3 Pay As You Go Data
In November 2007, I mentioned UK 3’s affordable £5 Pay As You Go data tariff. If you are mobile developer in the UK, this provides a very cheap way to test connected mobile applications. It also provides an easy and inexpensive way for visitors to the UK to obtain access to a data tariff.
On most projects I end up having to test on many different phone models. It’s time consuming and tedious to swap SIMs so often. Instead, why not have a SIM in each phone?
3’s SIMs are free. You can pick up at any 3 store or online (they take a week to arrive). Furthermore, they have recently provided free 150Mb data for 60 days every time you top up (only £5). Most mobile applications accessing a server use very little data and my experience is that it’s difficult to use up 150Mb in 60 days. So, if you then use the £5 after 60 days to buy one month’s ‘unlimited data’ (actually 1Gb) you will have obtained 3 months of testing for only £5. After this, you can top up again for £5 and effectively get another 3 months of data.
If you have more than one phone with a 3 SIM you can also do free 3 phone to phone calls and even do free Skype on some models.
One caveat is that the phone must be 3G. Some are GSM only and won’t work at all with a 3 SIM. You can check out compatible phones on the 3 web site.
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