No more free GPRS?

Last night, my internet access on my cell phone (free WAP APN from T-Mobile) stopped working. It would connect OK, but timed out on “Finding Site”. The normal process is Connecting (establishing a GPRS connection), Finding Site (DNS lookup), then Connecting/Loading to transfer and load the actual page.

A couple of people at HowardForums mentioned that their free WAP/GPRS access stopped working last night, too. The way I see it, there are two possibilities:

1. Some kind of outage or technical problem, or
2. T-Mobile is cracking down on the free access they’ve been giving away for over a year

I went ahead and added T-Zones ($4.99/month) to my account via their web interface, in case it’s the latter.

In the mean time, I discovered that the internet3.voicestream.com APN from my recently cancelled VPN plan still works, so I’m using that for now (until my T-Zones becomes active).

Hopefully this is just a glitch, and access will be restored soon. It would be a shame for T-Mobile to move toward being more Draconian with restricting access for its customers.