Ben Ward

Onspeed Mobile. What is this?

. Updated: .

Oh, interesti…waaaaitaminute…


Originally uploaded by Ben Ward
Saw this advert in on-train magazine while travelling back to Manchester. It’s an ad for a mobile web browser. Nice idea, maybe it’s a bit like the excellent Opera Mini. Then you look a little closer…

The most critical piece of text reads:

“And now you can try ONSPEED Mobile for FREE for 14 days — no obligation, no credit card required. It takes 2 minutes to install from a text message. After the free trial, you can buy ONSPEED Mobile for just £19.99 a YEAR – with no contract at all.”

Then you look more closely at the screenshot and wonder, doesn’t that look rather a lot exactly like the same as Opera Mini? Which is free?

Please. What on earth is going on?

Can anyone shed any light on why Onspeed Mobile are reselling Opera Mini? An application which is, err, free.

Comments

Previously, I hosted responses and commentary from readers directly on this site, but have decided not to any more. All previous comments and pingbacks are included here, but to post further responses, please refer me to a post on your own blog or other network. See instructions and recommendations of ways to do this.

  2. Tim

    Opera Mini isn’t free… Opera the browser for desktops (linux and windows) IS free, but the mini version remains on a trial-evaluation period, after which time the user is required to register and pay for the browser.

  3. Tim

    Ok, change of note.. Opera MOBILE isn’t free, Opera MINI is. Heres a snippet from the website:

    Do I have to pay for Opera Mini?
    No, Opera Mini is free. Depending on how you get Opera Mini, your provider may charge you for the actual download.
    When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to your phone. This means that even though your mobile provider may charge you for the data which is transferred to your phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper.

You can file issues or provide corrections: View Source on Github. Contributor credits.