back to article Vodafone bundles mobile data

Vodafone has decided to bundle net access with its monthly service packages, whether the punters want it or not. Like most operators Vodafone has mucked about with data charges, including per-byte charging and walled gardens (some with gates in them). Most recently the company has adopted the flat-but-capped rate that seems to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Tariffs increase by £5, but saving £7.50 for data

    I understand that the tariffs have increased by £5, but include 500MB of data, whereas before you got 100MB for a £7.50 add-on, so it's an improvement (more data, less cost) - but now means that everyone is paying for it, even if they don't want data.

  2. Craig Errington
    Paris Hilton

    Aren't o2 already doing this?

    I don't know if this is news because it's the first time Vodafone has done it, or because it's seen as the first step by a big operator.. But O2 already offer a choice between 'unlimited web bolt on', 'unlmitied o2 to o2 calls' or 'unlimited o2 to o2 texts' on their packages.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    vodafone stink

    I love the way they advertise the mobile internet, making them look like they invented the thing.

    I love the way they market this but tell you its only for new customers.

    I love the way they confuse the issue if you challenge them and ask why, they can give you this but add another 186 days to the length of your contract.

    I love the way vodafone stink of death!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Yes, O2 are already doing this

    600 mins, 600 texts, Nokia N95 8GB with one bolt-on (unlimited (1GB of) Internet) for £35 a month.

    Apparently most tarriffs come with one bolt-on, so you can choose to have unlimited data at no extra cost.

  5. Neil Kay
    Dead Vulture

    About bl***y time

    Hope they sort out business data access too - we currently limp by with a 100MB data bundle on our group business tariff that costs a whopping £60/month.

  6. Dangerous Dave

    hmm

    I get 3gb/month for £7.50/month with O2 Web Max bolt-on....hardly reinventing the wheel are they?

  7. Caroline Ford
    Alert

    but you'll be stuck behind content control

    I love the way content control gets stuck on all the time (no flickr for you!) and the vile image compression which makes everything look crap.

  8. Lul Whut
    Happy

    Average!

    Heh, as a Vodaphone punter the only sites I tend to check from my phone are my webmail (hotmail) and the BBC site... I feel very normal.

  9. Shinobi87
    Thumb Down

    @Craig Errington

    orange were the first to do unlimited boltons. but yes o2 and vodaphone followed suit a year and abit after orange flexed its muscle and gave its users a good option! if you dont opt for the bolt on web o2 is a quid a day (or 7.99 a month unlimited) which is so so i guess! glad my new phone has wifi! less faf! i will make sure not to use wap everyday if ever! ps vodafone suck my fat hairy bum! they are rubbish

  10. W
    Dead Vulture

    Non-story.

    I pay £7.50pm on 3 for UNLIMITED data as a bolt-on to my £15pm tariff which includes free SE K770 phone + 300mins/texts x-network + 300 mins 3to3 calls + 30 mins of (never used) video calls.

    Where's the story?

    And 3, along with T-Mobile, lead the way with mobile broadband dongles too.

    And "MySpace ranks eighth, reflecting its has-been status" isn't quite on the button, surely. I'd say it's more to do with the fact that myspace looks like a dog's dinner on a PC screen, so it'll be correspondingly awful on a mobile. And the size of the pages won't be much fun on a mobile connection either.

  11. W
    Dead Vulture

    I just lied.

    It's £17.50pm + £5pm for the unlimited data. Same total tho.

    I was thinking of the T-mobile Web'n'walk.

    So basically, we've established that Vodafone have come last. With the worst offering.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Caroline Ford

    i love the way that you love the way

  13. Ben Norris

    Thats great until...

    You get hit by a massive charge for using the phone as a modem. How is the same amount of data more expensive because of what you are viewing it on? Also I wish they would be more clear with their tariffs, until you are actually biled for it it seems impossible to find where they deem use as a modem seperate to browsing directly on the phone.

  14. Andrew

    err...

    " it seems impossible to find where they deem use as a modem seperate to browsing directly on the phone."

    its really very easy

    use the internet on your phone, and its direct

    use your phone as a modem for anything else, and its a modem connection

    done. simple. easy.

  15. TallPaul

    @Ben Norris

    I use their "up to 15MB/day for GBP1" option with a PAYG SIM and I use my phone as a modem and I still fall into that tariff ...

  16. Mike Bronze badge

    damn

    New contracts only? damn

    I just signed up for a new contract on monday... guess i'll have to make use of the right to send the phone back and cancel the contract within 7 business days, then i can buy it again the next day and get 500MB/month data added in for free! (at least it means i can check my email from the road - although not too sure about reading the pdf files some companies insist on using for all correspondence!)

  17. Jamie
    Happy

    Orange

    I have a payasyougo orange sony ericsson k800i which cost me £69.99 from argos a few months back I bought there £1 unlimited interenet for a day bundle and managed to download 2.3gb worth of videos on bbci player using my phones 3g conection, i think my way is the cheapest i could get 14gb with £7 lol think i will stick with orange

  18. TimM
    Unhappy

    Better than Orange's £3 per meg scam

    Orange *still* by default charge you a standard per-meg charge (now £3 per meg) unless you say so otherwise, and it's not hard with many phones these days to download quite a lot of data without realising (e.g using a map application like Google Maps or Nokia Maps).

    In fact Orange offer a daily capped rate for £0 extra on your monthly bill... but they don't advertise it and don't give you it by default.

    Worse than that (as I have found), even if you change to daily capped, they seem to ignore the request and continue to charge you at £3 per meg. Now I have to fight some £100 worth of data charges over the last 6 months for around 20 meg of data used! (although some was overseas... at £8 per meg!!!!).

    Sadly even though I have WiFi on my phone, finding reliable hotspots is near impossible as is finding any that have decent PAYG payment (i.e. pay just for what you use, not pay £7 for an hour's access whether you use it or not!).

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