In the US at least, every subscriber to T-Mobile's prepaid service gets free access to the mobile web. Before you get too excited I have to point out that it's a walled garden and a small one at that. In the garden you can find the usual pricey carrier downloadable games and ringtones, view your plan's prepaid balance and expiration date and add money to the account.
But there's more, T-Mobile gives prepaid users unlimited access to seven off-portal sites at no charge - and they aren't bad sites either. ABC News is linked directly from the phone's default homepage and six more that work if you type in the URL. Incidentally this free access is the only way to use the web on T-Mobile To Go. The carrier doesn't offer any other data plans on prepaid, which seems to be a missed revenue opportunity. I'd gladly pay the $5.95/month that T-Mobile charges contract customers, or even a little more, for access to the whole web but its not offered.
Update, the available sites tend to change over time. As of July 23, 2010 the following sites work on most T-Mobile USA prepaid handsets.
Included on the T-Zones Portal :
ABCNews (wap.go.com/wireless/abcnews/xhtml) US and internationl news, sports and weather.
Not on the T-Zone home page but available by entering the URL are:
Amusing Info (tmobile.aspiro.com/s/WDispTm?S=menu&F=Main) is a simple text-only trivia site with drink recipes, pick up lines, a body mass calculator, "love" horoscope, dream symbols, an interactive page showing the symbolic meaning of different flowers and a personality test. This is another carrier specific page, if you try to access that url from outside the t-mobile network you land on a spamy domain parking page.
Yahoo (m.yahoo.com) Most Yahoo features including news and Email are available, although some images are broken.
BBC (news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_news/index.wml) The wml version of the BBS's huge news, sports and entertainment portal is fully functional including images.
The Weather Channel (tmobile.xhtml.weather.com/) Current and long range weather forecasts, radar and precipitation maps.
NBC Day Area Mobile Entertainment (m.nbcbayarea.com/m/device/index.php) Local news, weather and entertainment listings for the San Francisco Bay Area.
The T-Zones search function will find some of these sites if you search for "ABC" , "Amusing", etc. Search for, load and bookmark these sites. For the others including the BBC, Radar, Traffic.com and Yahoo you will have to enter the URL's ( tmobile.xhtml.weather.com, etc.) manually, once they load, bookmark them too.
The sites available on the free T-Zones do change from time to time. 4INFO, ESPN, Traffic.com and CNN were available for years, but are gone now. Check the T-mobile to Go board at HowardForums for collective intelligence on what works and what doesn't.
Free T-Zones works with any browser that can connect through a WAP gateway or directly to the internet, including Safari on unlocked iPhones, Opera Mobile and the built in browsers of most phones. It doesn't work with proxy based browsers like Opera Mini or the SkyFire Beta because access to the proxies is blocked. An exception is that the Android phones sold by T-Mobile and the Google Developer phones are blocked from T_Zones.
If you are not using a T-Mobile branded handset, you will need to input the T-Mobile data settings. Refer to your phone manual or Google 'GPRS settings "your phone make and model"'
The relevant settings information for T-Mobile are:
- Access Point Name (APN): wap.voicestream.com
- Homepage: http://wap.myvoicestream.com
- WAP Gateway IP Address: 216.155.165.50
- WAP Gateway Port: 9201
Not of these apply to every phone. At a minimum you will need the APN. Non-smartphones generally require the WAP Gateway IP and port. If the phone asks for Username , Password or DNS you can safely leave them blank,
It's really pretty cool that T-Mobile is giving away a subset of mobile web for free to prepaid users. The sites are well chosen and cover the basics; news, sports, weather, directions and traffic.
It's unclear what T-Mobile's goal with free T-Zones is. They are providing a no-risk introduction to mobile browsing - creating awareness and buzz among pre-paid customers. But once customers see the value of the mobile web, T-Mobile doesn't offer them an upgrade path, other than going to postpaid which isn't a realistic choice for the average prepaid user who spends about $23/month. Postpaid with a data plan would more than double that, something I don't see many prepaid users willing to do just for data. But I believe that T-Mobile could sell a lot of $10 unlimited data plans to existing pre-paid customers.
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Check it out on your mobile phone for free internet. Also click on the "Galaxy Browser" to type in your own website URL to view it free!
and search for wat u wnt it will search with google
Going directly to m.yahoo.com gets me "413: Page Cannot Be Displayed."
My APN is set to wap.voicestream.com
One corner that needs help - I can get to m.yahoo.com and see my mail. However, sending mail from Yahoo requires filling in a CAPTCHA which shows up as a broken image. I tried to look at the web page source code but did not succeed in determining whether the issue is that the CAPTCHA is imported from another domain.
Any ideas how to send mail from yahoo using this scheme?
I'll try and set up a new account.
It seems CAPTCHA is only asked once per account?
I'll try from my phone next!
Thanks again.
Thanks
Can any body else try using skype on TMO TOGO for the purpose of establishing the right settings for everyone who wants to do it.
Can you provide more details so that we can figure out the settings.
From the home page you should have access to CNN, ESPN and ABC News. You can get to the other sites I mentioned by entering their URLs (except Radar.net which no longer seems to be available).
OS: Windows Mobile 6.5
GPRS Settings:
> Connects to: The Internet
> Access Point: wap.voicestream.com
> User name: -Blank-
> Password: -Blank-
> Primery DNS: 0.0.0.0
> Secondory DNS: 0.0.0.0
> IP Address: -Blank-
Proxy
> Connects from: WAP Network
> Connects to: The Internet
> Proxy : 216.155.165.050:8080
> Type: HTTP
> User name: -Blank-
> Password: -Blank-
Now I have a second proxy for PagePlus:
> Connects from: The Internet
> Connects to: WAP
> Proxy Address:Port: ppcgw1.vzwreseller.com:8080
> Type: WAP
> Username: min
> Password: vzw
I do not know if the second proxy plays any role in running Skype but who knows.
Hope it will work
this is a great deal since i dont need to get a data plan. if skype calling was over 3g rather then EDGE then i probably wouldn't even use any phone minutes. hell i hardly use phone minutes anyway since im only on the $1/day plan and i use my phone after 7p.
im thinking of gettin a nokia n900 as my next phone and that is partly to see if i get free skype on that as well and i can utilize full 3g with that phone since it has tmobile's 3g bands.
one thing people need to keep in mind is i lost everything (skype, exchange, google etc) when i swapped my sim onto another phone and then back to my iphone. changing apns didn't help either. it was only until i went from a simplemobile sim on my iphone for a month and then back to my tmo sim that i regained all that. so if you dont want to lose all that stuff dont swap your sim.
Supposedly you can unlock the Verizon Storm and use it on T-Mobile but it doesn't have T-Mobile's 3G bands so you will only get Edge.
YOU CAN GO TO OTHER WEBSITES TOO, T-MOBILE'S MAIN SITE BEING ONE OF THEM!
It's a big page for a mobile phone to load, but full support and the ability to shop for accessories (and new phones) on this free internet is awesome. http://www.t-mobile.com
Iphonefan I did your process, and it works perfectly!
BTW you can also access m.yahoo.com too!!!
Now I can check news sports email away from wifi. (things I usually read)
Thanks Again