Mobile Phone Operators are shit. All of them.

I got a nice notification about the Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem which costs £49 and offers service plans from £25 to £95 a month. It works with the Mac, looks vaguely MacLike (well, it would look okay beside a white MacBook)…

So, the plans,

• £49 for the modem and £25 per month buys you 250 MB download in the UK every month
• £0 for the modem and £45 per month buys you unlimited download in the UK every month
• £0 for the modem and £95 a month buys you unlimited download in the UK and 100MB abroad per month

I blinked at the middle option and started counting on my fingers. With Judicious Use of Skype, I could decrease my current mobile plan and essentially get free broadband…at 1.4 Mbps…everywhere. Sounded beezer…

Then I saw this:

The Vodafone Data Unlimited and Vodafone Data Travel price plans are subject to Vodafone’s fair usage policy. This means that a customer’s UK usage must not exceed 1Gb per user account in a month. We don’t expect customers to go over this limit however if a customer’s usage is in excess of this, we may ask them to moderate their usage.

What. The. Fuck.

1 GB.

One Gigabyte.

In a month!

I’m currently with Orange and, frankly they’ve proved to be a shower of bastards themselves. They won’t give me the PRICE a plan unless I commit to an 18 month contract, buy a new phone and sign over my first born. THEN they want to tell me the price?

Sure. No wonder mobile phone operators are the first thing I think of when I step in something soft when walking along the street.

Orange? You’re shit.
Vodafone? You’re shit.
Want to bet O2 will be any better? I can’t even face going to their web site!

[edit. I went to O2’s web site. They’re worse with the pricing, as draconian with the download limits and their download speed is less than Vodafone. Overall, a typically shit rating.]

Isn’t there ever going to be a disruptive influence in mobile broadband in the UK?