Three X-Series Internet plan is a great bit of marketing. Shame about the product.

Pocket-lint.co.uk (and many others) have reported that 3, the cellular carrier in the UK have revealed the price of the X-Series plans.

For £5 a month, X-Series Silver gives customers unlimited Skype to Skype calls, as well as unlimited instant messaging via Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger. Unlimited Internet browsing is also included.
For £10, X-Series Gold includes a tie-in with Slingbox. Customers will be able to access home TV and their home cinema systems via the Slingbox, as well as access all files on their PC with Orb. Gold also includes all the functions of the Silver plan.

X-Series is a combination of Smartphone, call plan and Internet access plan that in theory allows unlimited Internet browsing. It was announced last month and it sounded like a real step-change towards unlimited Internet access via mobile phones. Except its not.

I was suspicious when it was announced because of all the brands that were being talked about. Since when have you required an unlimited Skype-to-Skype plan if you already have unlimited Internet access? Because the plan does not include unlimited Internet access, that’s why. Its unlimited browsing not unlimited internet access. In fact its not really unlimited browsing either. Read on.

Its clear to see what’s going on here, especially when you consider the cheap price of the plan and that its only available when you get a new contract with the Nokia N73. (Sony W950i soon. Both Series 60 phones.) That means there’s no way of adding it to your existing plan and using your notebook or ultra mobile PC with it for internet access. I’m not even sure if they would allow tethering to the N73. (I’m finding it very hard to find detailed T&C’s)  It wouldn’t surprise me if the modem was locked out on this model. And if you want a different mobile phone, one of the nice HTC phones with a keyboard for example, you’ll have to go and buy it outright and swap the SIM over. A rather expensive solution. That’s if you’re allowed to do it. This is from the 3 small-print:

To use X-Series services, you need to buy an X-Series
mobile, sign up to a Pay Monthly price plan, and buy XSeries
Gold or Silver all from 3. You can only use our XSeries
services on X-Series mobiles.

I’m also wondering whether the Internet access, sorry, browsing will be proxied so that they can funnel and control the traffic. Grrrr. According to some of the small print, it might be a walled garden anyway:

When using the internet, you can’t use some websites
(including adult websites)

I guess you cold stream porn from your home server though.

If it really is a browsing only plan, you wont be able to FTP (I upload my images to my blog with Livewriter that uses FTP,) you wont be able to do your own streaming and you wont even be able to browse on non standard port numbers. I have a web server on a non-standard port that I use to stream my MP3’s. I bet it won’t work. Your own IM clients wont even work as its restricted to Windows Live messaging. In fact,  I bet all the client software is specially tailored too. No random port numbers or changing network config settings. Has anyone tried running gmail or google maps applications yet? What about IMAP and POP3 access. Is that going to work?  This is probably the reason that its only being done on Series-60. It would be too expensive and difficult to lock down a Windows Mobile phone.

Other restrictions are covered in a ‘fair use’ policy and these are just as horrible.

• – 5,000 Skype to Skype minutes per month.

• – Windows Live Messenger: 10,000 messages per month

• – 1GB per month for browsing

• – Orb and Slingbox: 80 hours a month with X-Series Gold

Lets summarise this ‘deal’ in car hire terms. With this contract, you can go almost anywhere (we won’t tell you where you can’t go until you try to go there) as long as its via the normal route (you can try other roads but they might not work. We don’t have a list of roads you can use.) with the car we specify using the fuel we specify and by the way, don’t use too much fuel because we might not like it and then we penalize you in an unspecified way.

I’ve read other reports saying that this is a transparent deal. It is, I can see right through it! Others won’t.

Having said all that, (I had to get it off my chest though. I’m against marketing-led re-definition of the Internet. I started using the Internet before ‘browsing’ existed so thats probably the root of my negative stance here.) its a step in the right direction and I applaud Three for making this move in the market. Many people are going to find this enough for their Google browsing at the local pub quiz. Its going to introduce people to browsing without cost worries and will advance the process of getting people used to using internet applications on mobile devices via high-speed cellular services. I’m all for that. As long as people know the restrictions.

Lets see what the first user reports are like. Oh wait a minute. There’s one already in… Purchase report. Unhappy customer.

Steve / Chippy.