I just received a very interesting email.

Here it is:

Hi Nic,

Thought this might of interest to you. If you access the Internet via your
mobile, and you are a Vodacom subscriber, I’m sure you’ve run into some
difficulty especially with sites like Twitter.

The Internet Society of South Africa released a statement strongly
condemning Vodacom’s actions. The full statement is below.

Let me know if you need some additional info. ISOC-ZA’s past chairman Alan
Levin is the official spokesperson for ISOC-ZA on this, and his contact
details are below if you want to chat with him.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Sentient Communications CC

ISOC-ZA strongly condemns Vodacom behaviour

On Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Vodacom claimed to revolutionise Internet
on the cellphone. They falsely claimed that millions of Vodacom
customers now (effectively) have the same experience of the Internet
on their cellphones as they do on a PC. In reality Vodacom have broken
the Internet for these millions of customers. This came without any
warning and ISOC-ZA is united against this sort of behaviour.

Various applications that include instant messaging, banking,
specialised mobile applications such as email, Youtube, Twitter, Fring
and at least a dozen others, are no longer working. In technical terms,
Vodacom installed a proxy service that was not sufficiently tested.
As one blogger so correctly pointed out: “Vodacom is essentially using the
public as subjects for an alpha test of their technology” (Flint.za 25 June)

The technology that Vodacom is using is not standards compliant and,
considering Vodacom¹s position as a dominant ISP, it should behave in a more
responsible fashion. Furthermore, some of our members have claimed that
Vodacom block many applications that it feels may threaten its business.
While we have no direct evidence of this, we appeal to Vodacom to disclose
what it blocks and intercepts on its networks.

Happily, some users have worked out how to bypass the new Vodacom changes
and ISOC-ZA urges all mobile Internet users to make use of this should they
too be unhappy with Vodacom¹s actions.

There are a number of bypasses freely available on the Internet, and are
simple to affect.

For example: If you use a Nokia phone then the following should work:
Access:

Tools
Settings
Connection
Access points
Vodacom
Options
Advanced Settings
Remove the Proxy server address

About ISOC
The Internet Society is a global not-for-profit membership organisation
founded in 1991 to provide leadership in the management of Internet
related standards, educational, and policy development issues. It has
chapters in over 90 countries around the world. Through its current
initiatives in support of education and training, Internet standards
and protocol, and public policy, ISOC has played a critical role in
ensuring that the Internet has developed in a stable and open manner.
It is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and other Internet-related bodies.

I’ve removed names until I can do a bit more background research and chat to a few more people. But I just tried to access twitter mobile…it didn’t work. This doesn’t look promising for Vodacom and their mobile internet tactics.