Samba Mobile Broadband - Is it Really Free?
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Twiceshy_2
Posts: 4 Newbie
This thread is specifically to discuss feedback of
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Many thanks to Twiceshy for letting us know.
Back to their original post......
Samba Mobile has now gone live with its "free" mobile broadband offering.
It sells a micro sim card for iPad users (£4.99 + p&p) and a dongle plus sim (£24.99 + p&p) for laptop/desktop users.
The business model uses advertising to pay for the service, although there also the option to topup, presumably using old fashioned money.
This service is new at the time of writing, in fact the dongle option is in the pre-register stage only.
Has anyone any experience of free Samba Mobile broadband, perhaps in other countries?
How free is it, or do you end up paying with cash just to avoid endless adverts?
If you've tried Samba Mobile or have any questions, please join in the discussion below.
Thanks,
MSE Becca
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Comments
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Nice advert0
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Very limited info on their website but sounds good.Just wondering what network they will use and if you can use your own dongle.Maybe someone else has some more info about them.0
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Very limited info on their website but sounds good.Just wondering what network they will use and if you can use your own dongle.Maybe someone else has some more info about them.
They use 3 for the network. And in theory any dongle will work.
Just signed up, so can't tell whether it's any good or not yet.
You earn credit by watching ads (this can be done on your landline broadband, not necessarily whilst connected via Samba) and then use that credit later. There's a cash top-up option too, though I don't know what the costs are, and it says that does expire after a month. Not clear whether the free credit has an expiry.
So far I've watched a few ads - but notice that the choice is diminishing fast - in other words they don't seem to have many ads! Which is worrying, as they'll need lot more of those if this is going to work longterm. But maybe advertisers are waiting to see how well they'll do...
Worth a try I think if you've already got a dongle (I'll be using a spare 3 dongle we have lying around). Bit more of a risk if you have to buy a dongle specially for it though. Sim by itself (micro for ipad or full size for dongles) is £7.49 inc p&P.0 -
Thanks, Zanderman,
For giving us your initial impressions.
Perhaps you would be kind enough to update us when you have more experience with the platform.
It is an interesting idea, but will Samba still be around 6 months from now?0 -
They give you 3.5 MB for every video you watch? A fair bit of that will be taken up by the video, so you'll be watching ads more often than you would watching American TV! I already have a 3 dongle but there's no chance they'll be getting my £7.49.0
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Thanks, Zanderman,
For giving us your initial impressions.
Perhaps you would be kind enough to update us when you have more experience with the platform.
It is an interesting idea, but will Samba still be around 6 months from now?
Well, I've tried it out properly now. Re getting credit, that's easy. There are about 6 ads available usually - these disappear after you've watched them but are replenished at some point during the day, so you can clock up at least 10-15 daily - and they give 3.5MB credit each. And, as pointed out above, watching these does NOT eat into your credit. Can be done on landline broadband to store credit for when roaming later (and watching over the 3 signal is sometimes difficult, with the ads timing out, so not recommended!)
Re using it, I had some trouble getting the simcard to work in my 3 dongle to start with - but that's now sorted, and I can get the service on a laptop running winXP and a netbook running Ubuntu 11 - so that's fine too.
My only practical worry is that that usage stats seem fairly high (nearly 25MB yesterday and I was only checking that it worked), so credit may be used up quickly. Which makes the case for stockpiling credit by ad-watching whenever possible (I'm thinking first thing in the morning, whilst checking o/night news, easy to clock up 50+MB a day that way). And ad credit lasts 'indefinitely' - or so they say.
Plus are they in this longterm? Will the business model work? Can't second-guess that of course - but as long as I get more than £7.50 worth (initial simcard costs inc postage, I already had a dongle) of internet from them I shouldn't worry too much.
hth0 -
This is very encouraging, Zanderman.
It is good to hear there are plenty of ads to watch, even if 3.5mb doesn't go far.
This could prove a good backup to my paid 3 data sim.0 -
Stop Press.
Sim card now priced at £2.99 plus £2 p+p.0 -
The default apps for monitoring the Ammount of data in your "battery" seem to be apple iOS oriented, or based on Firefox/Chrome browser based.
For those using Android phones, tablets and other devices.
A widget is available search for
"Samba Mobile Widget Unofficial"
listed above, as it is difficult to locate in android market,
as Samba is the long established and developed inter-operating system file sharing / drive mounting software.
So at 3.5MB/video thats
210MB for 60mins of videos
(and some are long 2-3 mins and some are short 30-40 secs)0 -
Thanks for all your comments about Samba Mobile guys - I'm gonna test it out and let you know how I get on
MSE Becca0
This discussion has been closed.
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