Mobile broadband weird pricing & the new dongle

[krib]

Hi All,

With all the crazy recent changes (ie the dreams over) in data plans thought I'd post this oddity up for discussion with Voda and other users;

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/personal/mobile-internet/on-your-pc-or-mac/internet-dongles/index.htm

Correct me if I'm wrong but you can presently sign up for a 30-day agreement (effectively pay and go even though this doesn't exist with Voda) with 2gb monthly allowance and you get a brand new Huawei K4511 28.8mbit HSPA+ dongle (worth £70) all for £15. I did exactly this today (upgrading my old warhorse).

The charge for exceeding the 2gb allowance in any one month is £15 per 1gb over. Ouch!

What's to stop me simply cancelling my contract at the end 30 days, before I go over my limit, and picking up another dongle and plan with a fresh 2gb (at half the price of going over the 2gb limit with the original) with the added bonus of getting a second £70 dongle for free (or possibly £9 in store for the faster K4551). In fact I could probably do this many times simply to spite the bonkers pricing.

What irritates me is that none of the UK mobile providers, despite whining about their ancient networks (a la broken business model GM) being punished by smartphone users and p2p, are really giving users a fair open flexible means to use and pay for their services. You can't buy 1gb+ data boosters or have your traffic shaped after hitting your allowance.  In fact, if you want even close to fair pricing you've got to go to three.co.uk but then you can look forward to sub 100kbit speeds around alot of London and the language barrier of their support lines.

I should add that I personally think Voda have the best cellular data network in the UK. I've always found it to be pretty reliable for coverage and speed.

What does everyone else think? Vodafone? When are we gonna see some well thought through data plans before your GSM phone profits completely evoporate?

PS. Please Voda up date you bldy software download links! I couldn't download v10.2.302 from the UK site, which supports the new K4551 dongle Voda have been selling for the last 2 months. Had to get it from the South African site... All note the K4551 is NOT plug n play (doubt anyone realised that either before they started selling it). I've had this happen alot in the past with the jump to 7.2mbits etc too...

[Retired-Lee]

Hey krib,

Many thanks for your post about the data pricing.

I have to agree with your statement about cancelling and starting a new line. It's entirely feasible that you're quite right in your thinking that there's nothing stopping you doing just this. I'm sure the marketing teams and project leads have taken this into account and have made this decision based on market research and their findings.

On the software side of things, there is a thread on the eForum that holds the latest software builds for our modems. The latest version available for our UK customers can be found at the below link.

Vodafone Mobile Broadband Help

I appreciate the version specified isn't the one you currently have but this is the latest Vodafone UK approved firmware.

Cheers,

Lee

eForum Team

[krib]

Thanks for the quick response Lee,

I realise that Vodafone are basing their pricing decisions on market research and other fingers in the air. Just thought after the aggrieved post, and alot of other unhappy customers comments on other forums, we should have a more productive thread dedicated to people suggesting the sorts of data plans they would ideally go for.  Rather than losing huge swathes of unused data or paying epic amounts for stuff all my ideal, at least for now, would be reasonably priced booster packs - eg 2gb for £5. Or even reasonably priced monthly plans. I work with alot of finance software and travel widely and the windows updates alone use up the paltry 2gb monthly allowance. Even 5gb is pushing it for me but I'm certain I'm less than 1% of your user base so would be interested to hear what others think.

Re the software, I was specifically talking about the link you posted being broken. If you click it, then scroll to the bottom where the download link is for v10.2.300 and then click that it takes you to "search support" results with the PDF quick guide up first. Ie completely useless. The unavailable v10.2 is the only version that supports the K4511.  I'm guessing the links were broken when you guys upgraded the forum a couple weeks ago.

Problem 2 was that you guys are currently selling a, albeit awesome spec, non plug and play USB modem in the K4511 - it even says so on the underside. For info, this means when you plug it into any mac or pc nothing happens - there is no accessible data partition with VMB or Huawei drivers. You have to download the latest VMB from the labrinth that is your website. Also note the business download link is only at v10.1.

Cheers,

Alex