Mobile Phone WAP or GPRS Met Office Services
Cruising in 2003 was made a little easier in the mornings, by not having to rise at
05:30am to be serenaded by Radio 4’s opening tunes of dubious quality, to listen to
the days shipping forecast and inshore forecast.
I bought a new mobile phone which has the WAP and or GPRS capability. The phone did not cost a lot of money, £75 was the price tag. Depending on ones contract with the service provider, this phone could be obtained as part of the ongoing contract for free.
The Met office now runs several mobile services for WAP or GPRS users. I am going to describe here how to obtain the inshore forecast daily for a fee of 50p.
You will need to register with the Met Office, and you have to pay for the service up front! I personally paid in £10 with my credit card, which I reckoned would last the whole season.
In your home, you will need to register with the met office web page, and pay whatever amount that you think necessary. I actually used about £6.00 worth of datduring the season. Log onto the following page;
www.metoffice.com/services/mobile/index.html
On this page you will be asked to register as a new user, or top up your account if you are an existing user.
Simple so far!
Now for the complicated bit. The WAP phone! Once you have bought your new phone, you have to get your provider (Vodaphone O2 Orange etc) to enable your new phone so that it can receive this service (GPRS). My O2 provider took over a week to get it online, but that’s another story!
Met Office will give you their WAP or GPRS address. (http://www.mymetoffice.com/main.wml ). So you have to log onto their website, which you can then bookmark (save the address) in your phone, (easy to get to next time). They will ask you to log on for marine services, the service that you have paid for. A user ID consists of your mobile phone number, and the inevitable password will then get you logged in. I was impressed, as the opening message gives you your name, just in case you forgot it, but seriously just proves that you are online and have been identified.
There are several services that you can choose. The Inshore Forecast is chosen, then you choose which area that you want the forecast for. Write it down, as I have not yet found out how to store it on the phone. Incidentally, this forecast is updated three times a day, morning noon and night.
Once on the Met Office website, there are several free services available, including the Shipping forecast, town or post code forecasts for the next six hours. This place forecast will only give weather (ie Sunny, showers etc) for each hour, with a general wind and temperature for the whole 6 hours. It can be useful for getting the feel of what weather is around.
I can also recommend following the menus to BBC, then onto their UK weather service. They provide a 5 day forecast, which consists of weather, Max temp, Min temp, and wind. I have found this to be quite accurate, but you have to bear in mind the forecast is for land use, and wind can be quite a bit stronger at sea.
If the WAP service is too much bother, then you can obtain the 6 hours forecast using
the SMS service which I think almost every mobile phone provider uses. This again comes
from the Met Office, you type in WTHR4 (town or postcode), and send the message to phone
number 2638.
I can say that I have found the GPRS service to be very useful, and it saves me getting up at 05:30am to write down the Radio 4 message. It’s another arrow in your sling of weather forecasts.
Pro’s are that you can get an up to date weather forecast almost at anytime, with several sources and types of forecast. Con’s are that you have to be in contact with you mobile phone network, or it does not work. You have to take your mobile phone with you on holiday! There is a relatively small cost for the service.
This note was written in August 2003. Web and mobile services can change. Hopefully it will be relevant in 2004.
Mark Johnson
TRITON
28/2/2004. The Met Office has withdrawn this service!