As you'll all know by now, I'm currently on Orange. I'm one of the many customers who are paying a rather
large amount of cash for data. Today I've been charged nearly £12 for using just 7Mb of data, which seems to
come from the "Pay As You Use" prices mentioned here. Pretty much all the other networks in the UK are aware that people will only use the
mobile internet if they're given a decent data allowance and a fair price.
So, after yet another stonking phone bill I called them to try and get a better deal. I went straight through
to the, "Thinking of leaving Orange?" option and got a nice chap here in the UK. He told me that I
could leave Orange at any time during the contract, but I'd have to pay the line rental due for the
remainder of the contract. That amounts to over £300 currently, so I decided to at least listen to the data
plans they had on offer for me. The guy then transferred me to the "help desk" which, of course, is outsourced
somewhere else in the planet. The lady told me that there were three data "bundles" available for
personal customers like myself. They are as follows..
1 - For £1 per day you can browse as much as you like.
2 - For £8 per month you can browse as much as you like, up to 30Mb.
3 - For £5 per month you can browse in the evenings (7pm-7am) and weekends.
Yes, that's it. I asked and asked again, but this is all that's available to Orange personal customers who
aren't taking out a new contract.The first option is, in my opinion, not really useful because I would have
to call and activate it on every day I want to use it. This isn't practical for many, and takes a good
few minutes of call-centre navigation to sort out. The evening and weekend one didn't seem to have a fair usage cap, but again it's not suitable for me so, reluctantly, I've had to pay £8 for 30Mb. Orange, I
believe, have come up with this 30Mb figure because they assume that people are only browsing "mobile
compatible" sites on their phones. This is insane, especially with the imminent release of the HTC Touch Diamond - a device which promotes "Usable mobile internet". Customers on Orange will be scared of using the internet on their version of the Diamond.
Orange do seem to have some other alternatives though, such as the Panther 40 tariff which offers 250Mb of
anytime browsing for £35 per month, however it does mean signing up to a new 2 year contract.
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