First it was Vodafone. They tried - in fact still are trying - to get rid of their "fair usage" policy for data charges accessing the internet on mobile phones. What that means is: you signed up to a contract that offered "unlimited internet" and in the small print (very small print) it pointed out that what this means is 500MB a month with "fair usage".In practice, it meant that if you bust that, nothing much would happen.
Now, Vodafone says it's going to introduce a hard cap to the 500MB - or 1GB, if that's what it said in your small print - and charge you fixed amounts of hard cash for the extra you use.
And O2 has quickly followed. It's published its new iPhone 4 contract tariffs and they have a hard cap on data usage. If you bust it, you have to cough up.
No doubt the other networks will eventually do the same because it generates more revenue in an expanding market. Smartphones use a lot of data. And smartphones are selling like hotcakes.
In the days of crappy and clunky WAP on phones it was ok...because we all got so fed up trying to use it, we gave up.
Now the technology - that the networks are selling us and making big profits - allows us to use mobile internet properly. And we're going to have to pay for it. Big style.
The networks argue that it's only fair that customers should know what their data limits are. OK...but why did the networks introduce the "fair usage" policy in the first place?
They did it because they didn't know what they were dealing with. And it allowed them to advertise smartphones with "unlimited internet" contracts.
Now they're backtracking as fast as they can.
It's bound to happen and in a way O2 are being more up-front. At least they're doing it for NEW contracts and not existing contracts.
Vodafone want to do it for ALL contracts - existing and new.
At the very least, Vodafone should climb down from this, admit they hooked customers with the "unlimited internet" ads and only impose strict data caps for new customers.
That's the least we can expect.
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