Costs of the downloaded GPRS data

Questions concerning the use of FoxyTag.

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Costs of the downloaded GPRS data

Postby BlueDragon » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:48 pm

Interestingly I have made following experience which I would like to share and of course any comment or feedback would be welcome.

I used to have an Sunrise monthly subscription (Abonnement) and the use of Foxytag was relatively cheap as I could drive for a long time (maybe 1 hour or so) by only paying about 10 ct. The cost of the Internet GPRS connection according to Sunrise is 10 ct / 20 kb of dl data without consideration of the time.

After having checked that the fees would be the same for a prepaid solution I changed to a prepaid plan with the result that I had to pay 10 ct for every 5 min!

According to Foxytag the application is requesting an update of the GPS data (tags) every 5min from the server. So it seems very clear that with the subscription plan a connection was build and maintained until the exit of Foxytag. Since Foxytag was only getting a couple of kb per request it did last a long time before the 20 kb limit was crossed, thus costing the next 10 ct more for the given session. But with the prepaid plan I guess that every 5 min a new connection must be made because somehow the connection is not maintained open. Sunrise pretends that there is no difference on their side e.g. that their servers do not disconnect the session even if no data is exchanged for about 5 min. On the other hand I see no reason to believe that the Foxytag application behaves differently according to a prepaid or subscription plan. So my assumption is that it must be the Sunrise servers which are not behaving the same way for prepaid of subscription.

Did anyone else have the same experience or something similar?

If someone knows by experience that some provider is proposing a prepaid solution which will not charge 10 ct for every 5 min of Foxytag use I would be very glad to know.

Thanks for any feedback!
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Postby Foxy » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:41 pm

Every operator works differently and even it changes over time...

FoxyTag makes a new connection every five minutes. It is not possible to maintain the connection open. But even so, some operators consider that a few following connections (with a five minutes delay) is a single connection. I personnaly have Orange (in Switzerland) and I pay very very little money for using FoxyTag... :D
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Postby BlueDragon » Sun Jun 07, 2009 11:19 pm

Foxy wrote:FoxyTag makes a new connection every five minutes. It is not possible to maintain the connection open. But even so, some operators consider that a few following connections (with a five minutes delay) is a single connection.


Oh that's an interesting point! I was convinced that it was the other way round e.g. that FoxyTag maintained the same connection open since the little square around the G on my Nokia upper left display corner always remains visible, which should indicate that the GPRS connection is and remains open. So if what you say is true than it would mean that the GPRS connection always remains open but the connection to the server is closed after every packet has been received until the next need for data update, normally 5 min after...

Could you check that and confirm this assumption please. (I have been struggling with the Sunrise technical Hotline because of this topic...)

Well yes one can change from one provider to the other one but again it's complicated, needs a migration of the phone number and always somewhere there is a drawback. Anyway that's our crazy time... 8)
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Postby Foxy » Mon Jun 08, 2009 12:41 pm

I'm afraid I can't confirm... The fact is that FoxyTag is coded in Java, and Java doesn't have hardware access. We can just ask data from a given URL, but then it is the mobile phone that chooses how to access it physically. But, according to technical descriptions, after each request the connection is closed, so I can confirm it at 95%.
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Postby BlueDragon » Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:23 pm

Foxy wrote:But, according to technical descriptions, after each request the connection is closed, so I can confirm it at 95%.


Well at this point there is something which logically cannot fit together. :shock:

Even if it's Java coded (not able to handle the hardware access) there must be a way in Java code to ask data from a given URL AND to somehow tell "ok, the requested data has been fully received so drop the connection" otherwise the GPRS connection would always remain open until the application is closed (exit). This indeed seems to be the case because, as I described above, the square remains arount the G until I exit FoxyTag (or there is a drop of coverage). So based upon this logics I would rather consider that at 99% after each request the connection is NOT closed. 8)

In that case what you said above could be the fact e.g. that some providers actually treat several GPRS connections with 5 min or less in between every request as a single connection... (only if you have the monthly subscription at Sunrise)

It's a pitty not to get some more feedback from FoxyTag users in this forum about this topic but anyway thanks again to you Foxy for always taking the time to answer the best you can! :)
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Postby brynnax » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:33 am

What do you think of GPRS trainers being developed? Trainers will soon have a built in GPRS facility so you always know where you are.
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Postby BlueDragon » Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:37 pm

brynnax wrote:What do you think of GPRS trainers being developed? Trainers will soon have a built in GPRS facility so you always know where you are.


That's called thread hijacking... :twisted: Probably a mistake I suppose..
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