Mobile Data Rates

The world of mobile data charging is a strange one, certainly if you use Pay As You Go (PAYG). I've been on Virgin Mobile's PAYG tariff for some years. It's nice: rather than having to top up you can ask for a credit limit and so long as you don't blow that they just send you a bill at the end of the month and direct debit you.

For me my typical monthly bill was about £3 as I don't make many calls so Virgin switched me to quarterly billing.

When I went sailing in Scotland last year I needed to be able to phone home and Virgin's coverage (they use the T-Mobile network) wasn't good so I looked around at other operators and ended up with a Vodafone SIM card. I didn't use it much afterwards though as voice calls are a lot dearer with Vodafone, they don't support the "new voicemail" marker (they have to send you an SMS instead!), and they don't offer the same PAYG with monthly billing tariff as Virgin so you have to top it up, which is tedious.

But the catch with Virgin is their data tariff. They charge 0.5p/KB for data. So that's £5.12/MB. I've talked here before about how I'm starting to make more data calls on my phone now and that really is a criminally expensive rate.

So I looked at Vodafone. They've relatively recently revamped their tariff. Data is now charged at £1 for the first 0.5MB, so that's just under 0.2p/KB and then the next 14.5MB per day is free, giving you an effective cost of about 0.0065p/KB if you use the whole 15MB. Thereafter it's back to the 0.2p/KB tariff.

So if, like me, you're on PAYG and you're doing more data than voice, then Vodafone looks like much better value that Virgin.

I have also looked briefly at O2¹. They use yet another system where you pay them £7.50 for a month's Web browsing (their web bolt on) and they don't expect you to use more than 200MB in that month. So if you use all of it that's cheaper than Vodafone at 0.0037p/KB, on the other hand if you only use it a little it comes in rather more expensive².

But it's more down to usage patterns. I'm very unlikely to use more than 15MB in a day so if I use mobile data on more than eight days a month I should use O2, otherwise I should use Vodafone.

I think Vodafone wins at the moment³.

1. I did look at Orange too but I'm blowed if I can find their PAYG data tariff at all.
2. I've also been warned off this tariff as it's allegedly HTTP/HTTPS only, any other traffic is charged at their "standard rates"
3. On the the back of this posting I wrote to Virgin customer services and I got a reply back within a few hours. It said:

   Thanks for your email to Virgin Mobile about our Data tariff. [...]
   
   First of all, we'd like to let you know that we've numerous queries like this and as such, we're aware that this is an area we need to focus on. We understand that more and more of our customers are demanding this type of service.
   
   At the moment our team are looking into the possibility of introducing Data packages, whereby for a one off charge per month, you can get a certain amount of 'data usage' on your phone. If we introduce this service, it'll be sure to lower the cost of data usage on Virgin Mobile.
   
   If we do introduce a data package, we'll advertise it online so please keep your eyes peeled on virgin.com/mobile. Until then, our standard GPRS charges apply if you access the internet on a Virgin Mobile phone. To get the full low-down on our tariff, just visit our website at www.virginmobile.co.uk/waystopay
   
   Although we understand that Vodaphone's data packages maybe more competitive than ours at the moment, we really hope you choose to come back to Virgin Mobile.
   
   Thanks for taking the time to write.

   So I'm obviously not the only one. It looks like they're thinking of going down the same road as O2 on this. It will be interesting to see how their prices come out - it would be nice to switch back (except when I'm in Scotland).