you know for a minute there I thought you said MB..MegaBytes..in 2007 LOL.

oh wait...you did. do Vodafone want customers using their network or not? if not then surely they should stop selling contracts rather that trying to put us off of buying them.

Given the rate at which it's possible to burn through data, especially with the latest phones *cough* N95 *cough* those allowances don't go very far.

Maybe if all you do is look occasionally at the mobile version of BBC News or Google you'll be OK, but if you're doing email w. attachments, proper web pages (with the inevitable ads) or even worse using the phone as a modem then that data allowance will last minutes.

T-mobile seem to be the only supplier with a decent data package, where is the competition?

120MB per month then £2 MB thereafter J***S thats expensive browsing.

And look at the small print "browseing abroad on another network £8.50 per MB".

Now lets see reasonable quality jpeg -- 750K. Graphics heavy web page 3MB, average Word doc 150K - 1.5 MB.

When will the phone companies accept that mobile internet access will only take off when the prices are reasonable. They have been sitting on this technoligy for three years now making massive losses. They could actually cover the costs of thier 3G licences if they sold this at a reasonable price.

"And what if I go over my 15MB limit?

This is unlikely, but If you do, you’ll be charged £2 for every additional MB you use."

LOL! Unlikely my arse. All you need is a modern top of the range smartphone that have many applications that can easily download many MBs. Mapping apps, VoIP, video streaming. Even just downloading an application is enough!

And don't even consider plugging a mobile into a PC to use as a modem. Once Windows gets it's hands on the Internet you'll eat 15MB in a second.

Thank god for WiFi capable phones.

I had an HSDPA card in my Dell D820 - and it came all badged with vodafone stuff - but isn't actually locked to vodafone.

I would use VF as its network is fast, and my mobile phone is on VF - but I just can't afford it - not when other networks are so much cheaper. I don't use the card every day, or even every month - but when I do use it, I use it a lot - perhaps 100Mb in a day. I'm not paying £200 for that!

What I need is a pay as you consume, or even buy before you consume tariff where I can buy bandwidth at a reasonable rate and use it when I want to.

I've asked this of Voda several times. They don't seem to be able to tell me what is and isn't covered other than a vague peer-to-peer voip and IM. Now I've asked them how they identify this traffic so I can be sure I can plan in advance how much I spend on data.

The answer? They won't tell me!

Surely this is illegal? Surely they have to detail charges before I start to use their service. I have a wonderfull selection of emails from them should el reg be interested...

If you are with Vodafone now tell them TODAY that you think that their changes (i.e. making Vodafone Live pay to surf) will increase your bills by 10%. Then after 30 days that happens then they have to make you a nice offer or let you leave the contract early.

The other thing is that the data amount on my bill are much lower than the ones that my data counter software (SPB GPRS Monitor) is recording. Much lower. This could work in your favour but there does need to be transparency over how they calculate how much data is used.

I use the Vodafone 3G datacard on a £25 per month 250Mb package and having signed up for an email newsletter I hadn't noticed that this was weighing in at 3Mb or so per day so of course I breached the 250 limit.

My bill that month was over £350..... not impressed I called Vodafone to see if they would null this if I signed up for th £45 1000Mb service which they decline......suffice to say I will take my business eleswhere as soon as possible.

I got charged £4 to download 2mb of email when I changed tariffs on Vodafone last year, so I cancelled and changed to T-Mobile's Flex tariff and Web'n'Walk. I had been with Vodafone for ten years, and their reaction? 'Sorry - bye'. None of the phone companies have understood the growth in data requirements, choosing to offer it as MMS or ringtones, or Premiership goals rather than a reasonable tariff. I was told when I signed up to T-Mobile that they take action if a user regularily goes over a gig a month or so and you're not *supposed* to connect your laptop to it but surely it's the most sensible option, yet this is Vodafone's considered response. I guess they'll keep on with the ringtones and charging a couple of quid for a music video, or promotional tool, as I call them.

Or 56mb for £15/mo.

I got a free 3G data card with a laptop I purchased a while ago, it was a Vodafone card, and I had to register it.

I asked the person how much the data was, and she said £2 per megabyte. I couldn't believe my ears! This was after 3 had launched their 56mb = £15 deal. So I aborted the registration and unplugged the card.

The card ended up on ebay...

You could always use a Pay-as-you-go SIM in the HSDPA card when abroad- I do this in Portugal on the Vodafone network over there- its very reasonable (particularly if you're only using it every few months).

I left Vodafone a few years back after discussing at length with a 'sales technician' *ahem* my tariff and handset upgrade... I ended the call when the bod asked me what 'economically viable' meant

I went to O2... Better people on the helldesk but worse data service... Currently my £30p/m tariff affords me 1Mb browsing a month... Yep 1Mb

Pricing after this runs at £3 per Mb... T-Mobile (at last check when other half was renewing her contract) topped out at 2Gb fair usage per month... I nearly fell over when I realised how it'd cost me to match that

It's just a shame that T-Mobile's customer service sucks :)

We have Orange 3G data cards (as my company is heavily in bed with Orange on the phone side) and their rates were akin to Vodafone's. It was starting to become rather expensive for the number of individual data cards required and they flatly refused to budge on tariff's or costs.

Just recently however they have had a change of heart and now allow us to have a single data transfer agreement with 1 master datacard with roughly 1Gb of transfer at £90 a month and our other datacards are enclosed in the same tariff for £13 a month each. If any of the data isn't used it seamlessly moves to the following month's allowance.

Works out a lot cheaper overall for more data transfer.

I see that Vodafone have also stopped off-setting data against text bundles. My 500 texts used to give me up to 25Mb of data per month, which was plenty for my needs most months. From tomorrow, the same useage pattern will cost me an extra £20/month (by my rough calcs) unless I sign up for the new data bundle

In the infancy of mobile data I signed up for a monthly calls package that had 'free mobile data' It was pricey for a monthly non-business package at the time but I thought that the data would be worthwhile.

About six months into the contract I got a text message saying the data was no longer 'all you can eat' and I was restricted to Kb inclusive, £2 a Mb after that. The text asked me to reply to it with the phrase "OK" Um, no, I don't think so.

So here I am many years later on the same tariff (they try to get me to change every time I upgrade my phone at the end of the contracted year, I say no way) still getting the free data, and am now using the SIM card in a high speed card in my laptop and getting through about 600Mb a month for the princely sum of £30 a month and that includes unlimited free off-peak calls to other mobiles on the same network, land lines and 500 text messages.

Not that that adds much to the discussion here, but I tell anyone who will listen....

Vodafone Live itself now has a page about this. Although it fails to mention how much you get for £7.50 it does say this will be available from 6th June.

Meanwhile with less than 2 hours to go Vodafone's website still says that browsing Vodafone Live is free.

...yes you guessed it. Why is it that companies insist on bringing new offers to the table which are in no way competitive or good value for money nor simple in pricing? Customers are not going to go for this sh@%

Vodafone used to be a decent company, but now they suck!

ITS ALL ABOUT GREED

T Mobile have something called web n walk which when you buy it as a datacard for a pc/laptop, not as an addon to your phone, you get 3GB.. yes 3GB per month for £29.. seems like a bargain to me. If you go over your limit (which for 3Gig is not easy) you dont get charged, you just get a little slap and are told not to be a naughty boy. I dont normally get anywhere near 3Gig! Its also HDPSA so you get 1.8mps broadband through it. I think its great value for money!

With a controllled mobile email environment like Nokia Intellisync (esemail.net) or Microsoft Direct PUSH, this is perfect as the data tariff is well within the monthly email usage but gives the user a fixed monthly fee.

Orange have a big range flexible cash bundles with their 3G data cards which can be used for 3G MBs, Wifi and roaming and these are much better value than standard 3G MB tariffs. As well being able to use the 3G network, you can use wifi at a BT Openzone hotspot without having to buy an extra voucher. It all comes out of the same line rental. The other good thing about Orange tariffs is that you can buy big cash bundles for groups of users. You can add sharers for £12 per month, per sharer and but a lot of time, it actually works out cheaper than giving each person in the group their own tariff.

Some new developments: http://www.whatmobile.net/forumvb/showpost.php?p=192810&postcount=6

I suspect that there might be a U turn coming up

It is now 4th June and Vodafone's online billing system still does not indicate how they are charging for data traffic. I made several test connections on 1st June using a variety of ports to see how I might be billed. The online system was down all weekend and calls to 44555 (which trigger an SMS showing usage) on Saturday said to try again the next day. Calls on Sunday also said to try again the next day. It is working today, but only shows events up to the end of the 31 May which was 4 days ago. I get the impression they are hiding something - maybe their billing systems aren't working yet? It might explain why the data pack will not now appear till the 6th.

As I am locked into a contract that agreed to provide me with £30 of text messages at 12p per message, or data at £2.35 per megabyte, as part of my standard monthly charge, I expect Vodafone to continue to abide by that contract.

As I use VF and google mailers app, which access the net, this price increase will affect me, can I use that as a get out from the damn expensive way this is going?

I've had enough of their poor customer support so to now charge me more etc is taking the biscuit.

I'm on a 18month contract and have about 4 month to go.

Am I right that vodafone live is now no longer free aswell !

In that case I *really* want to know how to word a email to get out of my remaining contract, my damn phone always goes onto their homepage when its in my pocket, I'm sure the 'hotkey' is not always protected by the keylock, no doubt an engineered feature...