I have used my nice shiny new SPV M700 for a few days now, it’s fantastic and I’m bound to burn loads of data on it, one of the reasons for my upgrades was the press release that this was coming:
Orange cuts cost of plugging into the internet on a mobile phone 3G facts
(April 23rd 2007, The Times)
The general concesus behind it being that we need to get people using the data services on their mobiles to take them to the next level, and that it’s never going to happen while it’s a rip off to use data services. I couldn’t agree more!
This announced the following offers for contract users:
Internet “snacks” – 30p for 15mins with daily cap of £1.50 or a “bundle” priced at £1 per day or £5 monthly for evening/ weekends or £8 monthly “anytime”
As the first commenter on the article states, the general feeling is this was all a scam to get people to sign-up into long term contracts, have they been duped?
It appears that unlimited is not what it seems anymore and is capped at 30MB! James Kendrick & Kevin Tofel call it seedy they could blow this limit just downloading a podcast, and I’m inclined to agree.
Running a hosting company I am truly aware that there is no such thing as “unlimited”, but there is such a thing as common-sense, a 1-2GB cap would probably have handled most users!
News of this cap has brought widespread criticsim from Orange who in recent years have removed all the added extras that made them the great network they were. They no longer want to be seen as good, and want to run with the pack it would appear. Ongoing discussions appear on AVForums, .
What confuses the issue more is that some people have had it in the past (a previous special offer maybe), Rob Evans is one such user, but his commenters have had mixed fortunes getting this applied to their accounts. I’m personally waiting for the dust to settle on this one as someone at O may sit-up and take notice with the amount of noise this is generating! Rob goes on to post that his bill actually says 1GB available but that it may have been withdrawn 🙁
I love the post at smstextnews:
Watch this space, as rumours are abound the industry is about to change the definition of the word ‘free’ to mean something that costs money. It’s nothing that an asterisk and a bit of small print can’t handle..
One commenter over at SMS Text News, Chris, says:
The only thing he could find was reference to an unlimited data package for £8 that is available Mid-July (I think he said 17th onwards, but don’t quote me on that).. however it is only listed as being available to business customers (not personal ones).
Now that’s interesting!!!
Other bloggers around the web that are annoyed:
great stuff im getting onto orange in my mobile browser tommorrow
As I said – the deal isn’t as good as it first sounded unfortunately 🙁
I just checked this months bill and it says mb’s available next month 1000mb.
I was concerned that they’d try and change the deal, but they haven’t.
hmmm…. Interesting!
Does that mean we can all get it I wonder?
Anybody else had any luck?