Billing packet size

[ambo]

I know that on pre-paid that when you dial GPRS (or 3G) the cost of your connection is billed in bytes and then rounded up to the nearest cent at the end of the connection.

I was wondering if one of our users on bundles could tell me - do you also get billed exactly per byte and is there any sort of rounding that occurs?

And vodacom3g - ditto for the new pre-paid bundles due for release.

 

[cyberbob]

it's always interesting how companies round up amounts to get more money out of you!!!!

 

[vodacom3g]

Will ask the billing guys the rules and post here.

 

[ambo]

Hey vodacom3g

Have you been able to find anything about this?

 

[bosun]

When you are in your bundle, there is no rounding, as everything is rated zero - you only have a "consumed" number of bytes. However, once out of bundle the same principle as prepaid applies, however the price per MB may well be different.
Obviously they cannot round down, otherwise you would get lots of zero charge sessions where small amounts of data were transmitted. At current data rates of R2.00 per MB, anythng less than 2.5KB would be rated zero if your rounded down (when below 0.5 cents).
It would then take approximately 15 minutes for some smart people to write applications that connect, send a small amont of data, disconnect and repeat until done.... You could then send massive amounts of data for no charge by utilising thousands of small zero charge sessions.
Remember, each session is billed independantly of any other sessions.
So, if you want to avoid the rounding up (as much as possible) stay connected

 

[ambo]

So, if you want to avoid the rounding up (as much as possible) stay connected

well thats me problem - i can't seem to get my phone to connect and stay connected - every time i close an app and open a new one it insists on reconnecting (SE T630 if anyone was wondering)