Vodafone's Mobile Internet _#

Just got a text from Big Red:

"Good news! Your monthly data allowance is now unlimited so u can use mobile internet & email every day. Fair use applies. More at vodafone.co.uk/mobileinternet"

...and at vodafone.co.uk/mobileinternet you'll see that's Vodafone's idea of unlimited is "subject to a fair use limit of 500mb per month"

500Mb is not the same as unlimited.

Reminds me of the reputed Henry Ford quote: "You can have any color as long as it's black".

I'm also amused by "internet & email". Email is via the internet, so it's a bit of a pointless confirmation. Unfortunately a lot of people equate internet to web browsing. I do hope Vodafone don't restrict this 500Mb package to web browsing + email only. Can anybody confirm?

Vodafone transparent proxy - BMI Javascript at 1.2.3.4 _#

Vodafone UK appear to run a transparent proxy on HTTP connections through its network. This is most apparent when using a laptop via a mobile phone to access the Internet.

They inject HTML code at the beginning of most (but not all) webpages which forces the inclusion of an external Javascript file.

<script src="http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js" language="javascript"></script>

This code is used to replace on-page images with more highly compressed alternatives, presumably to reduce bandwidth usage on their network. This is most noticeable when browsing photo sites such as Flickr and Facebook albums.

The code seems largely well-behaved (although I have seen reports that it can break XHTML/XML documents, I haven't experienced this personally) and is not a huge intrusion on my browsing experience ... if anything it may help to speed things up, and keep my data bill down!

Still, if anybody is unaware of this occurring and is wondering why their photos look a bit rubbish, this is why!

(Google link)