02 to cap data on smartphones - from 24th June - Grrrrrr!

[Arthur]

I really wish they would stop using the word "unlimited" when there clearly is a limit. Why can't the ASA do something about this blatant false advertising?

[featured_spectre]

I believe the Advertising standards agency are looking into this as it is clearly not unlimited. Unlimited to me = 10GB and beyond for a mobile device, 60GB and beyond for a PC internet connection

[creese]

I believe the Advertising standards agency are looking into this as it is clearly not unlimited. Unlimited to me = 10GB and beyond for a mobile device, 60GB and beyond for a PC internet connection

 

Surely unlimited means...... well.... no limit. Why not say 10Gb or 60Gb limit. So much simpler.

[featured_spectre]

Thats true, however it is all subject to fair usage.

[creese]

Thats true, however it is all subject to fair usage.

 

Ahhh, right. Qualified by another meaningless phrase. How do they get away with it.

 

If I was to say to them I'll pay you £30 a month for my calls. Subject to satifactory funds and £30 is actually £12.50 would that be okay?

 

Hmmmm. I don't think so.

Edited June 11, 2010 by creese

[Mcshammer_dj]

I'd thought I'd look up 'unlimited' in dictionary.com...

 

Just as I thought:

 

 

 

Invigorated by this revelation, I moved on to a legal dictionary, where I found that 'fair use' means:

 

perhaps there is a special ISP dictionary where each meaning can be slightly altered and modified as and where it will suit the isp

[CHR1S]

So, why sell services that will clearly eat your data allowance in a day? I pay £6 per month for Sky Sports on my iPhone, which I can watch over 3G (allowed by O2 no less). So, once im capped at 500mb I will have to pay twice (perhaps 3 - Unlimited Data, Sky, Extra Data) to watch the footie on my mobile?

 

Its a joke!

[Arthur]

Quote from The Guardian article above...

 

So: 200MB average; 97% use less than 500MB. Put those numbers into a normal distribution calculator and you discover that those 0.1% who are annoying O2 so much consume more than 690MB of data per month. That's about 23MB per day - roughly a megabyte every single hour. What, you think, are those folks doing? In fact, one network tells me that those people are downloading many gigabytes per month. That's quite hard to do on a smartphone.

 

 

The thing is, if 97% of O2's smartphone customers are averaging just 200MB of data, why impose limits at all? This is just a ploy to make more money using file-sharing as an excuse to impose caps and to continue underinvesting in their network infrastructure. The people who are using ~690MB of data per month are most likely tethering their phone to their computer(s) which is obviously a service O2 charge extra for.

[localzuk]

Quote from The Guardian article above...

 

 

 

 

The thing is, if 97% of O2's smartphone customers are averaging just 200MB of data, why impose limits at all? This is just a ploy to make more money using file-sharing as an excuse to impose caps and to continue underinvesting in their network infrastructure. The people who are using ~690MB of data per month are most likely tethering their phone to their computer(s) which is obviously a service O2 charge extra for.

 

I dunno, is £1m a day investment in their network under-investing? Also, there will be a number of those large data users who are tethering without paying extra in the first place.

 

Personally, I think it is about time the companies scrapped their unlimited plans and labelled them properly from the outset. As we've all said, 'unlimited' has never meant unlimited. What O2 are effectively doing is removing their usage of that word. True, they're also imposing stricter limits, but then when they look at their numbers they are bound to do so. Think about it in school - do we all give kids free-reign with their file storage? Or do we put in place quotas, limit what types of files can be stored etc? ie. Maximising our investment.

 

Many O2 customers have complained of poor connectivity and download speeds on their iPhones and other smart phones. If limiting the amount of data means more income and therefore more money to invest in the network, I think it may actually be a good thing.

 

Also, come on, £5 is not a lot for 500Mb of data allowance! I used to be on Orange, and I got a total of 4MB of data a month... With each extra MB being 25p. That's £125 for 500MB.

[Arthur]

I dunno, is £1m a day investment in their network under-investing?

While £1m is a lot of money, I'm not sure if that is good or bad in this context or compared to other networks (especially Vodafone who are a far larger company).

 

Also, there will be a number of those large data users who are tethering without paying extra in the first place.

I agree that heavy data users shouldn't cause issues for everyone else, but what I would really like to see are tariffs where you pay a flat-rate for everything. Say £5 pm for 100MB, £10 pm for 250MB, £15 pm for £500MB, £20 pm for 750MB and so on. This includes all of your calls, texts and Internet use since this is what they actually are - just data. Once you have used up your quota you pay a bit a bit more for some more data to make more calls, send texts or use the Internet. Simple really. Broadband ISPs don't differenciate between different types of data travelling across thier networks (in terms of pricing), so why should mobile networks? Also, if I am paying for 1GB I should be able to use it however I want, whether that is via tethering or not. If someone downloads 5GB using a P2P application then that is their fault and they should obviously pay more (£50 in this case if it costs £5 per 500MB).

 

The problem with this model though is that networks love making ridiculous profits on text messages and will never go for this. This is why we are still paying 10p for 140 bytes of data (or £749 for 1MB!!!)? Not everyone has "Unlimited" texts yet (which are limited to around 3,000 per month on most networks).

 

Also, come on, £5 is not a lot for 500MB of data allowance!

That's true, but O2 currently do not have any tariffs that I can see for smartphone users that want > 1GB (they will have to wait until until October 2010) or low voice/text users (< 100 mins or texts per month) who want 750MB-1GB data (like me). If I only make a few calls and send a few texts per month I don't want to pay £30-£45 per month just to be be able to have a bigger data quota.

 

I used to be on Orange, and I got a total of 4MB of data a month... With each extra MB being 25p. That's £125 for 500MB.

Orange's mobile Internet tariffs are a joke. This is why I didn't even bother using the Internet when on Orange. What is the point when you will always go over and be charged extra?

Edited June 12, 2010 by Arthur