More bad news for travellers today after this story highlighted the case of Joanne Lancaster. After getting the flu whilst on holiday Joanne decided to check a few film trailers on her Orange phone. Unfortunately, because she was in the French Alps, she got stung with £8 per meg data charges, racking her monthly bill up to £303. This is the second time high roaming data charges have been covered in the media and doesn’t help promote data usage at all.
What shocks me is that we live in Europe, where we’re all meant to be in one happy European Union. However, if you go for a short ride in the Eurotunnel you’re kicked in the nuts with crazy data charges. Whilst not exactly a perfect comparison, users in America can travel from state to state for miles on end without getting such vastly inflated data charges. We need to address this now. People will not use data if they’re worried about massive bills. People here in the UK will be able to browse at up to 8Mbps on their ADSL for £15 a month, yet their mobile data bills are out of proportion. This is why more and more people want WiFi in their Smartphones and Pocket PC’s. People don’t want to use the cellular network to get data. It costs too much and they’ll more than likely wait to get “that big download” or “that large attachment” because – even with 3G cards – the data charge can be collosal.
Link – ZDNet.co.uk