I originally posted this to
alt.cellular.motorola,alt.cellular,alt.cellular.data, but had some
additional questions, and I also wanted to cross-post this to uk.=AD
telecom.=ADmobile, which I missed the first time through. I hope I
haven't violated any Usenet Groups etiquette:
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Should the download size, measured in KBs, of a downloaded Web page
be
the same regardless of the carrier and cellular phone model used?
During a trip to Israel in November 2006, I rented Motorola i760
phones from Amigo, which provides cellular service through MIRS
Communication Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola Israel. We
were quite pleased with the quality of service and the coverage
provided.
Unfortunately, I just received a bill from Amigo, which charged me an
astronomical amount for Web surfing (yeah, call me a junkie, as does
my wife, along with some other choice names). At my request, I
received a detail for the data charges, which indicates that each
visited Web page equaled exactly 4KB of data. Most of my browsing
was
BBC-Mobile News, where the standard format is primarily text, with
maybe a tiny graphic. I was not downloading music or video files.
I used my US cellular phone -- a Samsung A707 Sync, with service
provided by Cingular -- to download many of the same (or similar)
pages as listed on Amigo's detail, and my phone indicated that these
pages seemed to average around 1300-1500 bytes, less than half what
MIRS/Amigo claimed.
Is it possible that the size of the same (or similar) Web page could
vary so much between carriers and cell phone models? If not, I think
MIRS or Amigo may be engaging in some questionable billing practices.
Thanks in advance.
Al
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John Navas was kind enough to reply:
> >Should the download size, measured in KBs, of a downloaded Web page be
> >the same regardless of the carrier and cellular phone model used?
>
> Not necessarily -- web page size can be affected by proxy servers, some
> of which can reduce size by higher compression of images, etc. Other
> proxies might increase size.
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A few additional questions related to my billing dispute with MIRS/
Amigo:
1=2E The phone I used in Israel, a Motorla i760, included the following
specs:
* Maximum WML Deck Size: 3K. Does that mean the phone's Web
browser -- OpenWave V7.0.2 -- would not have been capable of
downloading pages as large as 4KB? In WAP terminology, isn't Deck
Size the same as Page Size in HTML terms?
* Memory Cache Size: 60K. I was charged for multiple views of
the same Web page, frequently within moments of each other, and I know
that I didn't reload those pages. Since this phone has cache,
wouldn't it have just re-displayed those pages stored in its memory
without downloading new versions? All the pages I viewed were static
and wouldn't have required updates from the server.
2=2E I understand Mr. Navas's point about the effect of proxy servers,
but could the size of downloaded pages really have been doubled or
trebled from an observed 1500 bytes to a claimed 4KB, thanks to the
carrier's network? I find that sort of inflation beyond belief.
Other than fleecing consumers, where is the valued added by doing
that? Incidentally, many of the pages that I downloaded were from BBC-
Mobile News, which states in its FAQ that its typical three-page new
story totals about 5KB (assuming I did my math correctly), meaning
that a single page should be about 1.7KB, about a third of what MIRS/
Amigo claims.
Can someone help me sort through all this confusion?
Thanks.
Alan
PS. This dispute is not a minor issue to me, as MIRS/Amigo claims I
downloaded over 600 Web pages and other "stuff" (files with suffixes
CSS, WBMP, WML, GIF, and JPG), for a total of over 2700KB. At its
advertised download rate of US$.09 per KB, that comes to a not
insignificant US$240, give or take a few bucks.
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