Mobile broadband is becoming more popular now and many people are enjoying the convenience of being able to get broadband internet from a wide variety of locations. Both pre-pay and contract options are available on connections and the cost of using this service can be very reasonable. A lot of contracts are based on the idea of paying a certain rate for a set amount of data, for example £10 might buy you 1GB of data, but go over this allowance and the surfing could start getting a bit more expensive with each megabyte being charged separately at a high rate. The trouble with this is that the amount of data used is a bit of an abstract concept, if you are just about to enjoy watching a video on YouTube do you know how much of your allowance it will use up? It would be great to be able to use mobile broadband in the confidence that you will know automatically when your allowance is running low. You should have this information immediately to hand, just like a fuel gauge on a car.
Currently to keep tabs on your remaining allocation you have two options; the most accurate is to log on to your network operator's website and check your details, there will usually be something there to let you know how much is left. This is the most accurate method as it is linked into the operator's billing systems to it is accurate information, and the date your next allocation of data usage is added to your account will be accurate. The second method is to have something on your computer to manually keep a tally of your data usage. The Vodafone Mobile Connect software has such a feature, but you must remember to reset the data usage figures every new billing period, otherwise the figures will be inaccurate.
Both of these methods get in the way of using the Internet. In a car you can always glance at a fuel gage to see if you have enough fuel to keep you going. You don't have to interrupt your driving to find this information out. During a conversation on Twitter with @colinmccarthy today it struck me that a potentially really useful idea is a standardised API that could be read by applications on the user's computer, which would provide data from the operator's billing system. Why standardised? There are a lot of mobile operators in the world, so writing applications that could interact with supplied data, but had to have custom code for each operator would be unmanageable. It also keeps the cost and effort low to implement the API, operators would not have to keep designing their own APIs and developers would not have to keep implementing handling for them in their software.
The API could make the operating system more aware of the billing information which would allow it to react to billing events. For example, on Ubuntu systems the Network Manager software which manages Internet connections could be made aware of this API and could be adapted to do things like flash up a warning message when not much data allowance remains. It could show the remaining credit on the account and data used beside the connection information to make it easier for users to keep track of spending. The operating system might use the remaining data allowance information make decisions such as deciding whether to download updates automatically, possibly suspending non essential updates until the next billing period. If you are on pay as you go it would be very convenient to be able to input a top up voucher code into a pop up box provided by Network Manager on connection to an account that has run out of credit rather than having to navigate through a website to find the right page that will take the code.
It would have many advantages, if you don't realise that the data allowance was running low on your mobile broadband account you might waste money trying to download a file, getting part way through and running out of credit, with the API you could instead use this wasted data allowance for something else. The scope of the API would be quite limited; one possible restriction might be that it can only be used to discover information about the current connection being used, reducing the need for facilities to select an account, or have a lot of security.
All of this could mean that users would be able to enjoy their mobile broadband connections and not have to worry about running up large bills, which would mean that they would use their connections more often and more fully, enabling mobile broadband to grow even further in popularity. The cost for the operators shouldn't be too high as they would be just be presenting the information they hold in a slightly different, machine readable form. My idea would of course need a lot of work and fleshing out, but I think this is something that could be really useful for a lot of people.
Re: An idea to help control the cost of mobile broadband
What a fabulous idea. This would save mobile broadband users a great deal of frustration. Something similar for Pay As You Go phone credit would be a good idea too.
Re: An idea to help control the cost of mobile broadband
3 let's you set a credit limit on your dongle. Say your monthly charge is £10 for 1GB, you can set a credit limit of £10 which means your maximum monthly bill would be £20. You can also set your credit limit to zero on 3 which means once your 1GB of data is used your connection will cut out until the next billing cycle.
I've found this to be a god send as we got a bill one month for £80+. Since we put a credit limit in place, it never goes over £15 :-)
Re: An idea to help control the cost of mobile broadband
Good luck trying to get:
a) the providers to cooperate!
b) the providers to do anything in the same way as any other provider!
c) the providers letting anyone or anything anywhere near customer information!
Having just started playing with various mobile broadband dongles on a Billion BiPAC 7402NX ADSL/3G modem, I can understand how monitoring your usage could well become more important since the device doesn't allow you any access to the software that's on the dongle (which is what you usually use when plugging it into a laptop). Shame that the Billion doesn't appear to have any kind of usage meter either.
And just as I go to the Vodafone website to check my account, it says "We're updating this part of out site - come back soon"!
I need ZTE MF627 modem driver for winXP
How and where can i download modem driver for ZTE MF627? Pls i need it urgently. You can send me a reply to my email babyfaceodus [at] yahoo.co.uk
Re: I need ZTE MF627 modem driver for winXP
There should be WinXP drivers on the ZTE MF627 itself. If you plug it in to your computer you should find that it auto installs, if not you should see some in a file window.