NIC HARALAMBOUS

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Did Vodacom break their mobile internet?

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 yourmobile, and you are a Vodacom subscriber, I'm sure you've run into somedifficulty especially with sites like Twitter.The Internet Society of South Africa released a statement stronglycondemning Vodacom's actions. The full statement is below.Let me know if you need some additional info. ISOC-ZA's past chairman AlanLevin is the official spokesperson for ISOC-ZA on this, and his contactdetails are below if you want to chat with him.Hope you have a great weekend!Cheers,Sentient Communications CCISOC-ZA strongly condemns Vodacom behaviourOn Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Vodacom claimed to revolutionise Interneton the cellphone. They falsely claimed that millions of Vodacomcustomers now (effectively) have the same experience of the Interneton their cellphones as they do on a PC. In reality Vodacom have brokenthe Internet for these millions of customers. This came without anywarning 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, Fringand 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 thepublic 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 moreresponsible fashion. Furthermore, some of our members have claimed thatVodacom block many applications that it feels may threaten its business.While we have no direct evidence of this, we appeal to Vodacom to disclosewhat it blocks and intercepts on its networks.Happily, some users have worked out how to bypass the new Vodacom changesand ISOC-ZA urges all mobile Internet users to make use of this should theytoo be unhappy with Vodacom¹s actions.There are a number of bypasses freely available on the Internet, and aresimple to affect.For example: If you use a Nokia phone then the following should work:Access:ToolsSettingsConnectionAccess pointsVodacomOptionsAdvanced SettingsRemove the Proxy server addressAbout ISOCThe Internet Society is a global not-for-profit membership organisationfounded in 1991 to provide leadership in the management of Internetrelated standards, educational, and policy development issues. It haschapters in over 90 countries around the world. Through its currentinitiatives in support of education and training, Internet standardsand protocol, and public policy, ISOC has played a critical role inensuring 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 InternetEngineering 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.