Greece GPRS?

[luxor84]

First of all, I want to thank you for this very interesting post. I go to Greece every year in summer to spend my holidays... and I love Greece (my grandmother is greek). Every year the problem is always the same: internet. So I hope next July to apply the counsel of this post.

But I want to ask you:
1) Where should I buy a new prepaid card wind? every kiosk?
2) On the website Wind have read that i should send a message ‘PLUS’ to 19349 (and not 349 as indicated in the post)
3) After I buy the sim, are there already the WIND plus settings on the phone?
4) What should I do to use the phone with my laptop? I mean... you wrote: "
In order to use the WIND plus service with a computer tethered to your mobile phone, you have to enter the following settings to your computer:
access point "gwap.b-online.gr", username "wap", password "wap" for your cellphone's PC suite and you also have to set the following proxy server on your web browser IP: 192.168.200.10 port: 9401 as well as on the windows connections panel (for IE and MSN Messenger)". Where should I cahnge exactly this parameters for the browser? In whick window?
5) is there a way to download more than 1 MB? I have seen on the posts that may be there is a way, but I have not understood completely

Thank you very much for your answers

[DaveRo]

Originally Posted by luxor84

...
1) Where should I buy a new prepaid card wind? every kiosk?

A Greek would best answer that, but in Corfu town there were several shops run by Wind, Cosmote, and Vodafone. I bought the Wind card and a Cosmote card at these. (It seemed much like Italy.)

2) On the website Wind have read that i should send a message ‘PLUS’ to 19349 (and not 349 as indicated in the post)

Yes - I used that number.

3) After I buy the sim, are there already the WIND plus settings on the phone?

There is a facility on the Wind website to specify your phone and send it WAP settings. On my phone (Nok N70) these settings do not configure laptop tethering - they just make the phone browser work.

4) What should I do to use the phone with my laptop? I mean... you wrote: "
In order to use the WIND plus service with a computer tethered to your mobile phone, you have to enter the following settings to your computer:
access point "gwap.b-online.gr", username "wap", password "wap" for your cellphone's PC suite and you also have to set the following proxy server on your web browser IP: 192.168.200.10 port: 9401 as well as on the windows connections panel (for IE and MSN Messenger)". Where should I cahnge exactly this parameters for the browser? In whick window?

I set the access point in the phone (under 'packet data') but you might have to set it in the operating system under dial-up connections. I don't use Windows so I'll let someone else say how to do that. What OS and browser do you want to use?

Proxy: I'm using Firefox (on Linux) and the proxy is set in the Firefox configuration - under 'connection'.

5) is there a way to download more than 1 MB? I have seen on the posts that may be there is a way, but I have not understood completely

As the OP mentioned, if you use a different access point you don't have all these restrictions. But it costs more.

Thank you very much for your answers

You're welcome.

Take a look also at the numerous Cosmote data options - more expensive but perhaps simpler. (I bought a Cosmokarte as well. Does anybody know what SMS to send to get a balance?)

[gmmour]

All the SMS short codes in Greece changed recently due to the National Renumbering that recently included SMS shortcodes. The new activation procedure for wind plus non-stop is sending "PLUS" to 19349.

Customer care is 1260 (0,24 EUR per call) for all questions and 1231 free of charge (only for Wind plus). Ask them how you change the language, or they can change it for you... Unfortunately I don't currently have a wind prepaid so I don't know the procedure. Anywayz, by sending a blank SMS to 1269 you get your balance by SMS free of charge, and by sending the recharge voucher code to 1268 you top-up, so you don't need to change the language prompts...

The Wind F2G SIM pack can be bought at omnipresent kiosks (called periptero, if you've been to Greece you've probably seen them all over the place, most if not all periptera carry prepaid SIM packs from all carriers and all of them carry recharge vouchers) and wind stores around Greece, it costs 5 Euro and gives 1 Euro initial credit and 1 Euro every month for the next 4 months provided you have spent at least 1 Euro in the previous month, i.e. you get the 5 Euro back if you use your phone for 5 months and spend at least 1 Euro every month.

For tethering: The settings for the Access point go to the phone's PC suite, depending on the phone you use. Some Sony Ericsson phones, also create an automatic connection when you plug in the USB to you computer, so you have to enter the access point settings under the USB connection settings in your phone. The proxy settings go to your browser. For Firefox and Opera use the connections tab, for IE and MSN Messenger use the connections settings in the IE Properties window.

For phone use: Either call 1231 free of charge and ask them to send you the WAP settings, or visit the wind.com.gr site and use the online tool to send the settings to your phone or find the manual settings if your phone model is not supported.

For your information, Nokia Maps, works with the wind plus access point, but for A-GPS to work (and get a faster initial satellite detection on your Nokia phone, you have to use Wind Internet as the access point for the A-GPS facility of the phone, which only consumes about 7KB every time your phone tries to find a satellite for the first time, while still using the Wind Plus access point for Nokia Maps, Google maps and map downloads). If you don't set the A-GPS access point to Wind Internet, you practically have no A-GPS and it can take up to 5 minutes for your phone to detect the satellites and calculate your position, whilst with A-GPS it takes only a few seconds.

[ArSa]

Hi guys,
I feel so lucky that i found this thread... been trying to research greece prepaid gprs, with not much luck.

I see that most people here are OK with wind plus non-stop service. Well, unfortunately that won't work for me - i need a bunch of ports and relatively reliable connection (will need it for work emergencies). I do intend to pay for it, but the question is what to buy...

On Wind, it seems that the only good option is:
http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?pageID=1443&langID=2
i.e. ADSM Non-stop. I don't even have 3G phone, i just need some reasonably priced service (i will be there for two weeks)

What is the rate for normal Wind per-mb gprs connection? I can't find it in any price lists. I bet it's too much, i just want to compare.

What about other guys? I read on vodaphone pre-paid terms that they don't even give you gprs. Fine. What about Cosmote? They have specificaly data plans on their pre-paid page, i guess this one:
http://www.cosmote.gr/cosmote/cosmot...rviceCategory=
but nothing mentioned in the price list...

I will need probably around 200Mb of data for the entire 14 days i will be there, and don't need 3G (although i am sure my 2.5G phone will work on 3G data plans like ADSM, at least that's the theory) , so i am kinda lost... 200Mb is too much for normal Wind pre-paid service (which is about 1.4 euros per Mb, from this thread, right?)

[dyofanto]

I have read all previous post. I have read some time ago that mobile Internet on Greece is not allowed for pay-by-use (prepaid) SIM cards. But know, I understand from previous post that it is possible with Wind and Cosmote?
Can I buy a SIM card from WInd or Cosmote, put it on my unlocked Treo and be browsing and fetching email in minutes? Must I do any other tramit or call to customer care to activate it?

[DaveRo]

Originally Posted by ArSa

I see that most people here are OK with wind plus non-stop service...

An irony of the HTML mangling caused by PLUS non-stop is that I cannot read this forum at all with my Nokia N810 (which is what I'm using day-to-day because I don't usually have enough power for the laptop on the boat) so I've only just seen this post. I have to use the laptop with Firefox and the Force Content Type addon.

The effect of the WIND proxy with the Nokia is very variable - sites that work one day don't the next, and sometimes I'm fed WAP-style content, sometimes not. It works with simple websites but not with many blogs and forums.

So I too would like a reasonable prepaid internet solution - something like the Italian WIND offers. I would be happy to pay 20 to 30 Euro a month while I'm here in Greece.

Cosmote do have internet offers - and I have a Cosmokarte SIM - but they're difficult to understand and seem expensive.

If anybody knows of anything please post it here.

[DaveRo]

A couple of things I discovered about Wind Plus non-stop:
- The subscription lasts one calendar month not 30 days.
- I got an SMS telling me it had expired on the day that it expired - but late in that day (I had already resubscribed)

None of the SMSs I got said when it was going to expire - so remember when you subscribed.

At the time of writing, the Force Content Type add-on I was using has not been updated for Firefox 3. When I return to Greece I shall take a copy of Firefox 2 and Opera with me on the laptop. I still don't have a solution on the Nokia N810.

[luxor84]

Hello!
I'm writing you with my laptop using opera and wind plus non stop.

But I have some problems.
1) I cannot read my yahoo e-mail, using whatever browser. It seems wind plus non stop doesn't allow it.
2) I'm in Chalkidiki. Often it seems that this wind plus non stop doesn't work or is too slow. Are there other particular settings for the browsers or something else?

Thank you.

[DaveRo]

Originally Posted by luxor84

1) I cannot read my yahoo e-mail, using whatever browser. It seems wind plus non stop doesn't allow it.

I concluded that many (all?) sites that uses AJAX (asynchronous javascript and XML) won't work. At least they won't when parsed as html in Firefox - I don't know about Opera. The wordpress blog editor doesn't. Nor does gmail - if you use the standard GUI. But the old basic html GUI works - and I used the mobile one which is quicker.

Does yahoo mail have a similar html or mobile interface? I would have thought so.

2) I'm in Chalkidiki. Often it seems that this wind plus non stop doesn't work or is too slow. Are there other particular settings for the browsers or something else?

I used it in several places in the Ionian. I found that the speed varied with location and time of day - I assumed it was due to network capacity. It was always fastest early in the morning. And I got 3G five miles offshore from Parga!

I'm now back in the UK experimenting with proxies and looking for a solution for the Nokia N810 and for Firefox 3 on the laptop. The perl proxy posted by caliston in an earlier post
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/show...1&postcount=39
works on my Linux laptop - at least it does with a different proxy - I can't try the Wind one from here. (Thanks caliston.) Just to clarify his instructions, you set your http proxy to localhost:3128 - the Wind proxy address is in the perl module so you can change it to experiment.

No luck with the Nokia yet. Maybe some of my perl libraries are i86 specific. If any perl experts can help me debug the Nokia please pm me - I've never used perl before.

[heinz57g]

was/is ''Wind Plus non-stop'' not originally to be a WAP-only service? could this not be the reason
that certain things are blocked and cannot be made to work? even if it worked before, maybe they
got smart and noticed how many users were actually on laptops etc.

see my post on the sticky above: i have a feeling the service is turned off, or at least not offered
anymore to new customers. wish somebody in GR cld check and confirm this, either way, as i will
only be there late july.

greetings - heinz -