GPRS in Ireland with Vodafone and the iPhone
I recently switched from Meteor to Vodafone when in Ireland because Vodafone’s data rate (50MB for €1) is 3,000 times cheaper than Meteor’s (6c/KB).
Vodafone don’t have an EDGE network, but they do support GPRS—which works with the iPhone, despite appearances (GPRS coverage is indicated by an odd-looking blank square beside the carrier logo).
To get it to work, I edited my SystemPreferences plist file (/var/preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist) to contain the Vodafone APN details and a pointer to a PAC file describing the Vodafone proxy server (here’s the relevant section), and then created a simple proxy.pac in /var/root.
The Vodafone proxy doesn’t seem to allow much bar web traffic, but it’s enough for basic use on the move.