Introduction:
A friend of mine has been showing me the benefits of using e-mail on his mobile. It works great, he can communicate with customers or friends from wherever he is, without it using my bandwidth or time. Obviously I've been interested too, especially since the iPhone and other devices seem to support this e-mail more and more. I didn't think they'd be any problem...
What Happend?:
Ok, so here is the story. I buy a smartphone to use with mobile email. An HP iPAQ 514. Sure, it's not something O2 directly support but there shouldn't be much trouble should there?
If you've ever set up a mobile phone with GPRS before, its insanely easy. You either go onto your Mobile Phone companies website, send them a text or give them a call, and they send you across the settings for your individual mobile. Here's the first problem - they had no idea what my mobile was. Fact is, it runs Microsoft Windows Mobile - they sell other devices with this Operating System. In the end, I got them to send me across the details over email, and I had to set it up myself. Sure, it was fairly simple to do, but since O2 sell other Windows Mobile devices, I would've thought they'd have been set up for this. At this point, I could get to Google and use Opera Mini and Internet Explorer built in just fine. I hadn't tried e-mail at this point.
It's interesting to mention, O2 already knew that they didn't know what type of mobile I had. Obviously whenever you connect your mobile to their network, it must send some kind of identifier to them, to know what format to send the settings over. (I verified this with a fairly useless customer service droid). Obviously they had no idea what an HP iPAQ was...
To cut a long and boring story a lot shorter, I decide to buy the "O2 Web Bolt On" which gives me "Unlimited use of Mobile Web on my PAYG phone". The "O2 Mobile Web" service list states that I can "Pick up my work emails. If your work email system supports POP3 or IMAP4, you can send and receive company emails. Please check with your IT manager."
Sounds great doesn't it? Exactly what I need, email from wherever I am for only £7.50 a month. Only one problem - IT DOESN'T WORK! I try to set up my mobile for use with my own email server, and I have no luck.
So I phone up O2 and they aren't helpful at all. Apparently it's something they don't support? I'm not sure if this meant they "don't support" it or "we don't know what the hell you're talking about". Either way, they site said they did and I should have no problems.
My friend is also with O2 but he pays a contract (POSTPAY service) and his SIM and Handset work fine with his and my mail server. I asked him over and we swapped put my SIM card in his phone, pulled all the PAYG settings down (Yes, they are different!), and it does not work either - GPRS wont even connect for anything other than "Web Browsing". Putting his contract SIM card in my phone will all the Contract settings worked great. It only didn't seem to work when using a PAYG sim card!?
Having another look around the O2 website, we couldn't find any notice stating that this was the case - that the PAYG customers do not have anything except WEB access (i.e. E-Mail and so on don't work) - but did find a guide on how to use O2's mail servers. Well, on trying this, it worked on PAYG. So, O2 are forcing Pay As You Go customers to use their own substandard POP3 servers and blocking everyone elses!
WE contacted O2 Customer Support and they told us: "There is a network technical limitiation because PAYG customers use a different access point that is not compatable with GPRS." We think this is a lie because O2's own sub-standard mail servers work fine via POP3, and all other mail servers are blocked.
If anyone has the time or energy, I'd love to see an nMap scan or something done on O2 just to see what they do and don't block. I suspect it's down to the two proxy servers they use - there is wap.o2.co.uk/payandgo.o2.co.uk and mobileweb.o2.co.uk. Mobileweb is for Contract customers and supports everything, payandgo/wap.o2.co.uk don't support anything except for Web and access over SMTP/POP3 to mail.o2.co.uk.
The iPhone:
O2 UK advertise the iPhone on PAYG with "all the features". We were told on the phone by a Customer Support supervisor that the iPhone on PAYG will NOT be able to use these services, other than via Wi-Fi which face it, is not exactly our idea of mobile!
I have reported the case to several agencies in the UK. Hopefully something will be done about this. In the mean time, please spread the news!
Update: Apparently O2 lied when they said the iPhone doesn't work with eMail, it will if you pay an extra £10 a month, not £7.50 like their site says, and what contract customers pay. Anyone with any other handset still is being treated unfairly and cannot get their email.
Written by Techtoad.
Link to this page: http://xcns.co.uk/o2/email.php