Vodafone are offering free internet access over the mobile phones, to their UK customers. This Christmas and New Year's gift starts on Christmas Day and runs all the way up to the 1st of January 2010. This offer is supposed to be a part of their free Fridays service.

Both 'pay as you go' as well as 'pay monthly contract' customers can enjoy the free internet access as long as you already have a mobile internet bundle. However, laptop users with a Vodafone dongle for mobile broadband, cannot avail the free service.

While the Vodafone's promotions website mentions that there's no catch to this, The Register points out that if mobile phone users want to opt for "Contract Internet" APN rather than "WAP" APN, then they will not be entitled to the free service. There are 2 kinds of APNs (or Access Point Names) - WAP and Contract Internet. While WAP is for mobile phones, Contract Internet is for the laptops or dongle users. The WAP APN uses the Novarra gateway of Vodafone for routing data, which mangles content and even adds navigational features to it. For those mobile phone customers who do not wish to get such mangled data, can switch to Contract internet. But this will not be free during the holiday season.