an outdated phone but who cares if its working for me. Different phones have different hardware and different software capabilities. Nokia 6600 is an s60 v2 phone. Ok, not going into too much technical stuff, it doesn't mean its outdated. For specs. some N series phones also use same operating system as 6600 but with little updated features.
For the first two days I continuously searched the WAP world (its different from the HTML internet on the computer) to find software that could let me open yahoo mail, orkut, gmail, etc. I tried to install opera mini 4.1, older version 3, but none could connect to internet using NOP. They all need GPRS not NOP connection.(Remember NOP connects through WAP not GPRS access point). This might sound confusing but thats that. Only Mobile Office can connect through GPRS access point (whose APN is "airtelgprs.com" and has a different setting from LIVE or NOP) which can provide full access to HTML world (same as on computer).
Now the good part. I found an older opera mini 1.2. This was modified by Russians to enable proxy settings in opera mini and add download features to it. Original Opera Mini didn't have those features. After setting the proxy in opera, it magically started surfing the web. Orkut (mobile version), yahoo mail, gmail all work fine and fast. Opera uses its own servers to modify the web pages so that they load faster. Pictures are reduced in size, pop ups blocked, ad contents stripped....and text only pages are lightning fast.
Airtel charges Yahoo Mail at Rs.10 per 7 days if used through Airtel Live. But opera mini bypasses it and opens original yahoo mail site..cool na...
As I said different mobiles have different capabilities, a software working on one phone might not work on another. A friend of mine has a still older N-Gage which runs opera mini 2. It doesn't work on my phone (inspite of me having better phone). I am able to surf through PC also. In fact I am posting this one using NOP on PC only. Proxifier does allow download size of more than 3mb but the connection drops frequently and the download might get corrupted. Lucky are the guys whose connections do not snap even temporarily.
By the way MO is charged at Rs.498/month or Rs.25/day in Bengal.
Suggestion:
If you are using an EDGE enabled phone, please take trouble to use MO instead of NOP. It costs more but its worth it. EDGE phones can provide connections upto 177kbps and 236kbps for different models. GPRS on the other hand is much slower at 32-48 kbps. My 6600 gives 3-6KBPs (that's around 24-48kbps). Also you can surf any website and use any messenger software like 160by2, ebuddy, etc on MO GPRS connection avoiding all the hassles of using old and unreliable software and the various tricks to make them work.
Take care everybody.
