Vodafone have announced their entry into the flat-rate data plan market with a £7.50 data pack giving you anytime browsing with a monthly cap of 120Mb. Whilst it doesn’t quite compare to the T-Mobile data plans, 120Mb is still four times more than the ridiculous Orange 30Mb limit, which equates to around 1Mb per day.
The press release states that VoIP and other data-hungry apps are “discouraged” and, if you do happen to exceed the limit, you’ll be charge £1 for 500KB of usage each day. If you go over 500KB then there’ll be no further costs until you go over 15MB.
We have to wonder though, if networks are so worried about data abuse, why don’t they simply block all non-standard ports? Just open port 80 (HTTP), 25 (SMTP) and 110 (POP3) and block the rest? Then it’d be easier to offer higher caps that probably wouldn’t be reached?
Also, we’ve just added a new “networks” area where you can talk about talk plans and data tariffs, so get posting if you’ve found a good tariff !
Link – Vodafone Press Release