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Heavy GPRS data users get flat rate from Vodafone - but not roaming!

They're calling it "all you can eat" - a new flat-rate of fifty pounds a month, and Vodafone promises you won't have to pay for any more data. Nearly. If you stay at home, anyway.

The changes revolve around the replacement of existing GPRS bundles - the GPRS1, GPRS5, GPRS15, GPRS40 and GPRS100 tariffs – with the following pricing options:

First, there's "Mobile Connect Select" aimed at people who really don't use data much. You pay five pounds a month for absolutely nothing; and if you actually use data, it costs you an extra £2.00 per megabyte. If you use this, they saw you coming.

Next there's Mobile Connect 10 - it gives you ten megabytes for fifteen pounds a month, and if you go over that 15 meg, it's £1.50 per extra meg.

For email users, there's Mobile Connect 25 for £25.53 and it buys you 25 megabytes; any extra megs cost £1.00 each.

The new one is "Mobile Connect Complete" for a flat rate of £45.00 a month. If you use GPRS all the time, this is the one for you; there are no surplus charges, and you can't be charged more than the flat rate.

Or ... can you? Well, yes. First, there's a "fair usage policy" - if you go over 150 MB in a month, they'll ask you to pay a whole £1 per MB charge for every megabyte thereafter.

"This is great news for our customers who are heavy users of information on the move", said Lance Batchelor, Marketing Director, Vodafone UK. "The introduction of a flat rate price plan will mean customers need no longer be concerned with the amount of data they are using, but can work wherever and whenever they need to for a fixed fee."

Guy Kewney adds:

That's it? A fixed fee? Yes! All you can eat!

Well, sort of. It's a flat rate up to the "fair use" limit - that is, unless you go travelling. At that point all bets are off. Especially if you come here to Spain or Switzerland.

Roaming charges in Europe seem to start at around ten pounds a megabyte. Admittedly, there's a "special promotion" currently, offering roaming at 60% off the normal charge - that is, you "only" pay £3.50 per megabyte in 11 European countries in the EU.

Pity the poor guy who has to download a new PowerPoint presentation attachment and who thought he was covered!

And charges for other GPRS-providing countries can be even higher; quotes of over £20.00 have been reported by users in other parts.

Vodafone should deal with this at least in part. Perhaps it can't, alone, overcome rapacious pricing by roaming partners. But a joke is a joke; transferring data is virtually free over the Internet, and the phone companies should use the Internet to shift data from one network to another. They certainly shouldn't charge this sort of punitive premium.

While they're puzzling their sweet little heads over how to do that [hint: the "internet protocol" guys?] perhaps Vodafone could say to its "Complete" users that the first £50.00 of their roaming charges are going to be included in what they have paid? And then the "fair use" policy can kick in as if they'd exceeded their 150 megabyte limit.

To pay fifty pounds a month, and be charged as if you had paid nothing is, to put it kindly, a bloody rip-off.