Mobile Data Enough to Force a Man into Bankruptcy?

Full of Christmas cheer Vodafone UK landed a whopping £27,322 bill on British customer Ian Simpson’s lap.

As part of Simpson’s £41.50 per month contract was a £7.50 data plan maxing out at 120Mb per month.

It appears that Simpson may have forgotten to switch on his ‘Dumbdar’ when he hooked up his mobile as a broadband modem at home as it was faster than his existing connection! After downloading what was thought to be “20-30 TV shows and four albums” Vodafone UK pulled the plug.

Now I’m not sure whether this speaks worse of the state of broadband in the UK or Vodafone UK for helping to perpetuate the widely held belief that mobile network operators are determined not to offer up sensibly priced mobile data. These downloads equate to something like £18 per minute!

Only last month we had the case of the Canadian running up an $85,000 with Bell Canada, for exactly the same thing, using his mobile as a modem.

Vodafone UK have stated they will “try to come to some sympathetic arrangement” with Simpson but is this enough? With Vodafone’s mobile data revenues up 49% to £1bn for the six months to Sep’06 surely they would be in a position to i) wipe this silly bill and ii) leverage their size to open up mobile data when and where the customer wants it for a sensible price?