Free mobile broadband - too good to be true? Well SambaMobile are going to give it a try, you need to buy a SIM or microSIM for £2.99 (plus £2 postage), but after that you simply need to watch video adverts to top up your usage allowance. The service is piggy backed on the three 3G network.
The videos are fairly small in resolution and bitrate, with the size measuring around 2MB to 5MB for each, the credit for each video is apparently around 3.5MB, so to gain from the system you need a landline broadband connection to use to build up your credit.
Currently the iPad is the only supported tablet, but you can install the Samba browser extension on a laptop or desktop to build up your credit. Hopefully the number of devices that will support the browser extension, or app will be expanded in the near future.
The terms and conditions should be read closely, as there are conditions over what you can do, the usual only using it for legal purposes is extended to "You agree not to use Samba Mobile Broadband to send, receive, upload, download, use or re-use any information or material which is offensive, abusive, indecent, defamatory, pornographic, obscene, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory, inflammatory, threatening or menacing". The privacy policy also highlights that they may collect and retain details of visits to websites when using their products and services, including traffic data, location data, weblogs, URLs, search terms and other communication data.
Manual top-ups of the data usage allowance are possible, and it remains to be seen whether enough adverts for viewing appear on the site over the course of a month to mean that people do not need to constantly top-up. 250MB can be bought for £3.49, or 500MB for £5.99, these top-ups do expire after 30 days.
Not much chance of a connection at Warwick Gates (CV34) then, Been waiting for repairs to be completed since the mast upgrade at the start of March, first some of the emitters were not functioning, then another repair, then an upgrade, & on the 30th June double the capacity for contention issues. Still crap.