WAP configuration

The good thing of buying a cellphone pack is that everything comes pre-configured. I have chosen the Movistar Activa pack with a Sony Ericsson T200 phone. One small box containing the phone, a power adaptor, a manual for the phone, the Movistar Activa SIM card and the accompanying manual. In the shop they placed the SIM card in the phone, activated it and selected the right rate. I could use it immediately, everything was configured. Everything? Well, no. I couldn't use WAP. Not that I really need WAP, but I prefer that everything works when I buy something. I intent to use WAP for only two tasks: check my bank balance if I want to purchase something expensive and to do some emergency browsing in case www.fimcap.org is having problems.

Both manuals I received are user-level manuals (how do I send a SMS message) and hardly contain any technical details. So I changed the language from Spanish to English (somehow technical terms are easier to understand in English) and started browsing through the settings. After trying out some options I found it: the phone was configured to use WAP over GPRS, while the prepaid Movistar Activa I use does not support GPRS by default. This is really stupid, they deliver a phone and a SIM card bundled with WAP settings that don't function in this configuration!!!! It would be more logical to configure the phone by default to use WAP over GSM, and let the few people who do contract for GPRS configure their phones later!!!