Mobile internet

Posted on 14 Aug 2007 at 14:58

Rip-off prices

The internet over mobile phones has hardly set Britain alight, not least because the prices are prohibitive, and users aren't sure just how much checking email or their favourite website will cost. Only 5.7 million people in the UK accessed the internet from a phone in January, according to a study by comScore and Telephia, which, given the ubiquity of handsets, is a waif-like percentage.

Believe it or not (and things are improving with bundled packages), it's still possible to pay more than £7 for a megabyte of data - downloading a ten-track album of 4MB songs would cost a flabbergasting £280 without a data contract.

"We all know how much the industry paid for 3G licences, and there needs to be a return on that investment," says Mobile Data Association chairman Mike Short. "The price relates to competition and the market, and is limited by what's possible in terms of billing."

Although most of the carriers have made strides recently and started offering some sort of "unlimited" service, people that don't sign up to a subscription face exorbitant charges. One of the networks' favourite ploys is to quote prices in kilobytes to make them appear like the bargain they most certainly aren't. "When you access t-zones, you'll be charged for browsing and viewing different pages," says the T-Mobile website. "This is charged at 0.73p per kilobyte - that's less than a penny!" It's also much less than a webpage, but that isn't mentioned, neither is the fact that the rate converts to £7.30 per megabyte, so a two-minute, 1.5MB video download from the Beeb would cost around £10.

Vodafone, too, talks about kilobytes in its confusing new tariff for mobile data. Although you can sign up for a monthly subscription at £7.50 that provides 120MB per month, non-subscribers are told: "A customer not signing up to a data pack will pay £1 for 500KB of usage each day. Usage of less than 500KB will incur a proportionately lower charge. Once the customer goes over 500KB they'll experience no further costs until they've used 15MB."

Given that the network is already in place and it costs the telcos little to push bits of data around, it's hard to justify such steep prices, but carriers say they have to recoup large marketing overheads. According to Orange's vice president of mobile and convergence Jean-Pascal van Overbeke, the majority of expenditure goes on non-traffic costs. He claims the money goes on design, advertising and call centres. This is why per-megabyte charging is giving way to subscriptions, which are much cheaper to service, according to an interview he gave to The Telegraph.

Solution: If you're contemplating even modest amounts of mobile internet access, ensure you don't simply buy data on an ad hoc basis and sign up for a subscription. Deals vary enormously and data options often depend on your voice tariff - not surprisingly, the more expensive monthly voice plans often boast the best data deals.

Tight-fitting caps

A new range of so-called "unmetered" services offer a chunk of inclusive data for an upfront fee, but you have to read between the lines to find out just how much data you're entitled to and which services you can use.

Orange is the tightest of the bunch with a penny-pinching 30MB allowance for the month on its £5 tariff, a paltry amount a company spokesperson said was based on how much customers said they'd need. Given that the BBC says it takes 1.5MB to download a decent-quality news clip, the limit suggests either Orange or its customers badly underestimated demand.