For some strange reason, Orange France uses a transparent proxy server for mobile Internet access. Not sure what the proxy is good for but it has the nasty habit to block access to the mobile version of "Spiegel Online", a German news magazine. This is the only site that I access regularly that seems to be blocked and I am not sure why!? But now I’ve returned to France with Opera Mini and since it uses an encrypted socket connection, I can now read Spiegel online again. Thanks Opera!
The picture on the left shows that Opera Mini supports both socket connections and standard HTTP connections (probably for web only offers that block all other access). The socket interface is selected by default and apart from being encrypted and bypassing proxies, Opera says it is also faster than HTTP connections.
P.S.: You might have noted that this is the third post about Opera mini in a short time. The reason is simple: I am simply amazed by this program and it’s lightning speed and usability.
I’m an Orange France subscriber, just tried HTTP and Socket mode. I had images in both cases with http://www.spiegel.de.
I now switched to Sockets, eventhough I’m not sure how this will impact my billing plan where specific protocols and applications are billed differently. I have a 4MB monthly plan, I’ll see if Sockets usage continues to decrease this counter.
This is running Nokia 6680 + Opera Mini 4.0.9751 via server4.operamini.com:80 (now port 1080 since using sockets).
Hopefully this isn’t going to be a trend, because soon we’re all going to have to encrypt our traffic.
I’m sure you heard about the mess in the UK with Phrom: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm
Services to consumers should always be point to point, with no intervention in between. I just can’t wait until all these transcoding companies are sued. Opera Mini is an opt in transcoding service, it shouldn’t happen at the cloud layer.
Hi Stefan,
for this and other reasons I think tools such as Thor will become more popular in the future. Thor is quite popular already and unfortunately suffers from it. Too slow for my taste most of the times. So I guess privacy will have a price in the future.
Thanks for commenting!
Martin