How To: Avoid Silly 3G Restrictions By Your Operator
A few days ago, Nokia Beta Labs released Friend View, an application that joins social networking with GPS tagging. I installed and it worked fine over my home WiFi network. Then I tried to make it use my 3G connection and it wouldn’t connect. That was eye-opening and I was off on a roller coaster ride, trying to discover which applications do and don’t work on my 3G connection with french operator Bouygues Telecom. I discovered that basically the only thing that works is the Web Browser, Scribe, Nokia Maps and Talkonaut. No Nokia Friend View, no MSN Live Messenger, obviously no Fring, no Nokia Sports Tracker, no Google Maps, no Flixwagon, no Qik, not even the built-in email IMAP. You name it, Bouygues blocks it. Shweet! As Ricky put it when I told him: “what are you supposed to do with your 3G?!”, a question to which I still haven’t found an answer.
I was about to give up, and curse my luck for having committed to a 24-month contract, until I found out that Gerry Moth and Alan Buckley had the same 3G issue with operator 3 in the UK. Aha, so after all, it was a rather common problem with operators to block certain applications, in a silly, random and unexplained manner, from accessing their 3G network. That’s what we like to call the Walled Garden. Fast forward one day, or less, and Alan Buckley had the genius solution to this problem! He explained to me how to do it, and after a bit of tinkering, I had not only opened Bouygue’s 3G to use Friend View, but I also had Windows Live Messenger, Nimbuzz, Google Maps and Nokia Sports Tracker working!
Since I assume that many of you suffer from your operator’s silly 3G restrictions, I thought it would be handy to write down the steps that would help you regain online access to some of your favorite applications. Note that not all applications will work, but most of them will.
- Find a Proxy for your country: you can simply google “proxy server for x” where x is your country, or simply give a look to this page which has an extended list of proxies for almost any country. Use their search engine if your country doesn’t show up on the main page. Note that the IP address column shows the proxy address in this format proxyserver:portnumber (they’re separated by the symbol : ).
- On your device, go to Menu, Tools, Settings, Connection, Access Points. Select the 3G access point that you normally use, then hit Options, Duplicate access point.
- The connection’s editing menu opens up, change its name if you want to, then hit Options, Advanced Settings. Scroll down to Proxy server address and enter the proxy server for your country that you found in Step 1. Hit Ok and scroll to Proxy port number and enter the port number of that proxy server. Click Back and Voilà!
Now all you need to do is open the applications that didn’t work on your 3G connection before and choose your newly created access point. If it doesn’t work immediately, close the application then run it again, there’s a good chance it will. I will emphasize again that not all applications will work with this proxy method, for example, on my connection, Fring simply doesn’t, as well as the built-in email IMAP, but some of them will. Credits go again to Alan Buckley from S60 Life for discovering the method and explaining it to me.
Having Nimbuzz and Windows Live Messenger available during my excrutiatingly long and boring commutes has made them so much easier to handle, even though I definitely am NOT a chatting-addict. I didn’t check all my applications, but I have to say that this method also allowed me to access my mobile Hotmail account on the S60 Browser: the page doesn’t even open on the usual 3G access point, which was a total PIA since I use Hotmail for my university-related work.
If you tried this method, please tell us if it works, and what applications that didn’t work before are now able to access your 3G connection.
This makes sense when you consider that the way a proxy server works is that your phone talks to it rather than contacting servers out on the internet directly. The proxy then relays your requests and forwards you back the responses. The overheads of doing that introduce a slight delay in every request your phone issues which can slow down your net access.
There are many useful applications of this like anonymizing yourself (by hiding behind the proxy server's IP), caching commonly requested content (kinda like your web-browser does) but when it comes to mobile operators I suspect the proxys are used to restrict some ports/services, filter web-content (parental controls for example) and, sometimes, to re-format web-content (as in, simplify the html) for more basic phones that don't have full web browsers.
This is what was happening in my case. In practise it meant surfing the web was painfully slow (and often unreliable due to requests timing out and such) and also made things like listening to streaming internet radio almost impossible. Removing the proxy settings (thus making my phone talk to servers on the internet directly) made things a *lot* faster.
If your provider is using proxys to block certain services (like MSN) then simply removing the proxy settings (rather than replacing them) might help too! Of course, if your provider is using a transparent proxy (one that gives your phone the impression that there's no proxy there) or doing some kind of port filtering then such tinkering probably won't make any difference.
I've tried your method but unfortunately without success. The fact is my operator isn't blocking any port but pop and imap ones. So I'm out of luck with any mail client using these connection methods (Profimail here...).
I was hoping that in the list of proxys you gave, there might be one letting imap and pop ports through (and I already tried a LOT of proxys before).
So here I am, back at my start point, but thanks nonetheless for the post: it will help many people having problems even with web blocking operator, no doubt about that.
I think I'll post something here if I happen to find a proxy for email client...but do not hesitate to share if you find it first !! ;-)
IF your 3G connection has a Proxy set up, and you have a limited access to some applications, then the first thing you need to do obviously is to remove the proxy and see if the applications work.
Unfortunately, my own 3G connection had NO proxy set up, so the restriction is being done by Bouygues in some other manner. So I had to add an anonymous proxy to be able to use some applications.
I have to note though that I don't see any obvious speed differences between my proxy-enabled 3G and my usual 3G connection. I only use the proxy access point for the apps that don't work with the usual 3G. And even if there was a speed difference, having access to an application on a slow'er connection is ALWAYS better than no access at all.
Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.2.13057/330; U; en)
Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.1.11355/330; U; en)