There are has been a war out there thanks to Vodacom. Before I dive into this, let me remind of Opera Mini. You the extremely popular Java web browser don't you? Before displaying a web page, it sends it through a proxy so that the page you receive is at its minimum, and if you wish, without images. Well Vodacom in South Africa is starting to do this as well, against most consumers' wishes to have original web browsing.

Besides including publicity on web pages and continuing with the ridiculous R2/MB rate (convert here), they have posed restrictions on phones. Their reason:

The vast majority of websites on the internet were designed to display a large amount of content and requires a large, high resolution screen (such as a PC monitor) to display it correctly. Most of these websites will make a statement such as "Best viewed on 1024 x 768" at the bottom of the Home page.

In turn, the vast majority of cell phone browsers are not able to properly display these pages and thus make them difficult to use from the mobile device.

While some content providers and handset manufacturers have attempted to address this by either building custom "mobile-formatted" pages or more modern browsers into the newer, high-end phones that can browse these sites, the vast majority of sites and phones still do not support this.

How to remove it? Disable the proxies. More detail after the jump.

The solution to remove it:

1) Go to 'Tools' on the menu
2) Go to 'Settings'
3) Go to 'Connection'
4) Go to 'Access points'
5) Open the vodacom access point - Usually Internet.GPRS
6) Go to 'Options' - 'Advanced Settings'
7) Remove the Proxy serv. address

That, of course, is for S60 3rd edition devices, but it works practically the same way for others.

Why did Vodacom introduce this in the first place? They say it's for you, the consumer:

Simply put, a Content-Adaptation process (CA) of reformatting web pages on-the-fly to fit better on small screen devices (SSD) and thus give an easier browsing experience.

A secondary, but significant, advantage is that substantial traffic is saved (up to 80% on some sites) and thus it provides a corresponding saving in your data bill.

Do people want it? No!!! If people wanted such things they would use Opera Mini itself. Consumers want to take advantage of their "futuristic" phones to browse the real web, the web 2.0, appreciate it in all its FlashLite3 beauty!

Oh, and what they think we think:

It's still early days and there has been a fair amount of teething problems. But we can already see a substantial increase in web browsing via the CA portal. (While some here have flippantly remarked that this is probably due to all the re-tries ), we can see that more people are beginning to use the service to browse new sites who probably never used their mobile phones for this before.

And that is the crux of this service, to give people who had difficulty in accessing the web a better chance to do so with the tools they have. Members of this forum are privileged enough to have a PC to access the web. But millions out there only have an entry-level cell phone.

This service not only give them this ability, but substantially reduce their bill in browsing the web.

The reason I didn't report you about this previously is that I haven't bought airtime (credit) for my phone for about 3 weeks, I'm trying to dedicate myself fully to work and avoid distractions.

Will Vodacom allow to switch it off? Yes, but you have to do it manually:

If you really just want to switch it off, the only current method is to delete the proxy settings on your SSD. This will completely bypass the CA engine and you will see the original site exactly as you would have before the introduction of CA. Typical setting is 196.6.128.12. Find it in your phone sttings and delete it or find a setting that says something like "Use proxy?" and switch it off.

If you have a VLive branded phone that does not allow you to change the proxy settings, try and create a brand new profile (with no proxy set) and use that to connect. Reports so far shows this to work fine.

Let us know your opinions on this, and if Vodacom should remove this CA or not. In my opinion, they should. I have a N95, which has the S60 web browser and I can install Opera Mini. When I'm low on airtime (credit), I use Opera Mini, but if I'm connected to a hotspot, or I need to check a web 2.0 website, I use my default web browser. Most manufacturers advertise their full HTML phone browsers, so I don't think Vodacom should be here destroying their work.

Source: Web Addict, Flint, MyBroadband

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